How to Make Never Say Die Bourbon with Brian Luftman

The butterfly effect is the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system. The concept is imagined with a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a typhoon. Our butterfly, in this case, is one small sip of bourbon. 

That specific sip of bourbon started off a chain reaction that would see not only the world of drinks but the world at large change forever and I am not exaggerating!

But I am not going to ruin the story. You will have to hear it from one of the co-Founders of Never Say Die Bourbon.  Brian Luftman is here on Lush Life to tell you a story that is pretty incredible.  You don’t need to be a marketing genius to know that every brand needs a story, but this one you just couldn’t make up and its at the heart of Never Say Die.

Now feet in stirrups, hands on the reins, the gate is about to open with Brian leading the pack!

Watch it on YouTube

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Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Brian. Just remember that I own the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of Lush Life podcast, with all rights reserved, as well as my right of publicity. So if you want to use any of this, please email me!

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Susan: It’s so great to have you on the show. I am so excited to get through this fabulous story. It’s such a great story for the launch of a new bourbon. Why don’t you introduce yourself and we’ll get right to it.

Brian: Thanks, Susan. Yes. I’m Brian Luftman. I’m one of the co-founders of Never Say Die and I’d be happy to tell you the story of the horse and why we decided to make a whiskey after this crazy story.

Susan: I know it is a crazy story. I think people will love this as much as I did.

Brian: Thanks. Yes. Shall I explain how on earth I got involved with the bourbon brand and why this exists?

Susan: Yes, absolutely. Jump right in.

Brian: Awesome. I got a phone call one day about eight years ago from a friend of mine, I’m in Lexington, Kentucky, that’s where I’m calling you from today. And he said, “Brian, can I tell you a story?”

He knows I’m an entrepreneur who’s crazy enough to take on a project. He goes, “Can I tell you a story about a horse that was born here in Kentucky? Its life was saved by whiskey. And then it went on to become an underdog champion and actually kicked off one of the greatest rock bands in music history. I’m like, “Well, Pat, that sounds pretty interesting.  Yes. Tell me the story.”

Susan: As if you would say no to that, right?

Brian: Exactly. I mean, so he goes, “Okay, here, I’m going to tell you the story. And then if you’re intrigued, I’d love to have you on board for the ride,” This is Pat telling the story now. So, in 1951 on his farm down in Hamburg, which is Northeast Kentucky, or sorry, Northeast Lexington, there was a horse that was born. This is 1951. Middle of the night, bad birth.

They think the horse is not going to make it. It’s on the ground. It’s not breathing properly, if at all. They call in the main horse guy who’s running the farm at the time. His name was John Abel III, and they tell him, boss, we don’t think this one’s going to make it.

He tries to shock the horse’s system with this old-world way of giving the horse a shot of whiskey. They had it sitting around, and he dumps a slug of whiskey down the horse’s throat. It snaps out of whatever funk it was in. It jumps up, it shocks the system, blows the snot out, and it walks around the barn and then it goes to bed and they’re like, well, heck, we either killed it or we saved its life, so let’s see what happens.

Susan: I just want to say, I love that they just had a bottle of whiskey around. Of course, that always happens.

Brian: It’s Kentucky, so that’s where it’s made, but yes, it is pretty, pretty awesome. So, the next morning he’s fine and they named him, Never Say Die, miraculously lived through the night and, so it’s the appropriate name.

A few years later, he’s winning these turf races and he’s a champion, he’s got the right pedigree to be a turf racing horse. They sent him over to England, which is where much more turf racing was going on and he’s winning some stakes races, and they enter him.

This is 1954 now when he’s a three-year-old. Into the Epsom Darby and it’s called the English classic. It’s the biggest thoroughbred horse race in Europe at the time, 250,000 people attended that race back then, including Queen Elizabeth, newly inaugurated when she was in her twenties and, escorting her to the race that day was Winston Churchill.

They were in her box and, actually, Queen Elizabeth had the favorite in the race. So, they think they’re going to be victorious, and no American horses have won this race in 70 years and Never Say Die with a rookie jockey named Lester Piggott aboard at 33 to one odd, wins the race.

He shockingly runs past everybody at the finish line and is the first American horse in 70 years to win the race. That doesn’t happen without a shot of whiskey. In my opinion, it was enough of an exciting story to get me involved with the brand. The coolest part of the story is the rock band. Should I go on?

Susan: Wait, wait but before you tell the rock part, which is one of the coolest parts, yes, why did they send Never Say Die over to the UK instead of racing him in the US?

Brian: Yes, so there are turf races. And for those listeners who don’t know the difference, there’s dirt races and then turf races and thoroughbred horse racing, and the turf is on grass. And England at the time, had, and still to this day, the breeding for the UK is better for turf horses, to my knowledge.

I’m not in the horse business. I wish Pat, my co-founder was on here, he’d tell you a lot more about this. But the bottom line is if you have a turf horse, you want to enter them into the Epsom Derby. That’s the biggest turf race in the world. If that makes sense.

Susan: Mm-Hmm,

Brian: Okay.

Susan: One more question about you is, so you said you were an entrepreneur. Had you ever done anything involving drinks that Pat would call you?

Brian: Yes, that’s a great question. I run a real estate investment company here in Kentucky and a lot are farms. We buy farms, and it’s a company I came up with and have been running for 15 years now, all of our farms produce corn and wheat for the bourbon industry.

I mean, we’re in central Kentucky, it’s part of our culture here. big brands like Maker’s Mark, Jim Beam, they use corn from our farms. And Pat knew this. he figured I was in the bourbon industry somehow. No, to answer your early question, no, I’ve never created a whiskey brand. I didn’t know the first thing about this, but I’m crazy enough to take it on.

Susan: And you were a whiskey drinker, I assume?

Brian: Yes, I love bourbon. I lived in Chicago for 10 years after growing up in Kentucky.  right when the bourbon boom was happening, it was my cool factor. I was from Kentucky, and I was like, oh, what bourbons do you like, Brian?  I felt like I had to be awesome at bourbon, if there is such a thing.

So, I would have a bunch of bourbon around and when people come over, I’d show them where it was from and tell the story. And it’s kind of fun to tell a story while you’re sitting around drinking whiskey. Thus, when someone tells me with a really cool story, I’m like, okay, I know what excites people about bourbon. It’s a good story. this Never Say Die thing really piqued my interest.

Susan: Yes, and the story of the horse. If that weren’t good enough, just wait till you hear this other bit. So go ahead with that one.

Brian: So back to 1954, we’re in Liverpool now, and there’s a woman named Mona Best. She’s down on her luck, doesn’t have much money. Her son’s a musician and she has had her eye on this Victorian home in downtown Liverpool and obviously can’t afford it.

She just gets a premonition and she’s like, “I’m going to bet it all on Never Say Die. I see the name of this horse. I love the idea of Never Say Die. I’m kind of just looking for a last-ditch effort to make something magic happen.” She pawns all of her jewelry, bets it all, and multiply those times 33 with a 33 to 1 underdog, you’ve got a fortune.

Or a small enough fortune to buy a Victorian home in Liverpool and develop a music venue in the basement of it.  that was her plan. She developed the Casbah Coffee Club, it’s still, to my knowledge, it’s still in operation to this day, but it’s also a landmark. The reason is, she told her son, Peter Best, you and your friends, if you want to paint the walls and help me get this music venue going, you guys can be the first headliners in the club.

And his friends were George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and John Lennon. And they were called the Quarrymen back then. They hadn’t even met Ringo yet. They barely had ever had a gig. In fact, I believe it was the very first gig that they ever had was at the Casbah Coffee Club.

And the rest is history. Of course, Peter Best ended up getting fired from the band and they replaced him with Ringo, which is just tragic, for our story standpoint, but the same time it’s all history. So, without the shot of whiskey of this horse in Lexington, Kentucky, about two miles from where I’m sitting right now.

Maybe the Beatles never exist. Maybe Lester Piggott is never a Hall of Fame jockey, that’s the jockey that rode Never Say Die in that 1954 race. You can look it up. Lester Piggott is one of the greatest champion jockeys in British racing history. So, all of that is the butterfly effect of one shot of whiskey.

Susan: It’s so incredible. I mean, I get shivers because I loved the Beatles growing up. And it’s just so exciting for me also to come upon this story and be able to write about it for a magazine. It was so exciting for me for this crazy set of circumstances that you could say created the Beatles, not only Beatles, but a bourbon.

It’s one of these insane coincidental stories that you just couldn’t make up. So, when he told you this, did he know all the parts of it? He knew everything, the Beatles part as well, still, when he told you for the first time.

Brian: Thankfully, mostly, yes an author here in Kentucky named Jamie Nicholson wrote a book called Never Say Die, and Pat had read it, so we knew a lot of the nuance to the story already, and Jamie is a friend of ours, and he’s a friend of the brand, and is thrilled that this story is coming to life in a different direction from his book, and a lot more people are reading his book because of the bourbon.

He uncovered a lot of really cool details and Pat had already learned quite a bit about it. But yes, the story was so intriguing and compelling to me. I mean, I was like, how can people in America not know the story?  many people I tell it to are like, why is there not a movie called that, at this point to tell the world the story, but hopefully we can tell the story until the movie gets made, which I’m sure it might happen.

To my knowledge there actually, it might be in the works, I’m hoping it comes to fruition, but we can tell the story over a glass of whiskey to our friends sharing the bourbon, and I think that’s just as good, hopefully.

Susan: So, your friend Pat calls you, he says I have this great story, now having a story and having a bourbon are two different things, what was the impetus to say oh, let’s create a bourbon from this, let’s, let’s just make it happen.

Brian: Yes. There’s a lot of people that have a lot of really good ideas and they never come to fruition. Right, I think that’s why Pat called me. He knew that I’m not somebody who sits back on my heels and doesn’t do something. I took the bull by the horns with this one. I was like, all right, Pat, let’s figure this out.

So, he and I met up with his college roommate, David Wilde. David and Pat went to college, university together in Cambridge over in England for a year. Even though Pat’s from Kentucky. I mean, he was studying at Stanford at the time and went over, many years ago, spent a year and met David.

So, the two of them being at the Kentucky Derby, and Pat telling David the story is how this whole thing came to be. Pat tells David, I’m going to call Brian. Next thing Pat and I are over in England, I believe. I think that might have been the next step, talking to David about how we’re going to plan this out. I said, we actually have some really up and coming smart distillers that I’ve become friends with on a different project, and I really want to tell them the story and see if they’ll make our whiskey for us.

Because we didn’t want to build the distillery ourselves. That’d be really challenging. I mean, it’s hard enough to make a brand, but to build a distillery at the same time is a lot. Plus, these guys that I had met, Pat Heist and Shane Baker, were geniuses. And I mean, the world hadn’t quite uncovered how brilliant they were at the time.

Now everyone knows, at least if anyone’s paying attention, they know. But Pat and Shane, I told them the story next and they’re like, okay, yes, we would love to be a partner in that brand and make it for you and we can make our own custom mash bill and do it all in Never Say Die barrels. So, you’re not having to buy whiskey from other sources and you’re literally making it from scratch, just as if you own your own distillery.

They are partners in the brand. They were not just consultants on this. So like Pat and Shane jumped in with us and then me and David and Pat and David’s two co-founding partners of his firm over in London, Martha Dalton and Fran O’Leary.

So, boom, there’s seven people that are all, I mean, at least six of them, I don’t know if I am, but they’re all brilliant people in their own way. And it’s really, really a great team that we’ve built. It’s been the same seven of us even before we ever distilled a drop of bourbon and went through the whole process together of trying to get a spirit’s branding company to come up with what our bottle would look like and what the brand would look like.

I mean, none of us was creative types. We knew that we had this awesome, magical story. We didn’t know how the heck we were going to tell this story on a bottle without overwhelming the consumer. So, we’ve left in the hands of a company in London named Stranger and Stranger.

They’re the best spirits branding company in the country, in the world. I mean, no one’s better. So, we, we sat down there with their creative team, told them what we wanted the brand to feel like, be like, inspire people to feel when they’re drinking the whiskey.

It took us quite a few iterations, but they were so on mark with what they put together for us. I mean, when you see a Never Say Die bottle, you’re like, that’s a Never Say Die bottle and it’s bold and inspiring and that’s what we wanted. So, there you go.

Susan: Absolutely, for those who are watching, I will take down, the bottle in a second. And for those who are just listening, you have to go to YouTube to check out the bottle. 

I was thinking you guys need a moniker, right? You need like, not the Fab, Four, you need the Spiritual seven or something.

Brian: Let’s see if this thing actually becomes famous yet.

Susan: Yes, when it becomes famous, you will be the Spirited Seven, maybe that’s better or something like that, but so back to the liquid, did you have an idea of the kind of bourbon you want? Did you just leave it in Pat and Shane’s hands?

Brian: We’ve learned leave it in the hands of people who are brilliant to do brilliant things.  We just told them make something special and unique. They were the best in the world at making whiskey. They know how to do it and we didn’t even try to coach them. I mean, they’re partners in us.

It wasn’t like them listening to their client and doing what they client wants; they were the client. So, they did a higher percentage of corn in ours than they were currently doing in their own whiskey, I think the reason was to try to make it a little smoother and sweeter and a little less oaky punchy.

Just something that the world had never seen before. And I think they hit the mark on it. I mean, anyone who tries our whiskey is like, wow, that’s incredibly drinkable and smooth and fruity almost. So, yes, there’s no whiskey like it that I’ve ever tried. They definitely made something unique, which is what we were going for.

Susan: But you guys have a special way of aging it, right?

Brian: We are the very first and only whiskey brand spirits brands, that to my knowledge, takes whiskey, produces it in one country, ages it there till maturity almost, but then ships it in an ocean container in the barrel over to a different continent, and then ages it further there before bottling.

I really believe we’re the only spirits or bourbon company that just takes it across the ocean and bottles it elsewhere. So, our processes, we just wanted to like pay tribute to the horse, like that’s what the horse did, right? It was born in Kentucky, matures in Kentucky, goes over to England for greatness, and that’s really what our goal with the brand.

It’s kind of a beautiful thing that it actually made the whiskey better. And it’s no doubt noticeably better after that ocean trip. One of our buddies over in England told us. It’s like stirring a tea bag. When you dunk a bag of tea into a hot cup of water, it’s going to make tea eventually, but if you stir it around, it makes tea really quickly.

 that’s what happens for six weeks on the ocean trip. These barrels are sloshed around at sea for six weeks. Then it ages over in England for a further six months to a year before we bottle it. If you want to talk about something unique, no one does that.  that was just part of the business plan.

It really wasn’t like, hey, let’s send whiskey across the ocean, see how it tastes. It was more like, we kind of have to do this, and that was just like a nice bonus that it actually made it whiskey taste better.

Susan: Yes, it’s incredible if you think that you let it just sit there and the mechanics of the sloshing, I don’t have a better word for that, but the sloshing, yes, sloshing is good, I guess.

Brian: To be honest, I mean, we’re not the first people to put it on the ocean. I’ll give tribute to Jefferson’s, they’re a brand that actually released a Jefferson’s ocean brand. They take it out to sea and then they bring it back to America and they bottle it. The whole concept was because they knew it was going to taste better.

This is the way they used to make whiskey back in the day, bringing it over to England or to Europe. We weren’t the first to do that and I’ll be clear about that. We were the first to use it as part of the business model that takes it across sea.

I’ve actually heard of a company here in Kentucky that’s aging on a riverboat just cause the movement makes a big difference. So yes, the sloshing is good.

Susan: Sloshing is good. Now, let’s get to the bottle and also the first iteration of it. Let me get it down.

Brian: Yes.

Susan: I’ve had Never Say Die, I do know that it’s barrel strength. And your decision to start with a higher ABV what was.

Brian: Yes. well, so the bulk of the spirits that we’re selling right now are small batch. So, the barrel strength that you have is a unique product that you can’t even find in America right now. It was the first thing we did start with. So, you’re right. We started with barrel strength.

We just thought we wanted the first barrel and they’re all single barrel too. So, it’s not just like a batch of single barrel strength. Literally you’re drinking out of one particular barrel that we identified as a standalone, good barrel. the first barrel pick that we ever did we wanted to launch the brand with the British Bourbon Society because you are living in London, the bourbon culture in England is not nearly as deep or profound as it is in America.

But there are very hardcore fans. The British Bourbon Society was one group of those that we were like, let’s launch this brand into the hands of the people that really love bourbon in England. We gave them the honor of selecting the very first barrel of Never Say Die that ever came over.

I don’t even have a bottle of the barrel number one, they got it. I haven’t never even tried it to be perfectly honest, but that’s what we wanted to launch with. We did that for a year before we really geared up and were able to stock enough whiskey over to England and start doing some blending and really come up with our small batch product, which is a blended product, but it’s only 10 barrels.

So, it’s really nuanced between batch to batch. And I think they’re quite different, the barrel strength and the small batch. The small batch is incredibly drinkable and almost everybody who tries it, even people who aren’t diehard bourbon fans, people who are like, Ooh, that’s too strong for me.

They like our stuff. I mean, even if they drank it neat, they’re not going to be put off by it. But the barrel strength’s really unique and it’s awesome, cause every barrel is different.

Susan: I love it. Now, let’s talk about this wonderful bottle that Stranger and Stranger did, with your input, because literally, if no one listens to this or reads the article I wrote for The Tonic they can get so much of the story from this. So, can you talk us through it?

Brian: Yes. There’s not much on there on the bottle, but we tried really hard to get enough that intrigues the person who’s reading it. The bottle itself almost looks like a bullet shape. I mean, it’s flat or it’s a nice cylinder and then it rounds out at the top.

It’s got a cool crest, if you flip it over, the bottom has a horseshoe that inscribed NSD on the bottom of it for Never Say Die, of course. Then our crest has the British flag, so there’s four corners of the crest. It’s got the water which is significant in two ways. It’s the ocean voyage that the whiskey takes, but it’s also the limestone rich water that we use here in Kentucky that makes whiskey special. Then it’s got what looks like a farm or grain that’s coming from that Kentucky grain. Then of course the horseshoe, which is a tribute to the horse.

There’s just a lot of little features on the bottle. It says LP KY at the bottom, which is a Liverpool Kentucky connection. Then it’s got a British crest and an American Eagle. There’s a horse.

Susan: I’m pointing to the horse. There’s 1954. Oh, yes, the two crests. An NSD Never Say Die and Kentucky straight bourbon.

Brian: The font has the look of newsprint. That was Stranger and Stranger’s idea. Like the big headline Never Say Die is the big upset winner. So, it sort of looks a little bit like a newspaper. But in a cool hip modern way. Then I think the coolest feature on our bottle, which we lucked into because the first few iterations, if we would have picked one of those that Stranger & Stranger came up with, it had nothing to do with the colors.

Then when we came back for one more edit, and I think we thought it was our last edit, they were like, what if we use these colors? These were the colors that the jockey wore on his silks on that day when he ran that race. They put that on the bottle and all of us were like, boom, yes, that’s done. The creative process is over. You guys just sledgehammered it.

If you look at all of our branding, it’s almost like a magenta and then a grayish blue, and those are the two colors that Lester Piggott wore on his silks on that magical day in 1954.

Susan: One thing is that it looks like a ticket.

Brian: Yes, yes. Exactly. A ticket to the race, which you’ve been to with me! Susan was lucky enough to be involved with the Never Say Die launch over in England at the Epsom Derby appropriately. So that was really cool. We all had tickets to the race.

Susan: Oh, it was fabulous. I had never been before, and it was so exciting to launch it there. I mean, it was fabulous. It was great. It must have meant so much for you all to come over and be there with it.

Brian:  It was great! Our whole dream was to launch the brand at the Epsom Derby. I mean, that was really our goal. When we called the Jockey Club who puts on the race, they were so supportive of us. They were, because you really aren’t allowed to bring bottles of liquor into the Epsom Derby.

You can bring your own coolers of beer and wine and such, but like hardcore alcohol is not supposed to be brought in. And they, in fact, instead of saying, sorry, you can’t bring it, they were like, bring it, be careful with it, but here, we’re going to give you three spots on the finish line on the inside of the track where you can bring in double decker open top buses.

We brought in two buses and then we brought in for the third spot in between the two buses, we got to set up our own Never Say Die cocktail bar, where our bartenders were making custom Epsom Derby’s, which is a drink made with Never Say Die, a tribute to the Mint Julep.

And we had, I think, 60 something Americans came over for the race and for our big event and quite a few British folks as well, including Susan and her friends. Man, what a party and what a great way to kick it off. It was a sunny, beautiful day in England. And I mean, I’ve never had more fun than that day. I mean, it was a blast.

Susan: It was a blast and I actually bet on one of the horses that was like 35 to 1 and I won. But unfortunately, I only put like a pound down or something.

Brian: Hey, winning’s winning.

Susan: I did end up losing it all. But I thought, I remember, Never Say Die’s number was 5, right? Yes. every race came around and we would put down bets on number 5 or the ones that were like 35 to one, 33 to one and a few won.

Brian: Yes, yes, including the big, long shot, you’re right. How crazy is that?

Susan: Yes. I know. I know. It was great. So, what is the future for Never Say Die? What have you guys have planned?

Brian: Yes, so our ultimate goal is to be the bourbon of England and have all the people in the UK and England especially fall in love with this brand, fall in love with the story, and really almost discover how much they like bourbon through our brand.

Then explore other bourbons because the bourbon market in Kentucky and in America is huge. Enormous. I mean, compared to how much liquor is sold in, or bourbon is sold in the UK. It’s not even a drop in the bucket. So, there’s so much potential in that market for people to fall in love with a brand and we hope it’s ours.

I mean, with the ties to England and all the steps that we’ve taken to make it a British brand, we hope that it’s all appreciated and cherished. In the meantime, what we’re trying to do is we can sell a lot of whiskey over in America and that’s what we’re doing. People in America love this story too.

In fact, most of them don’t know the story, as opposed to most people in the UK who have heard of Lester Piggott or the Casper Coffee Club, no one in America, I shouldn’t say nobody, but most people haven’t. So, we’re opening America’s eyes to it and selling a lot of whiskey over in America, which is kind of fun because we’re shipping containers across the ocean both directions. We still are bottling it in England and then shipping it back to the US. You want to talk about a nightmare from importing and exporting and customs and everything that we’ve learned how to do.

We’ve only launched our small batch bourbon. So, the flagship product over in America so far. We’re launching the rye here. We’re going to have it into distribution and quite a few States in the US, online on Seelbach’s. People will be able to buy the rye on Seelbach’s website and get shipped to almost 40 states in the union. Launching the rye is key. Then eventually maybe someday we’ll launch the barrel strength over in the US.

Susan: You just dropped something into there that you didn’t talk about, which is the rye. So, did you always have plans for a rye?

Brian: I shouldn’t say always. Back to our founders being brilliant, Shane Baker, the second year of production was like, you guys want to make some rye too. I mean, we make a pretty darn good rye, and you could have a separate product. None of us had thought about that.

We’re so glad that he said that. So, our second year of production, we included some rye in there and man, I’m so glad he did. It is. I don’t know, my signature is on the rye bottle cause it’s my favorite product. And Martha’s as well, Martha and I have been running this brand, almost like as hard as we possibly can for the past five or six years.

Our co-founders let us sign that bottle. I don’t know if anyone who’s listening has ever tried a rye or maybe they liked it, maybe they didn’t. You have to try our rye because it is unlike any rye whiskey I’ve ever tried. It’s just got this smoothness to it. It’s not quite as sweet as the bourbon, but it’s close because it’s made in a Kentucky style rye.

There’s still 33% corn in our mash bill for the rye. So as opposed to some ryes that are like 95% rye. Ours is only 56%, but there’s this herbaceous, minty finish with our rye. That is, I’ve never tried anything like it before. It’s killer in an Old Fashioned or any cocktail, because it’s at 105 proof. That’s what we bottle it at.  So yes, I think, the world’s going to really love our rye whiskey and hope they do.

Susan: I’m sure. So already you have the Old Fashioned taken care of, you’ve got the Manhattan taken care of, so you said you’re also going to try and bring back the barrel strength, like I have.

Brian: Or maybe we’ll just keep that a British product for a while. Then maybe if someone really wants to take a trip to England to try it or cheat the system and buy it from one of our British retailers who will ship it to America, which do exist, they can get their hands on a barrel strength too, but it’s kind of cool that that’s going to be a British product for the time being.

Now let’s go full step, like real into the future. Susan, it’d be really cool since we don’t own a distillery to have some sort of place where fans could go in Lexington and also in England, it would be really cool. And obviously we’re spending our resources right now, just trying to get the story out and the bourbon out into distribution.

We’re not putting any money in our pockets for years. But if we can reinvest into more whiskey and be able to tell the story to more people, but also into some kind of fan experience type places, that’d be the ultimate dream, right?

Maybe we’ll build a distillery someday, but at this point we don’t really need that because we have killer distillery that helps us.

Susan: Oh, yes. A fan experience for this would just be insane. Everyone who hears the story loves the story. So, if they can get even more of the story, it’s a perfect combination for success, really.

Brian: Maybe see some thoroughbred horses on the premises. Because Kentucky, for anyone who’s not been to Kentucky, is a gorgeous state where bourbon and horses pretty much reign. It’s really cool to come immerse yourself in both of those, and that’s why it’s really cool that both whiskey and horse racing, thoroughbred horse racing coincide so well with our brand, which is why everybody comes to Kentucky anyway.

Susan: You have to get Paul McCartney to come to the opening of it, of course.

Brian: I know, I know!

Susan: I don’t know how Ringo Starr would feel, but Paul McCartney.

Brian: I sent Sir Paul a bottle and I know that to my knowledge he received it. I don’t have obviously a picture of him holding it or any thank you note or anything like that, but I do know that he has one. So, because we know he knows the story and we know he knows that we exist, that warms our heart.

Susan: Yes, that was going to be my next question – does he know? That’s cool. Does he know about the horse? Has he ever said anything about the horse?

Brian: I think you should try to get him on an interview, Susan. Would you do that? And ask him these questions. Cause nothing would make me happier than to hear Paul talk about that.

Susan: I love it. Could you imagine? Sir Paul, I don’t need to know about the Beatles per se, because everyone knows. Just tell me about your relationship with Never Say Die bourbon, please. Yes, that’s my goal. That’s my goal. So, yes, I think you said it’s available in 40 states. People can find it in at least in England.

Brian: In England, yes, I think it ships, Master of Malt, Whisky Exchange, Whiskey World. There’s quite a few. Selfridges just took on our product, which we’re thrilled and elated about to be in such a high class, retail establishment, and more and more are jumping online every day.

It’s taken a bit. We’ve been in the market in UK for over a year now, but, America, yes, we’re not quite in district full distribution in 40 States. We’re going to be in full distribution in about 8 states. For people who don’t know in America, you have to go through a licensing process, sign on with the distributor much work just to get one state open.

Then at that point they have to get the retailers in that state to take ownership of the brand and put it on their shelves and liquor sales in America. It’s done at the retail level for the most part, unlike in England where it’s shipped to your door. Americans just like driving up and picking out their own bottle either way. It takes a lot of work to get it into full distribution in America. Unlike in England, where you can just put it on Master of Malt and then they can ship it to every door.

Susan: 50 states all with different rules.

Brian: We were in eight and I’m like exhausted of just getting it into eight.

Susan: It’s worth it to get the 42 others!

Brian: Thank goodness. Yes. We’ll do it.

Susan: I’m sure. So, anything else to tell me?

Brian: No, I just want to thank you for helping us tell the world about this story. I think it’s super cool that you reached out to us in particular because we were so lucky to have you at the race with us. I mean, we invited quite a few people.  Susan was lucky and awesome enough to take us up on the offer and I think we made it worth your while. I see you smiling, knowing it, you had a great time.

So, thank you for telling the world about this brand. Nothing makes us happier than when people sit around the, around the table, crack an open a bottle of Never Say Die and tell the story to friends. That’s the dream.

Susan: And what a story it is. What a story it is. It is so great to have you on the show. Thank you so much for coming here. As I said, a plug for Never Say Die. If you can see it, if you can try it, do, because it’s wonderful bourbon and an upcoming Tonic Magazine is going to have even more of a story of it.

So, Brian, hopefully we’ll see you at the next Epsom Derby or another horse race, soon drinking some of your bourbon.

Brian: Yes, we will do that again. It was way too fun to only do it. So yes, but I’ll be over in England and see you sometime soon as well. Well, I’m still looking forward to it. Thank you.

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