[SPEAKER_00]: Many people don't know this, but a lot of the brands of whiskey that are on the shelf are not made by the company whose name is on the label.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called sourcing and there's a lot of deception and confusion and misunderstanding out there and we're going to clear it up today with a no-nonsense look at the truth about sourcing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you want to hear about it, stick around.
[SPEAKER_00]: Except some is not about calling out any specific brand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe a little bit, we'll talk about that in a bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more about understanding the system.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because from my perspective, and yes, I'm a little bit biased because I did start the prideful goat who does source.
[SPEAKER_00]: But from my perspective, sourcing is not the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is when there's a lack of transparency or if there's purposeful deception or misleading language.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, this is sourcing, it actually can be a good thing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically what it means is there's whiskey that's distilled by one party and then bottle or branded by another party.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sourcing doesn't automatically mean low quality because you're getting it from a high quality producer, it's going to be good whiskey.
[SPEAKER_00]: And origin alone doesn't find whether or not it's excellent or, you know, whatnot because there's a lot of craft
[SPEAKER_00]: that people like a lot less than some of the source whiskey, and so it's not necessarily about the flavor as much as it is about the customer not being taken advantage of.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the reason why sourcing is so important is because distilling requires long aging times and new brands need cash flow.
[SPEAKER_00]: before they can start selling the whiskey that they've personally produced.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of brands started off sourcing and trying to build their distribution networks and their brand recognition and all that stuff and then integrate in their own distillate as it comes of age and sourcing also allows many distilleries to survive long enough to get past that first risky period of starting a new business, right, because they're able to bring something to market.
[SPEAKER_00]: that's going to help them financially.
[SPEAKER_00]: The problem is when there's a transparency breakdown and marketing can rely more on implication than clarification and they sometimes design wording to encourage assumptions that are actually not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: And these practices might be legal, but they are confusing.
[SPEAKER_00]: and legal but misleading label language is a pretty common problem in the sourcing industry.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so one of the things that we need to understand on all labels, not just source labels, is that numbers on a label don't necessarily mean that it's the age unless it's specifically states that it's the age.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I mean by that is that there are some brands that will sometimes put a a a number on their label and they're hoping that you assume that it means that that's the age, but they know that it doesn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another thing to keep in mind is produced by does not mean distilled by.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is something that even came as a shock to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought if they said boot produced by, that it was the same as saying distilled by, but as it turns out in the language, you're allowed to say that you produce it, even if you only bottled it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the less deceptive term would be bottled by, not produced by.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another thing to keep in mind is that the terms craft,
[SPEAKER_00]: small batch handcrafted, they're not regulated terms, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Those are marketing terms.
[SPEAKER_00]: And since they're marketing terms, it is in the eye of the holder, whether or not that belongs on their label.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you see people using misleading language to try
[SPEAKER_00]: to see the customer and the believing that there's value that's probably not actually there, it creates distrust and consumers can fill embarrassed when there are assumptions or challenge, especially in the whiskey enthusiast world.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that it's happened to me and I spend a lot of time researching these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the anger about filling misled is more about being dupped than it is about sourcing itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what I think the antidote is in sourcing and in labeling in general is to have true transparency with your consumer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what that looks like is you have to make clear statements about where the whiskey was distilled.
[SPEAKER_00]: honest explanations of blending and sourcing, I think go a long way to build credibility between you and your consumer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that they should use very plain language and that plain language, in my opinion, will build trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how to read labels the smart way, right, and not be deceived.
[SPEAKER_00]: First off, if it matters to you, you need to check the distillation origin.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the good news is the federal government has a rule that somewhere on the front or the back label, it has to tell you where the whiskey was distilled.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're looking at a label that says Kentucky bourbon, it means it had to have been distilled
[SPEAKER_00]: the state of Kentucky.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it might just say straight bourbon whiskey and not say a state.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you're going to have to look someplace on there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if it's not in the description on the back, if it's not somewhere in the name and the front label, usually on the back label right above or below the the the code.
[SPEAKER_00]: This can code it will say distilled in and then the state and the most common state for Non-distolar produced products is Indiana because MGP produces a lot of whiskey for a lot of other smaller non-produced distiller producer brands that are sourcing and so you can look for a state of origin
[SPEAKER_00]: You generally should treat numbers as meaningless unless they very explicitly state what the number says and take the time to read the fine print, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's another rule that if you're distilling and selling a whiskey, it has to have an aid statement on it if the whiskey itself is under four years old in the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if it's what they call it non-age-stated whiskey, then you can assume it's four years old or older.
[SPEAKER_00]: But quite often, you'll have a whiskey that you think is non-age-stated.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you'll look at the very fine print at the bottom of the back label and it will say aged in, you know, new chart of barrels for 18 months, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that'd be a really short aging period for most aging environments.
[SPEAKER_00]: My overall thoughts are that sourcing is not the enemy, sourcing can be great to help support a new production facility that maybe doesn't have enough demand today to justify the production capacity that they need to start off with.
[SPEAKER_00]: a great example would be bar sumber and company and another great example would be castle and key.
[SPEAKER_00]: Both of those institutions had a lot of capital that they had to raise to get those destroy operations up and running and they needed to be able to generate revenue and they couldn't do it with their own brands because nobody knew of their range yet and their whiskey was going to be too young to sell.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they started doing some contract distillation for other brands to help make ends meet and to justify that capital expenditure without it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We wouldn't have those amazing distilleries today.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there's a lot of brands that got their start with non-distiller production whiskey.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I don't think it's the enemy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the silence of
[SPEAKER_00]: that you see on some labels of what could have been said, but they remained silent because they felt that it would be better to leave people to assume something better than they would know if they had told the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's a problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that another major problem is when they want the consumer to assume something based on implication of something that they put on the label.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the sourcing itself,
[SPEAKER_00]: isn't isn't the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you as a consumer I want you to feel empowered and know how to read labels so that you know what it is that you're purchasing.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you doing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm testing my new whiskey glass that I had designed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there's a company out there that's a real Karen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she threatened to sue us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I. Yeah, so we had been producing some traditional tulip shape whisky glasses.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: We never used the name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they claimed to own the shape of the glass.
[SPEAKER_00]: And since I'm just a little guy, I couldn't fight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But do you know what that motivated us to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: What?
[SPEAKER_00]: To go out and design a glass that was actually made for high proof American spirits.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the company that had the problem with us, their glass was originally designed for low proof Scotch whiskey.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: 80, 86 proof that type of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what I noticed?
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time I would know is a really high proof high quality.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, spirit in the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Out of this glass.
[SPEAKER_00]: All I got was ethanol.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, little burn there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I felt that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we went out and we designed this glass.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually designed for those higher-proof spirits.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm so confident in this glass that if anybody were to go to our website and buy one, I'm offering a money-back guarantee.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you get that glass to your house and you find yourself one of these traditional two-up-shaped glasses and you know is a high-proof spirit side by side, you can't tell the difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will gladly give you your money-back.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what you're saying is they can really stick it to the Karen and support the little guy by going to bourbonrilltalk.com and ordering one of these with absolutely no risk, they can get their money back if they don't prefer it, nosing it to the other.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you love small business and you like sticking it to Karen, that's the way to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stick it to Karen.
[SPEAKER_01]: bourbonrilltalk.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I hope that this was useful information for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have any additional questions and you want to get into the nitty gritty details, feel free to throw them in the comments below.
[SPEAKER_00]: I read every single comment and I respond to everyone that the man's response.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as always, we love to give a little bit of whiskey away.
[SPEAKER_00]: So today, I thought we'd start off by giving away some 13th colony.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, 13th colony is probably the brand that's most responsible for consumers wanting to have this discussion because it was discovered that their labels were actually not compliant with federal regulations.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had very heavily inferred that they were the ones that were just stealing the whiskey.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had just septive language on their website and the internet sluice got involved whenever they started to get a lot of attention for their double oak product which is delicious by the way and I still have a bottle of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I loved drinking, I loved the whiskey, because as I said, sourcing is not the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lack of transparency is the problem, and they effectively got busted.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they've never actually come right out and admitted it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this channel was one of the channels that was responsible for putting the truth out there about what was going on behind the scenes that we, you know, could put the pieces together.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we couldn't say definitively, but we had enough evidence to know that there was something wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: reissuing their labels, and they started to apply for a certificate of label approval for all their old labels so that they could get compliant after that word hit the streets in the whisky enthusiast world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we thought we would give that away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another individual who sources is Bob Desperits.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was one of the founders of Whistlepague, and a very interesting individual
[SPEAKER_00]: rented a elephant wrote across the border from Mexico to Texas on the elephant while a Mary-Ichi band played to show how weak our borders the city was.
[SPEAKER_00]: but he does some sourcing and then my buddy over at back yard which is a restaurant near New Orleans.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has some pretty amazing access to liquid from what I understand a lot of other people don't have access to.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is very tasty and the price is reasonably affordable and you can go there and have some amazing barbecue and you can also have some amazing whiskey.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of the only situations I know of in the United States where there's a distillery that's located inside of a restaurant that serves their own products as well as other people's products.
[SPEAKER_00]: He found a caveat as to how he could do that into it legally.
[SPEAKER_00]: but he meant that he could never go into distribution, so you can only buy this product there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we have high-west, high-west, make some of their own whiskey, but they're a great example of a brand that started off sourcing other people's products built to brand and now they're transitioning over to their own distillate, and that's really amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then one of my favorite non-distolar producers is Penelope.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course they were recently acquired by the company that they were selling their whiskey.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was pretty interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were so good at marketing MGPs whiskey.
[SPEAKER_00]: The MGP decided to stop trying to take market share from them and just buy them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so that's pretty cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're gonna give away five one-out sample packs.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way that you enter to win this is you Got to like this video subscribe to the channel ring the bell ringing the bell on YouTube We'll notify you a future content pieces and future free giveaways and then you got to go to YouTube go to the video description Expand the description find the link next to the word giveaway fill it out and show basic contact information We're gonna run a randomizer post the results publicly reach out to the winners
[SPEAKER_00]: send your samples absolutely for free.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you like this content and you want to support the channel, you know, this channel does a lot of philanthropy work.
[SPEAKER_00]: We spend a lot of time creating community events and opportunities for the whiskey enthusiasts community to connect.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for the most part, we don't get paid for those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so
[SPEAKER_00]: We ask for Patreon support and everyone's names who are on the screen right now are contributing at the top three levels But we understand that's not right for everybody's budget But we do want to promise you we have a Patreon level for every budget So if you want to support you can check that out But if Patreon's not your thing we do have merch at bourbonrilltalk.com that is whiskey merchandise made by whiskey lovers for whiskey lovers
[SPEAKER_00]: and much of it is customizable.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have commercial lasers, and so not only can you go get some awesome urban real-talk merch, but you have the ability to get custom glasses, and if you have your own brand or your own whisky club, we can set up a pop-up site so that everything that we have that's customizable can be customized for your people to go to your website.
[SPEAKER_00]: We set up for you and get your logo on our stuff, which is pretty cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last but not least, I'm a resident of the real estate agent in the Houston Dallas Metro areas, and if you need residential services, I'd love to talk with you about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find links for all three ways to support the channel in the video description on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you are not used to this channel, you don't really know what we're all about.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll tell you where about community and connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's something that's very important to me because I'll also love one to suicide.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I found out after his passing that he had started to lose some of those connections that keep us bound to this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And about that same time I was getting into whiskey and I saw how whiskey was a great conduit to form those kinds of connections.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought maybe if I get you connected to whiskey, the whiskey did the rest of the job and get you connected to others.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we started this channel.
[SPEAKER_00]: but we needed a place for people to be able to interact and we needed to be overwhelmingly positive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was a lot of negativity out there on some of the forums.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we decided to make a troll free environment called bourbon real-talk community, which is a Facebook group.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can go join right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's absolutely free.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's no troll activity.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the vibes are good.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, they've been so good and so successful that we're able to start a 511c3 called livestayproject.org.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is a sewer-side prevention and intervention non-profit.
[SPEAKER_00]: We administer all of that inside the whiskey world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're sitting out there in YouTube laying or listening to this on your podcast player, and you know of a 501c3 that works in the suicide prevention space that needs money, you can go to our website livestayproject.org and you can fill out an online form to request a grant because we do have funds to give to worthy causes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, along this whole process, we did see some of that negativity that made us want to start our own space.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that negativity taught us a very important lesson, and that is, if somebody can hate a stranger online, they don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's nothing that keeps us from loving a stranger online that we don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why we end every episode the same way, and that's this.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you woke up this morning, and you're unsure whether or not anyone loved you, just know that I love you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll see you next time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be real talk.
[SPEAKER_00]: Cheers.