I'll tee up a lot of things because as we're building our own brand as our own bourbon and spirits world,

there'll be a lot of things that I can learn from this too. So I'll probably ask a lot of dumb questions that at least I won't have to pay for consulting advice.

Oh, wow. That was a good trick. Yeah. This is Bourbon Pursuit, the official podcast of Bourbon, bringing to you the best in news, reviews, and interviews with people making the bourbon whiskey industry happen and I'm one of

your hosts Kenny Coleman. So what attracts you to a particular brand? Well for most people,

we really look at it as that unexplainable underpinning that is also called brand mysticism.

And I'm joined by author Aaron Goldfarb and brand icon builder Stephen Grass to talk about this very subject that they happen to publish a book on called, well, you guessed it, brand mysticism.

Steve has a lot of feathers in his cap, such as being the brains behind things like Hendrix Gin and Sailor Jerry Rum.

And these aren't typical brands like we see in Bourbon,

but this book is how to brand almost anything.

It's a teaser into figuring out how to transform an idea into a brand,

or maybe evolve an existing brand,

and even some of the best lessons to take away from the book.

Plus, we even dive into the brand mysticism behind Pappy Van Winkle.

With that, enjoyed this week's episode, and now here's Fred Minnick with Above the Char.

I'm Fred Minnick, and this is Above the Char.

This week's idea comes from John Robertson, who writes me on Twitter. Obviously, with the bourbon

boom, there's lots of fomo with people getting in and not being able to find things they want.

Any other spirits categories you'd see that might be a good go-to to look into now. Why, John,

every now and then, I go off on a little rum tangent. I wrote a book called Rum Curious, and that was kind of a, you know, a follow-up to my book, Barbin Curious, but in Rum, of course.

I love rum.

There's so much value in rum, but there's also so much misunderstanding of rum and what is real rum and how the federal government actually

subsidizes the likes of Captain Morgan and Bacardi.

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