My Favorite Movie with Corky Taylor, Kentucky Peerless Distilling

0:01 Hey everybody, Welcome to the podcast. We've got another special bonus episode. We're coming to you today from Louisville. Kentucky, we are at Kentucky Peerless distilling and we're sitting here with the owner, the president, the CEO Corky, Taylor Corky, how are you today? I'm doing great. Thanks so much for joining us. Absolutely. So quirky, can you tell us a little bit about this brand Peerless because we've been reading articles about you all and we found out that it hasn't been produced under this name and almost a century and you guys are Resurrecting the brand. So tell us a little bit about your history with Peerless. We are my great-grandfather Henry. Craver started Peerless back in 1889, shut it down during prohibition at one at one time in history.

0:45 He was probably the fourth or fourth, or fifth largest distillery in a state of Kentucky, out of 220 distilleries. So there were days, he was making two hundred barrels a day while. So he was a, he was a pretty good-sized to Stiller down. In Henderson Kentucky, our home is Is west of here right on the Ohio River. So that's where it all got started. I had a financial services company. I sold it walked on a beach in Sarasota. Florida for a year-and-a-half most oppressed over. Ben I said I've got to go back to work so yeah, I am so I love what I'm doing. We're bringing back the Peerless name. Got my son Carson involved in it, so we're having a lot of fun. Hopefully, we're making a good Rye, Whiskey in a really good burp.

1:27 Yeah, yeah. And that's the crazy thing is like, whenever You hear about something being on for a century like we can think about 10 or 20 years and you can remember what it was like in the 90s. You know 20 30 years ago like when you think about something being gone for a century and being brought back, there is some sort of excitement that you just don't get with other things. That's really exciting. Yeah. And I think it's a history That's so exciting. I mean we were able to get back the Peerless name. He gave it up during prohibition. I got the Peerless name back. We got his actual DSP, the federal ID number To make distilled Spirits his number 50. So I first time in history, the government side, ever gone back to give a distilled Spirits plant number back to a family.

2:10 Well, I was able to get that. So then we came out with, it's been a hundred and two years since Peerless has put out of bourbon June, 22nd on my father's birthday, I was honoring my father because we skipped his generation, so we came out with our bourbon, it's about four, four and a half years old. So we're very excited to get our bourbon out. Or rye whiskey. He's done great for us. So so we're proud of our rye whiskey, that's great. Well, Corky has been generous enough to give us a poor here of the bourbon that they make it Peerless and I'd like to go ahead and just give it a little taste. And you just get that. Good trademark sweetness. No.

2:51 Yeah you expect from a bourbon man. This is beautiful. You can really taste the age on it too and I'm so glad, you know, we've talked to some distilleries in the past that they really rushed to get their product out there on the market at two years. But you can just tell the difference between a two-year Whiskey and a four-year whiskey. This is beautiful. Well, thank you very much. And we made a decision as a family that we were not going to Source product from another company. And where's bad from a come, put it in a bottle. And say, oh, by the way, this is peerless, right? We make our own. So we had to wait a little over four years to bottle this. So I think we did the right thing. Not many people will do that. Not many people are as crazy as I am. So what I love about even just in, you know, 45 minutes so far. You talk about family so much.

3:39 So talk to me about the importance of keeping family involved and this is obviously a great grandpa. Great grandfather's great. Grandfather's Legacy. Yeah. And like talk to me more about like family and keeping family involved and how important that's been for. You know, that's that's the most important. Like I said, I had a, I had a big company. I had a couple thousand people working in the financial services business. I sold it, you know, and then I had the, I just felt like I had to go back to work, but when I did, I wanted my family involved with me and that's what we want to do. You know, we're building a family Legacy here. We're not selling. We're not, I didn't build it to sell it. I've already been through all that my life. So I built it to keep My kids, my grandkids and build this, I'm the fourth generation Carson's of fifth. I've got 20 men are running around there the sixth generation.

4:26 So we're here to stay and that and that's probably the most important argument. Well, it going along with that, as well. You all are working with one of the hottest names in the business. Now, in your master distiller, Caleb, Kilburn, can you tell me a little bit about how you found Caleb? And, and the process to get him to the point where he is now, is Master distiller. Yeah, we actually found him when he was a junior. In college. Wow, was he knew he knew exactly what he wanted to do in his life. So we had worked and he'd been to a number of different distilleries and of course, he knew he wanted to get in there. So he actually worked for us in the summer. He was he was shoveling gravel and pulling Nails out of out of wood before he even thought about working or getting into the Sterling business.

5:07 So he saw the whole project all the way through. He, he actually came up with his own software package to run the still, the young man is brilliant. Yeah, he's A very smart young man, he's he's well-mannered and I respect the knowledge that he has, but he's studied it hard. We made him the master distiller, last Christmas and it made my home at a Christmas party. I think he was honored. I invited his parents they were tickled to death so he's he's going to be with us a long time and he does a great job for us. I actually heard about that story. You know, from what I read it was surprised he wasn't expecting to be named Master distiller because he had been working under the title of was ahead. Distillery distiller, correct, sure. And when he and when he came to came to work here, I said, Caleb, you're not going to be a master distiller, you're going to be a distiller, you know, in a lot of distilleries, you people, young people go to work and they just assume just because they're the distiller there. The master distiller, to me, I think you have to make product. You have to make a good product, and after he came out in 2017 with the 15, best whiskey overall in the world, but the number one rye whiskey, and in April, the 18th of 18, Ranked the number one, real Whiskey in the world. Yeah, I'd say you're a master is still absolutely sober. Well, that's beautiful and I think it just ties into what Brad was talking about.

6:25 It, it really does feel like a tight-knit group here that considers itself to be a family. Well we do we we really do. I mean that's important everybody that works here. I think they feel like they are family and that they're enjoying working here. They want to be here. They're passionate. That's the main thing about it. We want everybody to be passionate about what they're trying to trying to do in life. And if you're not, if you don't If you're not happy where you're working, you're just not happy. Sure. So we want Happy People. We don't, we don't have that. Many employees will only have about 20 22 employees and that's front to back. Yeah, so we're you know, we try to try to work together and and we're concerned we want we want good.

7:06 Good people. Absolutely. Take care of each other. We do we absolutely do well why don't we go ahead and segue? Then, you know, the title of this series that we're doing is my favorite movie and we reached out to Corky's And she said that the movie he wanted to talk about, was called Bloodworth, and at the time, I had not heard of Bloodworth, but I looked it up and we found out that it actually goes a long with this Peerless, tradition of incorporating family. This movie Bloodworth was actually directed by Corky son, Shane. So, what can you tell me about this film? Well, I was also the executive producer on that fellow. Okay, so I'm in, I'm in a movie business with My Soul with malice a Shane, but Bloodworth is, is a really a unique movie. We had Chris Christopherson Val. Dwight Yoakam, Hilary Duff and Earl Brown who was in Something About Mary.

7:52 So the cast was basically unbelievable. It was about a family Kris Kristofferson was an Entertainer. Like he is today, kind of left the family. He came back and wanted to make it up to his kids. He had three kids who were having a hard time getting back with him, but it's kind of a country film but it's done very well around the world. We won the site Santa Barbara film festival and my son Shane won best director in a And a barber film out of 100 films. So so we're proud of that and it's going all around the world, so it's that type of movie. But the cast Kris kristofferson's, a friend of mine, I'll really like Chris. Yeah, and I was so, we had some really good actors in the movie.

8:33 Dwight Yoakam. Actually grew up here in Louisville concern, grew up in Middletown. So it was like him coming home and we see each other, you know, so it's a in Hilary Duff. Icy Hill, Riyadh and Burbank. And I see her every once while she's at Sweet girl. And she did a great job and her Searle Browns from Murray Kentucky, so we've known her forever. So it's it was a it was a that's by far my favorite map. I've seen a lot of movies, but, you know, it's not just because I was on the executive producer side but my son did direct it and we won accolades with it and are still in it. Still, I had somebody call me other day. They were flying to Europe and they watched a watch Bloodworth on Delta Airlines. So you can even plan a lot, you know, long flights on Delta and it's going to be on So yeah and course Netflix and all the rest up.

9:20 So so what's it been like to be in the movie business coming from the background that you do and now being in the distilled Spirits business? Do you, do you find any parallels? Do you find one to be easier than the other? You know, I nothing's easy. But, you know, I do like, I like the energy of the movie business. It's exciting to make movies, you know, to watch other done. Shane does a great job. He gets very serious. So I see a different side of my oldest son, you know. When he's kind of laid back but when there's a movie he's intense and how he does it and how he drives it and how he moves people. So it's exciting to see him work. I love the business it's but I think the distilling business is something that that's long-term to our family.

10:07 So you know, we know we want to be in this business, we want to be in the bourbon business, we got in the Rye business because it matured faster and we were able to put that out. So we want some To get accolades on our Rabbi well and there's something cool about, you know, as a parent, you know, that your son's work is great. But it's kind of cool. When you start to see accolades coming in from people who have no relation to you guys saying, hey, yeah, like this movie is really good and this rye whiskey is really good. Yeah. And you're like, well, I always knew that it was really good but thank you for letting me know that. It's really good as well. Yeah, there's something cool about that. It is, I mean, I think, you know, no in business.

10:48 I've always tried to do things right. I mean, I was just talking about it earlier today. Somebody was asking me and they said, why do you? Why are you where you are? And I said, well, because I don't cut corners and I don't expect my son's to cut course, I don't expect to cut corners and Distilling business for the movie business. You get the right actors in it, even though it's a small budget, but you do it right? You treat people, right. You know, you're there, you're you don't just try to run everything with a computer and say be there. Such and such you're actually there. So you're you know you're working with people that's but that's the difference in what I want to teach my son's, when they're running a business, I want them to be there. I want them to, you know, to understand that everything's important.

11:31 Every little things important. That what you did it's a small things are as important as a big thing. Absolutely. We've been talking with a couple distilleries on our trip here to Kentucky and most of them are our newer distilleries. And one thing that we found with the new distilleries is that they value transparency above everything else. In a way that we found that some of the the older more established names. Don't necessarily do you know we just actually did an interview with Bardstown bourbon company and they're putting their Mash bill right on the side of the bottle and what I love about, what you all are doing here is, it's not just that you're transparent because you are, but it's also that you're creating something on a smaller scale on a purposely smaller scale and you're doing it with this sort of family tie in as well. So I guess my question to you would be, have you have you seen that sort of spirit in these smaller distillers as opposed to the Your ones as you've gotten going here.

12:19 Yeah. It's it's, it's an interesting business. I believe not speaking about Bardstown. I know. I know David down there and they're great. Distillery beautiful, Distillery, sure. But I think a lot of people today that are getting in and Distilling business or getting into sell the business. And I that's not what my interest is. I'm not for sale. I've been, I've been an investment banker. I've had big big companies. I'm not I'm here to stay. Yeah, so so people get into it and then they want to sell it. They want to make a lot of money and go on. That's not what my interest is. I want to be here, work with people work with my kids, try to tell them the values of how I want to run a business and that's the way I want them to run a business.

13:03 Absolutely. So, you know, I think you have to be upfront about everything you do course. I'm not going to, I'm not going to give my magical out if we just finished. Don't we? Just don't do that short. We're put, you know, I think with, with the accolades We've gotten at a very young age. Only been out on the market for four or five years kind of speaks for itself. I mean, we're ranked, we just won the award. There's an award sitting on the table right here. This award. That's the award that we receive March the 28th and London, we, that's, we won the number one. Craft producer in the world. 3200 craft producers in the world. On, on January, the 30th, we won the same award in New York City.

13:43 We won the number one. Craft producer had a And 300 craft distilleries in the United States. So we do it, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And everything you're talking about here is the essence of distilling, whiskey, and the. And we've said this before on the podcast, you can't rush whiskey. You have to have patience. You have to have the essence of everything you're saying. You have to have longevity, you have to be committed to the crap. You have to be committed to what it takes to produce a good barrel. And we said this at the start, a lot of people might Rush out of barrel, at two to two and a half years and because they need the money, or they need this or that one, they're putting out a subpar product. So, everything you just said, is, is distilled into the essence of whiskey of patients and making sure that you are putting out the best products that you possibly can there. That's exactly, right.

14:37 We, we've looked at a lot of different ways. I know everybody, they try to go to a smaller Barrel. They try to go, you know, different ways they can. Can age product. There's different things to do. I'm just going to do it. The old way, I'm going to do it the way. It was 100 years ago. I'm going to put them in a Rik house. I'm going to put them on Rick's, I'm only going to go one floor on the Rick because I want to be able to control the quality of my product. So there's there's ways you can cut corners, but when you cut Corners, you cut quality. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I can say and I'm sure I can speak for Brad as well. You are not cutting quality here. No, this is fantastic product that you're producing and I just want to say, too. Your whole family into the whole family here at Peerless.

15:19 Thank you so much for having us here today. Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate that. Absolutely, this has been Corky Taylor, the owner, the CEO of the president of Kentucky Peerless and for the film and whiskey podcast, I am Bob book, I grab G. We'll see you next time.