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Bourbon Pursuit

191 - Blending Your Way to a Brand with Trey and Chet Zoeller of Jefferson's Bourbon

Bourbon Pursuit

Bourbon Pursuit

Hobbies, Food, Leisure, Arts

4.8926 Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2019

⏱️ 69 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Trey Zoeller makes his return and we are also joined by his father, Chet Zoeller. We go back in time, before Jefferson's Bourbon was established, to see how the Co-Founders sourced whiskey. We look at the current landscape to see if they feel pressure as sourcing becomes much harder when distilleries want to hang on to current stocks and people with deeper pockets enter the industry. We delve into Chet's past by talking about prohibition era whiskey and ask if he thinks Jefferson's Ocean is a gimmick. Trey and Chet provide knowledge behind growing a business and making pivots to find new opportunities. Show Notes: Join Bourbon Pursuit on March 16th at The Louisville Bourbon Society meeting - http://www.thebourbonsociety.org/ The week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about getting caught up in the moment. Talk about growing up around bourbon. What made you think getting into bourbon was going to work? Does 25 year old Irish Whiskey take on as much oak as bourbon in the US? How did you go about sourcing barrels? Chet, talk about your books and how you are a historian. Did you think Jefferson's would be as successful as it is today? What roadblocks did you hit? Did you feel like you were pricing it too high at first? What’s the next big hurdle for bourbon to take over scotch? Are many brands underselling themselves today? What flavor profile were you aiming for when you started Jefferson's? Did you start off selling in Kentucky only? Talk about the first blending experience. How did you name Old Iron Skillet? Do you have any tips on blending? If you tap into a barrel that isn't good, how can you know it will be better in a few years? Tell us about all the moving parts of sourcing whiskey. Do you have a turf war problem when sourcing? What did you think of Trey’s Ocean experiment. Was it a gimmick? Tell us about the double barrel and twin oak. Do you think there is an opportunity for line extensions? How did the New Orleans experiment turn out? Talk about your pet sharks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

That was one thing if Fred couldn't be here today, and he said that you had the opportunity to, you know, he said, we're going to, we'll take Fred and we'll go feed him to the sharks.

0:09.6

Yeah, we'll just chum with Fred.

0:10.9

Yeah.

0:12.2

I love Askel.

0:13.8

Sharks.

0:14.3

This is episode 191 of Bourbon Pursuit.

0:27.5

I'm one of your host, Kenny.

0:29.0

Now let's run through a little bit of the news.

0:31.1

The Fraser Museum.

0:32.1

It's the first stop on the Kentucky Bourbon Trail located in the heart of downtown Louisville.

0:37.0

But the news this week is that they are now selling Prohibition-era dusty bottles.

0:41.6

In 2017, House Bill 100 passed that allowed retailers in bars in Kentucky to sell vintage whiskey,

0:47.6

and it's good to see others now taking advantage of this new law.

0:51.2

The Frazier does an incredible job of sharing the history of these distilleries

0:55.2

of where these bottles originated because they were all lost during Prohibition. You can find out

1:00.7

more at Fraser Museum.org. Barton 1792 is going to be in need of more repairs. On Tuesday,

1:09.1

60,000 gallons of masks spilled across the premises and covered the parking lots.

1:14.4

Their beer wells experience a failure.

1:16.6

You're unfamiliar, a beer well holds fermented mash before it is distilled.

1:20.8

One tank failed, another tank was punctured, and a pipe on a third tank was damaged causing

1:25.9

the tanks to leak. According to new sources, two employees had been injured in the incident.

1:31.8

Ryan and I will be presenting at the Louisville Bourbon Society on March 18th.

...

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