231 - Continuing 84 Years of Tradition at Heaven Hill with Conor O'Driscoll

Bourbon Pursuit

Hobbies, Food, Arts, Leisure

4.9 • 866 Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2019

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Conor O'Driscoll is beginning to make a name for himself. After spending part of his career at Brown Forman and Angel's Envy, he was recruited to fulfill the role left behind by Denny Potter. Conor is now the seventh Master Distiller in Heaven Hill's 84-year history. We spend some time getting to know Conor's past, what the recruitment process is like to find a master distiller, what his role is going to be with the operation side of things, and how at the end of the day he just doesn't want to screw anything up. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about dry January. Where are you from? How did you end up in Terre Haute, Indiana? How did you get into bourbon? Tell us about your time at Woodford. What was difficult to learn about the distilling process? Talk about working at Angel's Envy. Is distilling rum the same process as bourbon? Are distillers in charge of blending? How did you end up at Heaven Hill? Did you have to give up anything to move into this role? Are you looking for ways to improve the legacy brands? Was there a learning curve coming to Heaven Hill? Who determines the increase in production? Were you involved in forecasting at your other roles? How did you learn the Heaven Hill portfolio? Do you have a favorite brand? What was it like to sign your first bottle?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Perfect timing.
0:02.3	Look at the Irish again, right?
0:04.0	Yeah.
0:04.5	How often do you get to say that one?
0:06.0	About every day.
0:17.2	What's up, everybody, everybody?
0:18.2	It is episode 231 of Urban Pursuit. I'm one of your host, Kenny, and we've got just a little bit of news to go through.
0:25.3	Four Roses, like every other distillery out there, is trying to figure out what do you do with old barrels, and there are all kinds of breweries across the nation to just want to gobble them up.
0:33.8	And Four Roses is collaborating with Brooklyn Brewery for a new limited release beer called Black Ops.
0:39.6	Now, I've seen it before, but this one's a little bit different because this vintage of
0:43.0	Brooklyn Black Ops was aged for four months in Four Roses small batch barrels that were then
0:48.3	selected by master distiller, Brent Elliott, and re-fermented with champagne yeast.
0:53.9	This Russian and Superior Stout comes at 12.4 ABV, raises a fluffy dark brown head,
0:59.7	combines big chocolate and coffee notes with a rich underpinning of vanilla-like oak.
1:04.7	Brooklyn Black Ops will be available in limited quantities wherever Brooklyn Brewery is available.
1:10.2	A new development is happening in downtown Louisville
1:12.3	with a new website that offers an interactive map, a whole list of attractions featuring downtown
1:17.6	distilleries like Old Forrester, Angels Envy, mictors, plus a whole gallery of pictures. It's called
1:24.5	the Bourbon District. There are flagpoles and information signs going up around downtown and around the city that give information,
1:32.3	history, and directions to all the Bourbon-related happenings in downtown Louisville.
1:36.3	You can check it out online at Bourbonism.com.
1:40.3	That's like tourism, but bourbonism.com. Ryan and myself, we traveled down to Lynchburg, Tennessee this week to go and pick our first ever single barrel of Jack Daniels.
	...

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