Exploring Armagnac and Beyond: A Conversation with Master Blender Pete Lynch at Bhakta Spirits (S3 E17)

# AI Transcript: Bhakta Interview  - please excuse any typos

Kerry:
All right, let's get this started. Pete Lynch.

Pete:
So Kerry tell me about yourself. What brings you to little old Pulteney, Vermont?

Kerry:
You do, Pete. I came here just to talk to you.

Pete:
I've never felt more special.

Kerry:
Well, you should. Well, cheers.

Pete:
Cheers.

Kerry:
Thanks for coming. We'll start this off. This is Pete Lynch. We are here at BACTA. BACTA. Where's there's no BACTA.

Pete:
We've always got a BACTA. We are here at BACTA Spirits in Pulteney, Vermont, the great state of Vermont.

Kerry:
Yes, and you, my dear friend, are the master blender here stateside. I am indeed. So I want to get into that, but I also want to tell the folks at home what that means, stateside, because what? And then it's not just whiskey, which most of my audience is whiskey-centric, but you also do some other things, and well, let's start, we'll have you start. So tell me about You started off at Whistlepig.

Pete:
I did indeed, yes.

Kerry:
Where you met the current owner of Bokda, Raj Bokda. And tell me about how you guys met, what your experience was. Basically, give me your whiskey journey and tell where we are today.

Pete:
This turned into a job interview real quick, huh? Yeah. So yeah, I joined Whistlepig back in 2015, still very early days. It was about four years into the company, five years in the company, but They'd really yet to hit that tipping point where we really took off. And Raj obviously started the company. And I see so many similarities between here and there in the culture, in the ethos, in the getting down and dirty as well, if you will, and getting it done with a smaller kind of operation. I say as I look at the college campus out the window. But it is deceiving. This is a very small operation, very few people. and were still very early stages. And at Whistlepig, that's honestly part of what drove the success was... this sort of a different take in the whiskey industry. And we were not the only ones who were coming at it from the craft side of the time, but we were quite fortunate in that we really managed to get a solid supply of rye whiskey and delicious rye whiskey that tasted unlike most other offerings that people had available. Coming from Alberta Distillers Limited up in Alberta, Calgary, this was some spice forward whiskey. This was really something quite different from your old overhaul or from any other standard brand, the few and far between you could find back then. No knock against then, but the consumer, the industry, the people at large seem to respond quite well to that. I think Raj is trying to do that here, but in a bit of a more complex way, if that makes sense.

Kerry:
Well, tell us about the base spirit that catapulted this new company for him.

Pete:
Absolutely. So this company right here, was founded after Raj departed Whistlepig in 2018. And to hear him tell it, he was effectively saying, all right, I've sold my company, I've got all this money, but I'm not satisfied. And I think that very few of us can relate to that. But he I don't have too hard of a time stretching my brain to say, huh? I can kind of agree with that. You know, it's that being hungry nature if you will it's that drive to do and create and succeed and He has obviously the spirits background going on He wants to stay within what he knows perhaps branch out a little bit but not just jump right into anything and so this led to basically a bit of a touring of the world one could say and visiting the Caribbean, visiting different European countries, even visiting, I believe, some Asian countries to sample some of their unique spirits. And what really sold him on this company existing, period, was the French region of Gascony, was basically the Armagnac producing region where this spirit, unlike any other brandy in particular, but spirit, period, was not just being created, but being done so in such a particular time-honored way and done in such a way that these spirits can taste fantastic at ages not seen in any other category. And then first and foremost, tasting that actual spirit is really what sold him. I actually heard this story, not from Raj, but from Johnny Page. Johnny Page was an intern back in the Whistlepig days. We were roommates for about seven days, believe it or not, in some company housing situation, and this is now Johnny Page about seven years later. Seeing him as a man has been quite interesting, but Johnny graduates college, doesn't quite know what he wants to do. He was Raj's basically assistant for about a summer back then. They'd kept in touch quite a bit. And, you know, it's hard to have that sort of experience as a college kid where you're not only thrown into the thick of the business, but it's a whiskey making business. And it's in this boom, which we've never seen in this industry before. And Johnny Page got the bug hard, I think, because he could not help but go back to the man who really introduced him to this world, Raj. And he actually happened to be in France on this sort of world-hopping tour, if you will, when they first sampled this Armagnac that then launched this whole endeavor, if you will. And to hear Johnny tell it, Raj came back from the distillery with basically a metal pail. A bucket. with the Armagnac in it, because they didn't have any sample bottles or anything, and said, hey, you've got to try this. They try it, and the rest is effectively history where Raj says, all right, let me get to know this side of the spirits world a little bit better. Let me get to get an understanding of what the supply is like, what the age profiles are like, even how the spirit itself ages and how we can release variations of this wonderful, time-honored, and very traditional spirit, but push the boundaries a little bit. And lo and behold, brings on over a fair amount of Armagnac to the U.S. and really starts to get out there, releasing single vintages in a way that I don't think I've really seen many other companies do insofar as If you were born within the last 100 years, we probably have your birth year in a vintage bottling. We have maybe more SKUs than any other company out there, more differentiation in our product line. And that's just because we happen to take each one of these individual unique vintage years and treat them as their own instead of saying, OK, we've got a whole bunch of 80 through 85. Let's blend that together. Then we've got a lot of volume. Then we can put out some kind of more mainline product. Obviously, we've grown as a company over the time, and I'm a bit fresh here, so you're getting the second hand, but I feel like I've got a pretty decent handle on things, because as of two years ago, Raj is continuing to travel the world, continuing to accrue spirits such as whiskeys, such as rums, and also, when he's back on the home turf, saying, what can we do with these? Blending if you will much like we just did earlier was the answer and saying okay What if I mix some of this five-year-old rye with some of this 30-year-old Armagnac some of this 35-year-old rum Maybe even some of this Calvado spirit as well Try that enough times you end up with a product like 1928 which again we were just blending earlier a bit of a unique version but 1928 I think is the defining next step for bakta in the sense that it is a blend of rye whiskey, of calvados, which is another French brandy distilled from apples, and of armagnac, a French brandy distilled from specific grape varietals. Those three things don't necessarily mix in my mind just off the bat. Flavor profile, style, everything about it. Even legality, I'd say, you're making a product that a liquor store owner's gonna say, hmm, this isn't a whiskey, this isn't a brandy, where do I put it on the shelf? Exactly. So 1928 really bringing those things together, presenting a whiskey forward drink, not a whiskey mind you, but a whiskey forward drink that really appeals to the whiskey drinker out there, to the bartender who can take this at 100 Proof, put it in a variety of cocktails, and have it really sing quite a bit, and as well to the everyday drinker who just wants to be able to pour something that can stand up neat, stand up on the rocks, and get a different take. Not just say, I'm going to the liquor store, I'm buying another five-year-old craft whiskey, taking a chance, having a decent understanding of what it could taste like, perhaps being disappointed when it doesn't meet that standard. 1928 really challenges you to say, hmm, maybe you're about to taste something you've never tasted before.

Kerry:
I would have to agree. And we, as he was starting to touch on, I just came from the blending class where he was the professor. And we got to wear our little white lab coats, which you guys will see here in the b-roll shortly. And this is what I came up with, which is 60% rye, 30% French oak finish. And then the, I chose three for the Calvados. And then for the three, I used the 19, Is it 89, 91, and 94? Nice, that's a great spread.

Pete:
And you were so hard at work for so long, too. I didn't even get to taste your blend, really. Only had a little, only had a couple drops. I planned to circle back around, but so it goes.

Kerry:
You can have some. If you don't mind. Give me that glass of it.

Pete:
You don't want my filthy lips on your glass? Can't say I blame you.

Kerry:
No. I mean, I'm going to be having lipstick, so I don't know if you want to be getting lipstick on your...

Pete:
Cheers. And what do you call this blend? Because all blends must have a name.

Kerry:
Well, on the paper, I just put Barrel Room Chronicles. Nice. But I don't know. I did a similar thing last year in Dingle. Well, a year and a half ago now in Dingle. And Dingle is in Ireland.

Pete:
In County Kerry. Yeah, there you go. Spelled correctly.

Kerry:
Beautiful. And so I called it Kerry's Dingle Malt Whiskey.

Pete:
Oh, nice. That's what it is.

Kerry:
Kerry's Dingle Malt Whiskey. And so it was a play on where we were and my name.

Pete:
I'm surprised the SMWS didn't come after you for that one.

Kerry:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It could have been. But yeah, so let's have a... I thought, I mean, we had to use 60% rye. Right, as your base. So it's going to be spicy. And I thought... There was a... The 1973... No.

Pete:
78?

Kerry:
This is the oldest one. 73. Was very sweet and oaky. And I thought some people were using that to like kind of offset the spice, but I leaned into the spice, I think.

Pete:
That's not the wrong move right there. That's the fun thing about the whole program is that, for a little background, what we have here at BACTA is a blending program for that 1928, where we offer you various inputs, one of them being the rye whiskey, which you must include. However, we give you three variations on the calvados input, being a French oak finish, a bourbon finish, and for the wild ones, an isla finish. And then last but not least, for the 10% of the Armagnac component, which is the 10% of the blend rather, we give you seven different Armagnacs, allow you to choose from up to four of them. And these Armagnacs span from 96 down to 73, good age range in there. But more importantly, the flavor differentiation is pretty wild in between. Yeah, and the color. Exactly, the color as well too, right? Because to show that age doesn't necessarily dictate color, especially in a spirit like Armagnac. But a lot of interesting variation in fruit character and sweetness and sort of back-end, nice sort of dark, rancio-like character as well. And I didn't taste a single blend in that room of 16 people that was maybe similar, but not even close to the same, even using almost the same inputs right there. So it just goes to show you, doesn't it?

Kerry:
When we were in Dingle, it was not set up like this. For those of you, we haven't completely gone into the whole thing here at BACTA, but it is at an old college campus in Vermont. Where are we, by the way, right now? Where are we? We're in the library. We're in the library, yes, but we can't go in that part of the library where they're aging barrels. state something. So hopefully I'll get some pictures that you guys can- Bureaucracy. You can send my way so I can come up to B-roll, but yeah, it's pretty cool. The books are still in there, and books and barrels. It should be the books and barrel room or something.

Pete:
And we actually, we kind of store the barrels near their respective Dewey Decimal Year, if you will. So the 90s are with the 90 books. I love that. I love that.

Kerry:
Yeah, it's pretty fun. But anyway, so we did this blending in the school lab with beakers and test tubes and lab coats. It was great.

Pete:
All things that were here when we moved in, by the way, that we have reappropriated. Reduce, reuse, recycle it, I think is the best way to put that for Vermont. But lab coats, we did have to source, unfortunately.

Kerry:
That's okay. You gotta do something.

Pete:
But isn't it kind of funny, you know, the same countertops you might have had in high school, and you see like the stains on them from the whiskey spilled and whatnot, and it's this strange piece of nostalgia. For me, this college campus too is much like where I went to school, which is UVM up in Burlington, and it's pretty almost goofy having keys that let me in any closet and opening a closet and saying, huh, that's what's in there. Interesting.

Kerry:
What I think is interesting is that the lab was essentially in the basement of the theater.

Pete:
Right, exactly. There's the auditorium upstairs.

Kerry:
When I asked yesterday, I said, so did you guys move the lab? He said, no, that's where it was.

Pete:
Small liberal arts college, there you go. Interesting.

Kerry:
I've never had a school where the theater was in the same building.

Pete:
That's what we call a multi-purpose building, I think.

Kerry:
I mean, the whole building. I mean, it's more than a multi-purpose room, for sure. So tell me, you left Whistlepig when?

Pete:
I left Whistlepig at the end of 2020. Okay. And after that, I actually ended up consulting for quite a while. And it wasn't till the summer of last year, actually, where I ran into Taylor Hanson. Taylor actually is running sales in Vermont for Bakta. He was also running hospitality beforehand. But I met him at BCB, Barcom of Brooklyn, and I looked at his name tag, it said Bakta. didn't know you were working up there. And he basically launched into, hey, you know, come check it out. It's this college campus that has been refurbished. A lot of crazy things happening up there. Very much reminded him, who was an earlier than me Whistlepig employee, of the early days of Whistlepig. So within two weeks, I was on the road with the lady, came up here, were blown away by the whole experience of it all. Myself, I was able to get a bit more deeper into the business side and really see, okay, where is the outlook for the future? Where does this company see itself focusing in on? And between that, the incredibly varied stocks of things like Arbaniac Calvados, and not just your run of the mill, but these incredibly unique high age statement basically unheard of In terms of profile in terms of flavor and again in terms of age stocks I couldn't help but get a piece of that pie if you will so I have only been here for four months actually pretty fresh meat over here, but I'm I'm trying to make my mark known if you will I'm trying to dive right into it see where I can improve see where I can learn So who was blending the stuff before you got here?

Kerry:
Oh

Pete:
So a little bit of takes a village, you could say, I suppose. So Giles Garnham, who was our operations manager, who I've mentioned earlier, based out of France, he still does. He's quite involved with blending, but he was sort of the main blending arm of the company, if you will. It was a group effort led by Raj in a lot of ways, I'll say. For instance, I was looking to break into an office in that building and set myself up over there before I ended up over here, thank God. But I opened the door and I see about 100 different bottles with varying degrees of labeling on them and I was like, what is this? After searching through it, I learned that, oh, this is them making 1928. This is all the components and then about 100 different other ones as well. And this is how it was done before. Different handwriting all over the place, meaning that it's quite a few people coming into this. Not even using the lab. Not even using the lab, right. Well, it is a bit cold in there, I'll say. It is a little cold. It's very cold. Bit of a more pragmatic move there. But yeah, honestly, as I sort of touched on earlier, I didn't just come in and start saying, okay, we're doing things the Pete way now. In reality, I'm trying to mesh my personal brand with the Bachta way of life and say, okay, we can perhaps tighten up our consistency here. For new products, yeah, I'm trying to take the helm on blending for sure, but again, not spitting in the face of the way things have been and in fact, trying to capitalize on that. In a simple way, I've got a great tasting panel already set up. It's the people who were working on products beforehand. And now that I am able to spend a bit more time with a bit more background focusing on product development, these people who were part of the village team can now start to branch out a bit into their Designated jobs. Yeah. That's one way to put it, right? Exactly. What their titles actually say. I mean, classic small startup company though, and especially in the spirits industry where, yeah, we all have job titles, but that only describes part of what we do. Right. And every day something else might come up and it's part of crafting what I see as being a very successful company down the line in terms of you need to have people who care, who have passion, who bring their A game to the job, not just because they're being paid to, but because they believe in what they're doing. And that's not just your salespeople or your people like me. That's even your guys who are putting the liquid in the bottle at the end of the day. That has to be present because that translates then into people like you who come to visit, into your bartenders, your bar managers, your retail store owners who can feel that passion and might not, oh man, it's been a long day, I don't really want to taste something else, but this guy really cares, doesn't he? Maybe I should give him the time of day, you know? And, I mean, last but not least is the personalization of it all, where I see, you know, this as a place where people come to experience rather than just come to pick a barrel or something like that. And people can get a notion by seeing, you know, Alan, Roger's assistant, walk by and shooting the shit with him about, okay, this is what's going on up here.

Kerry:
Turns out we were neighbors.

Pete:
Not next door neighbors, but he's from North Hollywood. Yeah, exactly.

Kerry:
Yeah, North Hollywood. And he used to work at one of the agencies out there, and I was like, well, how did you end up over here? in the spirit stuff, like you were Bollywood all the way.

Pete:
Yeah, exactly. I'm glad he did though, because he's a friend of mine at this point, you know, and we enjoyed doing this company for sure.

Kerry:
So tell me a little bit more, I know like initially, and correct me if I'm wrong, I could be, I'm assuming that the idea was to put as much of the production and everything on this campus. Correct. But there is another property up the road like an hour or something? It's about a half hour, 40 minutes or so.

Pete:
So there's actually two other properties because what happened was Raj purchases the campus. We say, great. We start trying to produce liquor here. And then certain simple facts like, huh, we can't fit a forklift in any of these buildings really come to the forefront, which you'd be shocked at how important forklift accessibility is for any sort of production operation, even with shipping and receiving.

Kerry:
Barrels are not light. Are you allowed to change any of the buildings?

Pete:
I think it's historically protected. So that's another factor is we weren't able to make appreciable changes here. But we didn't want to lose this as a brand home, why would you? So what we basically ended up doing was building a barn, actually behind Raj's house up in Shoreham, which is the same town where Whistleblower started actually, and moving production up there. We quickly outgrew that production. This was a couple of years ago that was built, and last year I believe the decision was made to say, We're growing at a pretty rapid rate. We're already approaching the point where this space is a bit too small for us. So let's think ahead. Let's start to transition out. And what we ended up doing was, and forgive me, I don't actually know specifically if we purchased or just rent this old apple orchard with some infrastructure in place, basically just a building that nobody but me would look at and think, oh, great, awesome. But, you know, a bit of an old, somewhat rundown, but still in great working order for our purposes. production facility where we can receive everything from empty glass bottles to barrel trucks and store them appropriately, have the space to grow into it, build out a blending sort of tank farm is what we might call it with various sizes of tanks that we can transfer our liquid in a much more efficient manner rather than using something like the Plastic Totes, I'm sure you've seen at every distillery you've ever been to. We would like to move into a place that's going to be a home for us for quite a while. And that's part of one of my big projects is working on that transition and ensuring that not only are we moving in there in a smooth and ergonomic way but that we're purchasing the right equipment not just for now but for five and ten years from now that we're even laying out things like floor plans properly and barrel storage and dry supply and building out a bottling line which you know may suit our needs for the next few years but also allows room for perhaps further expansion if if we're able to be as successful as we'd like to be in terms of sales and whatnot. So this is always going to be the brand home. We're working on renovating buildings year by year. I believe you're probably staying at Sage over there. I am staying at Sage Hollywood. And these are straight up old dorms as well, with a bit of a nicer touch. Maybe the bed's not the size of a military cot. My room is pretty big. Yeah, right, exactly.

Kerry:
And the bed is queen-size bed.

Pete:
And you don't have four people living in that room for, you know, living in that room. No, just me. Just me. Exactly. So it's not, and when I first came here, I was like, oh, feels like college, but way better, doesn't it? You know, yeah. So I think that nostalgic piece is just, it'd be a waste if we moved away from here. And it's a bit easier to get here than it is from Shoreham, believe it or not, from somewhere like Albany or even Rutland, which is the local airport here. But yeah, that will be our main production facility. We still will end up doing quite a bit of production for, let's say, The smaller items, smaller run items like our vintage releases, like our even 50 milliliter bottling for now will continue to run in the building over there, which is called Withy. You may have not seen it, but in the basement there's quite a large open area with some offices that we've basically translated into a finished goods storage and whatnot. But again, the lack of forklift access does make everything quite difficult. But yeah, no, it's a great place, honestly. I have my main office here. I spend quite a bit of time in Shoreham. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't prefer one over the other, just in terms of the feel of it all, right? Yeah. Some would say even the vibe, wouldn't they? The vibe.

Kerry:
It's a good vibe. It's a great vibe.

Pete:
It is.

Kerry:
And then this morning, I woke up just before sunrise. And I looked out, and I'm like, is that rain or snow? I can't tell. And then as the, as the, and I looked at the ground, I'm like, well, if it's snow, it's not staying. And then, you know how they always say just before sunrise is the coldest. Yeah. So like about 10 minutes later, I went back out and I looked out the window and I'm like, oh, that's definitely snow. And then by 6 30, when the site, the light was up, uh, it was like somebody sugarcoated.

Pete:
Yeah, exactly. The frost.

Kerry:
And it was beautiful. It was, I mean, it was more than, yeah, it was like, It's great. And then I went back to sleep, got up at nine, and I'm like, oh, it's all gone now.

Pete:
But you got some extra sleep, though. I did get, yeah, I did. Probably much needed after a night with baklava, yeah.

Kerry:
Yes, we had a, whew, we tasted a lot. For sure. Well, I'm very interested to see where you guys go. And I mean, I don't even know how many things we've tasted, but how many There's a whole wall full of stuff that we've seen and tasted quite a bit of. How many products are out on the market that anybody could go buy at the moment?

Pete:
That's a great question. We obviously have the 1928, which should be available in most retail stores that carry any of our product, and hopefully most off-premise bar or restaurant as well.

Kerry:
Why is it called 1928?

Pete:
So it's called 1928 for two reasons. Number one is it encapsulates the spirit of the Roaring Twenties, but more specifically, the oldest vintage in that blend is 1928, Armagnac vintage. So that's where the name comes from. Simple as, I think. I guess I need to do a little marketing studying, huh? That's good. So you have a 1928.

Kerry:
We have a 1928. We also have

Pete:
It's a bit of a new thing for us starting as of last year, but we have various special limited releases that we're doing each year where what we've done in the past has been the 2013 bourbon, the 1990 rum, and then at the start of this year, the 2013 bourbon. I won't go too deep into specifics to keep my job, but you might be seeing some other bourbons coming out, perhaps even soon. You might be seeing some age statements on some products that you might not expect. You might even be seeing some spirit, even things like whiskey, from some countries you might not be so used to seeing. I really think that this, we could even call it a limited release slate, if you will, has a lot of interesting things to come. And these are things I like to get as ahead of everything as I possibly can. And I'm looking at projects three, four plus years down the road.

Kerry:
So what does the government classify this as? That's the spirits. Well, except for the ones that are fully bourbon or fully... Yeah, right.

Pete:
So a distilled spirit specialty is kind of the catch-all for, okay, you just blend it together, bourbon and rye, but then you also put in vodka for whatever reason. Basically, once it can no longer fit into any of these cookie cutter, and there's quite a few class and type designations on the TTB manual, but you go into this catch-all category of distilled spirit specialty, which doesn't really sound very sexy, does it? And isn't a known category by any means. And again, this could be anything from blend of scotch whiskey and literally anything done in America because then we're losing that scotch whiskey designation and There is no category for that. So I guess it could be a blended whiskey actually, but regardless neither here nor there Distilled spirit specialty is that kind of catch-all category. I actually, I noticed your glass is empty. I'm gonna pour you a sample of something. Oh, how about the brand? How about we go a little, oh, okay, you're already good. Oh, no, I'm the offender. Uh-oh. You're the offender. I've clearly never seen Truman Show. But, oh yeah, wow, that's some pretty aggressive lipstick on there. It is. But what I'm pouring for you right now is another distilled spirit specialty. All that I will really say about this is I hope you get your hogsworth from it. Don't worry about what that means. And you are drinking a blend of whiskey and Armagnac. Perhaps more specifically, whiskey's plural and Armagnac's plural. Ooh. That's very interesting. It's still very much in development. For instance, what you're tasting right here is missing one crucial component, which we've recently added to the blend. It's also not even at a set proof, so we're tasting at about 98 proof right now. Not sure exactly where we'll land on the proof character for it. You know, it's that classic balance of we want to give as much of that flavor sort of hit blast, etc. We want it to hold up in cocktails, we want you to be able to drown this thing in ice and have it taste great, but that's really good. We don't want to scare people away who maybe are a little bit less or a little more timid perhaps when it comes to things like heat, but Yeah, I'm happy with this product. I'm never happy with products I make, by the way.

Kerry:
It's got a little nuttiness on it that I'm not used to anything else that we've had here.

Pete:
Yeah, exactly. That's the hope, is that it stands out. It is similar in ethos, but stands out completely on a flavor profile. I think for me, this really draws in the whiskey drinker on a flavor profile more so than maybe 1928 does. It's a bit more, I'll say it's bourbon whiskey as well that we're using rather than rye whiskey in the 1928, and it's a bit more of that sort of Familiar character. I think you know, like you said there's a bit of that nuttiness coming from that perhaps corn we can say maybe not though You never know Okay, maybe I put some pecans on the barrel. Oh Actually, that's that's actually worked out quite well in the past.

Kerry:
No, do you guys do any? I noticed in our little gift baskets. We got these little maple Some maple syrup. Is there any maple anything coming out the pipeline?

Pete:
There is maple something coming through the pipeline but Specifically, barrel-aged maple syrup. We did a great job with that at Whistlepig. We're doing a great job with that here as well, with the Armagnac barrels in particular.

Kerry:
I was talking at lunch, and I said, you know, I had the Whistlepig syrup, and it was delicious. And then we were talking about the Pappy Van Winkle, what happens, the Pappy effect with the prices on things. And I said, speaking of that, his three triplet daughters also have a pappy aged syrup. It's also very good. And so Adobaldi whiskey flavored, or whiskey syrups Whiskey aged syrups that I've had, those two have been my favorite. So I'm interested to see what you guys will come up with.

Pete:
You've got to start with some great maple syrup. And I'm something of a maple syrup snob from living in Vermont for so long. But it's got to be grade A. It's got to be robust. It's got to be dark. It's gotta have a banging flavor profile off the bat, because that's really what it's gonna stand on. The barrel aging influence is more of a top note for it, really. It's what makes you say, oh, damn, that's unique, and that's unlike anything I've had, but it has to be good syrup, first and foremost. Whistlepig partnered with a great syrup maker. They've since switched to another great one, a bit larger in scale, Runamuck, I believe. And we are working with a local guy who, this guy literally just showed up one day. He's like, hey, I'm here for the barrel. Who are you and what are you talking about? That's how small potatoes it is right now. And then when he told me more specifics, I said, hell yeah, you're getting a barrel. Let's give you two, actually. So we basically are running trials for that right now to see what input syrup, what barrel types, and for how long will best suit us. And I don't know what the exact specific plan is. Hopefully you can purchase some of that, maybe at the very least online in the near future. Well, there we go. Oh, yeah. Put that in your old fashion, actually.

Kerry:
So how soon do you think this guy will be ready for release?

Pete:
You might be seeing that in the next couple of months, actually. Wow. Maybe even just a press release.

Kerry:
I knew there was a photo shoot.

Pete:
Oh, yeah. OK. So you heard about that photo shoot.

Kerry:
I saw some pictures from the photo shoot, and I wish I could say more about said photo shoot. But when this comes out, I will bring this up in another episode.

Pete:
That's journalistic integrity right there, by the way.

Kerry:
Yes, I will bring it up, and we will talk about the characters that were involved.

Pete:
I will say this, which might be a little bit more revealing, but not much. I gained a new job title that day, which was Pig Man on Campus.

Kerry:
Didn't want to have that job title, but ... I don't understand why Raj would have anything to do with pigs.

Pete:
Now let's not forget what I told you when I first bought this, get your hogswear.

Kerry:
And then what I love about this too, for those who don't know much about Raj, besides being one of the founders of Whispake, there's a YouTube video with him on an elephant crossing the border over, is it a river, a lake? It's the Rio Grande. The Rio Grande. So if you look at their logo, it's an elephant's head.

Pete:
Oh yeah. It's a little like almost stained glass looking type. Yeah, it is. It's pretty sweet.

Kerry:
And I could totally see, like this would be, like I could see a stained glass right there. Yeah. And with different colors. I'd be surprised we don't have that yet. I'm surprised you don't. My sister used to do stained glass.

Pete:
I've always been amazingly intrigued by stained glass. It's really the fact that I've seen bad stained glass that makes me incredibly interested in it. I grew up Catholic, going to church, and you just look at it and you're like, oh, it's colored glass, no big deal. And then, actually, in the house I live in right now, there's some amazing stained glass. And it's just like, huh, how the hell did they do that? I told you earlier, I have a deep need to know about specifics when it comes to unique jobs people have. And that's one of those things where I'm kind of like, I'm not even going to begin to assume I could figure out anything about how this process works.

Kerry:
And then we're in an office here in the library, since we can't go in the actual library. And I love, is this all this furniture that was, do you know if this was here when you got, was this like, I mean, what I love about this college campus is they close it down so abruptly that pretty much everything is just frozen in time.

Pete:
I could show you a closet downstairs that has about 90 computer monitors in it. Nothing but just, it's like a TV show where you open it and it's just monitors spilling out. But yeah, this would all be original, maybe except for the rolling chair over there, but you can even look at something like that. Is the gong original or is it? I'm going to guess the gong was not original. That seems a bit more like Raja's style than perhaps the ... I mean, who even was in this office before? That's the real question. The feel of it is a bit austere, but at the same time, this is a library, and I would have guessed this would have been the head librarian's office, perhaps.

Kerry:
And I'm wondering, is there more than one map in that map thing? Because it's only showing part of the world. So, I don't know. That's interesting.

Pete:
No, it's Western Hemisphere.

Kerry:
So that's why.

Pete:
Well, we are the Western Hemisphere, aren't we? We are the Western Hemisphere, yes. That's the one thing that you guys will always have over me being a New England boy, is you're from the best coast, and I'm only from the beast coast, which is not nearly as good. Or from the least coast, if you really want to get antagonistic on me. Oh, that's just sad, that's sad. Yeah, just gave you some ammo there.

Kerry:
Well, this office is fantastic. This campus is terrific. I've had so much fun, and I'm loving the weather. They've been saying it's warm, and I'm like, well, it's not warm, but I'm not freezing. That's good. I mean, actually, I think the coldest I've been since I got here was in your lab today. Yeah, right. It's like, I'm actually cold in here.

Pete:
It's about 48 degrees in there.

Kerry:
Yeah. So anyway, I'd love to see what you guys have been working on. I can't wait till this comes out and I can taste the final component.

Pete:
And you can brag to everybody that you tasted it with none other than Peter Vincent Lynch.

Kerry:
Peter Vincent Lynch gave me a dram before this was even ready. And it's so oily, I love it.

Pete:
Yeah, it's got some nice... I mean, this blend right here, the average weighted age is not even that high. It's about seven and a half years total. The newer blend will take that up a bit, because I'm adding in a little bit of an older Armagnac for various reasons. But I think that this is going to be a winner for various reasons, without saying anything specific at all.

Kerry:
Yeah, no, it's good. And then the Armagnac that he He bought the company that made the Armagnac? He bought a warehouse full of like eight billion years of Armagnac?

Pete:
So I mentioned Giles earlier, who's our French-based operations manager. His mother is actually something of a legend in the Armagnac industry. And they, again, I don't know all the specifics quite yet. My brand training is not perfect. But they, I believe, own this chateau, which we would look at as kind of an independent bottler in the whiskey world. More like a Gordon MacPhail though, where they would source casks from all over of various vintage years and on a more rolling basis. So they're not buying like, oh, let's look for 50 year. It's more like we've had these casks since they were distilled and we've brought them up in our own process. So it's a bit, it's kind of, I think, a little bit disingenuous to say IB because you might think about someone who's starting a new company and just putting it into a bottle, which, you know, nothing against that at all, more so that there's a lot more expertise and practice going into what they're doing over there. So Raj owns that Chateau now. Giles runs both that chateau and a lot of the operations over here. And with that purchase, he also purchased all of their stocks. And again, I might be incorrect here, but... In addition to those stocks, also purchased quite a bit more of some of the higher age points that were present in the region at the time, which would be the vast majority of them because, again, we're not really seeing age statements like we see in Armagnac in almost any other spirit, to be frank, and the volume production of Armagnac is not very high. I mean, you know,

Kerry:
Because they have a specific time frame during the year that they're allowed to do stuff, right?

Pete:
Yeah, exactly. This is one area where I'm woefully unprepared, and I apologize. But my Armagnac specific knowledge in terms of their production practices, laws, and even all of the grape types that go into it, I'm still very rusty on. doing a lot of reading and research and whatnot to get myself up to speed, but I've been quite busy as well, so I don't always have the time for it. Nice time reading.

Kerry:
Forget cable, forget internet. When the cable goes out and the internet goes out, pick up a book, study.

Pete:
Well, when your internet barely even works to begin with, then the incentive's already baked in, isn't it?

Kerry:
Yes. Well, Pete, this has been great.

Pete:
What a pleasure, seriously. Thank you so much. Thanks for putting up with me.

Kerry:
And I can't wait to see this in a bottle, and thank you so much, Pete.

Pete:
That was very painless.