This week's guest is Leah Niskinid, who joins us from Brooklyn, New York. Leah is dedicated to the power of storytelling and is a passionate whiskey advocate. She is an executive verbient steward, holds an advanced diploma in single malt whiskey from the Edinburgh Whiskey Academy, and is an award-winning distillery visitor experienced professional with a deep passion for whiskey history. Leah is the founder of Barrel Strength Talent, a whiskey-event and education-business based in Brooklyn.
In our interview with Leah, she shares her journey from working as a tour-guided Kentucky to developing educational whiskey programs in Brooklyn that emphasize the importance of sensory training and smell in whiskey appreciation. Leah also discusses her time moving to Louisville, Kentucky to immerse herself in bourbon culture, how she became a certified instructor for the Edinburgh Whiskey Academy single malt whiskey course, the development of her sensory appreciation course, and the importance of training and utilizing the sense of smell, highlighting its superior capacity compared to taste, and its direct connection to memory and emotion. Plus, Leah shares several recommendations for high-end and budget-friendly whiskeys. We had a terrific time talking with Leah, and you'll enjoy it too.
Make sure you check out Leah's social links on Instagram at Barrel Strength Talent and on the web Barrelstrengthtalent.com, or check the show notes as always for all the links. Enjoy the show! Alright, we're back with another episode of the industry podcast. My name is Kip, and this is Dan.
How's it going? Good man, how are you doing? I'm still awesome. I'm still awesome.
I'm enjoying that recording this in the trailing days of August, so just enjoying the summer weather while we still got it, because I'm sure we'll start complaining about the cold soon now. True enough, true enough. Not minding the dip out of the humidity, the lap part's alright. Yeah, it's been pretty scorching most of the summer, so.
Yeah. How things going with you? No complaints whatsoever. Yeah, it's working on some new projects, as you know, looking for saltire raremaults, to be coming to a liquor store near you, hopefully, working with you all to be on that project.
If you want to get your hands on some of these amazing single malts from Scotland, then the best thing you could do is email your local LCBO manager and be like, hey, you know what we need is those saltire raremaults in stock. That'll help us out. That'll help us get it placed and then into your hands. Aside from that, if you're looking for spirits from allure distillery or wine from Malabar Winery, you can contact me directly at kipsoners.gmail.com.
kypsaundrs.com. If you are in the Kipson Marlu area and you want to grab a cocktail, stop by Sugar Run at Sugar Run Bar on Instagram to figure out everything that's going on there. And if you'd like to help us out here on the show, you like what we're doing, subscribe, rate review, don't forget to do that. And if you'd like to be a guest on the show or provide support for the show, that is info at theindustrypodcast.club or at the industry podcast on Instagram, where you will find amazing artwork by the great and immensely talented Zakana at zakana.co for all of your graphic arts needs.
A couple more shout outs today. I'd like to mention once again the flavor report by a friend of the pod, Reese Sims, you should check that out. You can Google it the flavor report. The first issue is available now.
Flavor is connection. So check that out for sure. And of course, we got a step plug because it's coming up now by the time you're listening to the show, the Toronto Cocktail Festival. You can go to the archives to hear our interview with the founder of the Toronto Cocktail Festival.
It's going to be taking place October 22nd to the 26th. And it's a citywide celebration featuring tasting events, neighborhood crawls, seminars, parties and special guest shifts across Toronto. Proceeds from the festival will support Mind the Bar and National Mental Health Initiative for the hospitality community. So check that out.
We're super excited about it. Toronto Cocktail Festival October 22nd to 26th. You can Google Toronto Cocktail Festival find out everything that's going on there. And if you're looking for some help with your making your own cocktails or if you're a bartender professional, what's the best tool for these people then?
Well, you should mention that because today's episode is in partnership with InBibley, the visual cocktail app built by Bartenders for Bartenders. As you build custom recipes in InBibley, you can see a visualization of the projected flavor and compari and the bitter spikes. Balance with pineapple and watch the bitter drift down in the sweet rise. InBibley as recipe builder computes flavor profiles in real time, letting you workshop cocktails without wasting product.
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Visit www.anbibley.com or just check the show notes as always for all the links. Yeah, I'm super excited. But I'm bibblya. Super excited about the flavor report Toronto Cocktail Festival.
Check out all of that stuff. And right now you can check out our guest of the week. It's Leah and it's going to how are you? I'm doing well sir and yourself.
We're doing all right. Yeah. Thank you for having me. My pleasure.
Leah is joining us from Brooklyn, New York and Leah is the founder of Barrel Strength Talent. So tell us a little bit about Barrel Strength Talent and then we can talk a little bit about your career. Yes, of course. So I started Barrel Strength Talent in 2021, the very end of 2021 right during COVID.
I had just finished a tenure at Kings County facility where I was the tour and events manager for many years. I was at that time that I decided to venture off into my own world and start my own business which is Barrel Strength Talent. So I am a whiskey events and education business based out of Brooklyn, New York. The motivation for starting a whiskey events business based around education is largely about supporting the creative people who are mostly behind the scenes.
The people who are distillers, the people who are the master blenders, the people who are the coopers, the barrel makers. I wanted to bring in something a little different to the whiskey events scene where I not only can provide whiskey tastings for both corporate and private groups myself but I can also guess in the old days they used to call it your Rolodex through my deep Rolodex and portfolio of contacts in the business. I can arrange for anybody that's interested to have a tasting or an experience with a blender or with a distiller or with a barrel maker or with a cast investment expert or with somebody that knows how to set up your home bar. So people can come to me and say, you know, we really wanted to have our group do a team building exercise around blending.
For instance, I can provide through my network of contacts in the industry to set them up with a blender, to set them up with a distiller, to set them up with an independent baller. It's kind of the sky's the limit. So it's not just me that you're getting when you book with us. It's also booking anybody in my world that you are interested in having come and do your event for you.
So impetus behind barrel strength talent, I really wanted to bring in those people and sort of give them the spotlight for a while because, you know, we don't think too much about them in front of house, I guess. You could say the people that are making your spirit, people that are blending it, boggling it, I wanted to give them their chance in the spotlight. So then if I got this right, you will go and do a tasting at an office on your own. If that's what they're looking for, or you'll also bring them on a tour of a distiller or whatever, like it's just anything's possible.
It's extremely bespoke. So I love that word. I came up in a former life. I was in the fashion business.
So I really tailor and customize events to the client and the sky is kind of the limit. So anyone comes to me and says, we want to take a tour, we'd like to have a private tour, we'd like to learn about barreling. I can arrange any of those things on a customized setup. And so sometimes you can even get like the distillers or the blenders to come with you to an office space or whatever.
Absolutely. Absolutely. So it's not just that it could be at the distillery, it could be at the home or the private home above the client, it could be at the office of the client, it could be at a distillery, it could be anywhere. Now on a technical basis there.
So obviously to run your business, you take a fee from whatever the booking of the event is. Yes. When you have a tour of the distillery or if you have a distillery come with you or a distiller or a blunder or whatever, do you also end up paying them? And that works until the price of the event?
Absolutely. Yeah, that's the point. I was just wondering, I would imagine some of them would be just maybe doing it for self-promotion. Yeah, well I wanted to kind of change that.
And that's the point. I know that distillers and people at MakeWhisking and People at MakeSpares are always doing stuff free to do the brand. And these people, they need to get paid for their time and their passion. And so absolutely, anybody in the business that doesn't event for me is getting paid.
I will take a small commission if it's not actually myself that's doing the event and posting the time in the event. But they are absolutely getting paid what they think they're worth. So yeah. Okay, that's interesting.
So that's great because I would imagine a lot of them would probably even consider doing it for free just for the same reason. But it's good that you recognize that they are working for free so much of the time. Because I think the people don't understand about the behind the scenes of when you own your own business. You end up working so much that you don't get paid for.
Really? Like in any line of work I'm sure about. Okay. So I think a little bit, I was thinking of passion.
When did you find out that you were passionate about whiskey? Oh boy. So I got into the whiskey business, I guess legitimately, and I want to say 2010. So that's almost 15 to go.
I had loved whiskey and been curious and fascinated by it for a long time. I've lived in New York City for 30 years now. And in 2010, I wanted to combine my love of storytelling. I was working as a tour guide at the time of being a tour guide in New York City in 2010.
And I wanted to find a way to combine that with my love of whiskey. And so I did something pretty radical. I guess I'm looking back on it. I think it was pretty radical.
I moved to Kentucky for a year from New York City. I moved to Louisville, Kentucky. I just thought, well, I want to learn the trade. I want to learn the bourbon trade.
I want to become immersed in the culture of Big Bourbon and start from there. And so that's what I did. I moved to Louisville, Kentucky. My partner and I rented a shotgun house in what's called the Highland section of Louisville, which is really beautiful.
And I got a... I got to ask a quick question. What's a shotgun house? It's a really narrow...
It's mostly so. There's a really narrow little house instead of it being wide rooms. It all kind of flows in a narrow path. I was like, what they used to call them, like railroad homes.
And you kind of drop down through the front door and go all the way. Like, similar to what they call one of those old railroad homes or whatever. It's not the same thing. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, have railroad flats in New York City too. But shotgun houses are, I guess, I think they're particular to the south.
Yeah. So, sorry, go on. Yeah. Yeah.
So I got to get with a big tour company that did tours of the Bourbon Trail. And you have to remember, Kentucky's... When you go to these huge massive distilleries in Kentucky, right, they're far away from each other. And the tour company was the first, duh, to think about providing transportation from one big distillery to the next.
Hadn't been done before they had figured that out. It doesn't seem that hard, but they were like, how do people are driving themselves to Jim Beam and to make a mark and it's 60, 70 miles away? And, you know, they made perfect sense, right? So I started to work with them.
So I was a tour guide and I would take people around these vans they provided and I got a chance to... I got this crash course in Kentucky Bourbon history from that company, which I'll always be grateful to them for. They're called the Jillip Tours. And I've got a chance to experience the massive Kentucky Bourbon industry.
And I'm so glad that I did that because until you see the scale and enormity of these big American Kentucky Bourbon distilleries, it doesn't quite sink in. Like when you're drinking your buffalo trace or your Jim Beam or whatever it does that you like, the enormity and scale of these places. So as an example, right? I live on the sixth floor.
I'm on the top floor of a pre-war billionaire in New York City and some of Jim Beam's stills are that high. Oh, well. Crazy. So to put things in perspective, you know, I went there and I was a gog the whole time.
It's that big and it really drove home for me. What an important part of American history. This is and how enormous, you know, it's such an important part of our culture. And I just really, really benefited so much from that.
So the two different tours were... I think we went to Makeers Mark, Woodford Reserve, Buffalo Trace, and of course Jim Beam and some of the... And at the time, 1792, I don't know if you guys heard that. They make great whiskey, but I don't think they give tours anymore.
And some of the tours went to Wellland and stuff like that. But it was just such an amazing learning experience. And during the year that I was there, I was contacted by King's County Distillery here in Brooklyn, New York, who had heard about me somehow. I'm not sure how we ended up connecting that way.
But they were just starting out at the time. They were in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. And they had finally got to the point in their life as a craft distillery that they needed somebody official to come in and develop a real deal tour and events program for them. Because they were getting to the point where people in their office were getting up and having to go do tours.
And the owners were doing that and so forth and so on. So that's how I ended up having to go. I got that job. And you have no idea why they contacted you?
Well, no, I had been following them. I think we had reached out to them via email. We had been going back and forth for a while just in a conversational way. And then while I was in a move, they contacted me and said, you know what, we really need the tips to create this new position.
Would you be interested? And I was like, yeah. What was the transition from New York City to Louisville? Much more smaller place.
How did you like that? You know, Kentucky is a really strange place coming from the point of view of being a New Yorker and East Coast person. And the very first thing that stuck in my mind was this, right? So we got this place in the Highlands area of Louisville.
We had just moved in. My partner and I said, I'm going to the drug store and I had something to get. The drug store was a two block away walk. I think it was Walgreens.
I go into Walgreens and lo and behold, there are two enormous aisles chock full of bourbon. I mean, this is Walgreens. So all the best bourbon, all the best Kentucky bourbon are right there in your face. And that just shocked me.
Wow, this is incredible. I've never seen whiskey in a drug store. And at the time, and this was, you know, 15 years ago, I was still a cigarette smoker and I was smoking American spirits at the time. And I think there were like $6 at Walgreens, which is nothing.
And so I thought, oh, this is great. I just moved to a place where all the stuff that's really bad for me is right. It's really cheap. Right beside your prescriptions.
Yeah. One stop shopping. I'm filled and I'm getting some bourbon and cigarettes and go back home. You know, so.
So wait, I spent all the time in Kentucky. When you left there, what were some of your favorite bourbon? Well, I was still, I mean, I don't want to say I was a neophyte, but I was just starting out in the business and I. Well, that's why I kind of wanted to ask you about it because I know what then you started doing some courses and etcetera and probably your opinion changed a little bit.
But that's why I wanted to get like sort of just living in Kentucky where you were like, oh, like what were your goals to drink then? Yeah. Well, you know, I was always in college and throughout my younger years, I was always a big guy and a wild turkey and you know, the one on one, not the one on three that. Yeah.
And then I remember sitting at a bar in Louisville and trying El Martili for the first time. I mean, that's really hard to find these days. It's almost impossible to find. But I just remember being floored by how beautiful it was and I realized that I was in the right business and I knew that there was so much to, so much to learn about this.
So when it's when you got back to New York, you start working for this, this other distillery in New York, what was it called again? King's County. King's County. Yeah.
And is this at the point where you're like, okay, my curiosity, my passion for whiskey is about to a point where I want to start learning more deeply about it. Absolutely. So it was a perfect marriage of my experience that I already had with developing tours and giving tours with my newfound passion for whiskey. And I just want to say one thing.
If anybody, I always recommend to everybody that I talk to, that's interesting whiskey. If you have any opportunity to spend any amount of time working in a distillery, I still urge people to do that because it's a game changer. You know, being in a distillery, a working distillery every single day was a better education than I could have ever had. I'm sure, yeah.
You're there every single day. You know, you're dealing with the distillers. You get to know their problems and their challenges and the blenders and their challenges that they face. And it's just, it's an incredible experience.
So I really, really enjoyed it. And oddly enough, Collins woman, a founder of King's County Distillery is from Kentucky. So I don't know if you know, I don't want to tell a story that you may have already heard. Well, even if we've heard of most of our listeners having stuff, go for it.
Yeah. So he, his story is so interesting because, um, kept and down he, he grew up in Kentucky, but he didn't grow up in the part of Kentucky that most people know about. If you haven't been to that state, if you haven't been that part of the country. So Western Kentucky is all about bourbon, a big bourbon and bluegrass.
So it's the Kentucky Derby, you know, race, horses, you know, bluegrass, big fields of race, horses, a lot of money, you know, all the big distillaries and that kind of culture. And then there's this invisible wine between that, part of Kentucky and Eastern Kentucky, which is part of Appalachia. So that's where conga, and he grew up in Harlan County, Kentucky. Oh, I know that's what that's so justified is all about.
Right. And there was a, and there was a really famous documentary called Harlan, I think it's called Harlan County, USA about coal miner strike. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
And so part of Kentucky, and he'll tell you this himself was more about, at least back then when he was going coal mining and moonshining versus bourbon and race horses. Right. Yeah. I don't know what the comparison would be.
You know, it's a East and West Berlin almost. Yeah. And back then. So, so his, his take on making bourbon was just really creative.
I mean, he, when King's County's really started out, they started out on the strength of their moonshine. So rather than source whiskey from another place while they were trying to make money, you know, you have to set away barrels. It takes a lot of time from age, a lot of the source from another place and then put their label on it and then wait until their own barrels are kind of age. I mean, you know, the story.
So he literally made such a good white whiskey initially that they were able to survive on those sales and until their, until their very first whiskies came out in small barrels by the own barrels. Wow. That's crazy. Yeah.
Cause that is really the struggle. If you want to be a facility that specializes in whiskey is the aging. I know, I know. There's nothing wrong with, you know, sourcing, sourcing is not a crime.
No. I mean, it's, it's, if you're a business, you almost have to do it. So if you can do it another way, that's particularly remarkable. I think it's important to get that point across.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's so, so I love that because he made, he and his partner David Haskell focused all their efforts onto making this really beautiful, approachable, accessible white whiskey clean on age whiskey to sell first and it's fantastic. I don't know if you've ever tried it, but I haven't know.
I'm not familiar with Kings County actually, but yeah, I should actually get familiar. Well, the problem is we live under the, um, the odd controversy of the liquor control board of Ontario, which tells us where we're allowed to drink here. So that's, I mean, basically we, uh, products has to get accepted by the LCBO for anyone to be allowed to drink it in our province, which is shitty. So but, uh, but as a result, we don't like often anyone lives in Ontario probably has to go visit a place in the US to even learn about these distilleries.
So it's the one bonus of visiting the US, but why isn't there so much money going? So I don't mean that, but yeah, but that's a big bonus of visiting the US is getting to try spirits that were not allowed or wines, even though we're not allowed to try here. So yeah. Um, anyway, getting back to your story and not more complaining about the LCBO by your favorite host here.
So it's almost like a sponsored part of our show now. Leah is just me bitching about the LCBO. So now we've got that. I'm sorry to mention that you're too believe it or not.
I think we're gonna have a rabbit hole with that. So, and while I agree with you wholeheartedly, like in almost any business, because I can compare it to say just the bartending scene, a lot of people go to bartenders college and you learn a certain amount about the basics there, but you don't learn anything compared to what you learn working behind a bar and it really doesn't train you properly for that. So I do think it's interesting that you mentioned that working in the distillery is probably what taught you the most, but you did get these accreditation. So talk us about the accreditation that you do have and, and like what it was involved in the genome.
Yeah. So I was a little sneaky about it. When I was working at King's County Distillery, I guess I was their tour director like I said, their tour and events around about three years and I really wanted to take the executive bourbon steward certification, which is given by Moon Shine University in Louisville, Kentucky. It's a highly respected Academy of Whiskey Knowledge and through the state, it's called the State of Thieves Society.
So they give a super in-depth certification called the executive bourbon certification. I really wanted to take that and get that as a feather in my cap. So like I said, I was a little sneaky. I actually reached out to them and said, would you like to come and do the certification in Brooklyn at King's County Distillery?
And they had never done that before. So I set that up. That's smart though. I thought my certification that way because people from all over the country were coming in and they came and they gave the test and it was great.
So what's involved in that is it similar to like some of the program where you're learning about specific whiskey from different regions and then as they're blind tasting? Like tell us about it. Yeah. So it's a very in-depth that goes into everything.
It goes into history, the history of bourbon, which is a lot. I mean, it's a massive and fascinating history of how bourbon began in the United States. So it's a very in-depth look at the history of bourbon production. It's a very, very in-depth look at the process of bourbon making.
So if you've ever had any questions about the process of bourbon was being made, those are all covered and gone over in that test. They also do some really interesting sensory tests. One of my favorite things about taking the executive bourbon steward test was they ask you to blind taste new make. And so there's the heads, the hearts and the tails that come off the still.
So the job of the distiller is to get the heart off the still. That's the spirit. And so they taste and smell really differently. So they put three white whiskeys in front of us and ask us to test it as an knowledge of what those were and how they smelled and tasted.
So that was pretty incredible. I think working in a white whiskey or a new make tasting into a certification test is great. So I love that. And there was a lot of sensory involved as well.
So you have a blind tasting at the end of your test. Cool. That's why I mean, that's a hell of a lot of knowledge right there. And like the blind tasting is, I mean, you got to keep up with it to keep that skill I feel like, but it certainly lost it.
But it's cool skill. It's definitely an awesome party trick when you first learned it. Yeah, I mean, not for sure. So I'm going to see if I can still remember this.
So to be considered bourbon, it has to be distilled in the United States age for a minimum of three years in new white hoke cast. Is that good? Virgin Charitable. Yes.
Right. I still did remember not bad. The cool thing about that rule is that it doesn't have to be made in Kentucky. Right.
That's the thing that people don't. That's the thing that they screw up. It could be anywhere in the US. I was a great bourbon all over the United States.
Oh, okay. I was always regionalized for the longest time. That's what most people think. And I think I don't think Kentucky goes out of their way to dispel that.
Of course not. They have one of the biggest marketing arms of whiskey. And why would they want to keep that sort of? Yeah.
Okay. Interesting. But that's okay. That's fine.
They do make a bourbon. So later on, I guess it's maybe 2023. I was approached by the Edinburgh Whiskey Academy in Scotland. They're probably the most prestigious whiskey, Scotch Whiskey certification academy in the world and they're vetted by the SQA, which is the Scottish Qualifications Authority.
And it's the only certification that is done so. So the country actually says this is a legitimate form of education. And they're representative that one of the owners actually came to New York City and asked her to give me with me. And she said, look, we do, we give our courses all over the world.
So they're certification courses in Scotch and American single mall. They have a new course in American single mall courses in single mall whiskey and they teach them all over the world with approved course providers, right? So it's sort of like a franchise and they had not ever had anyone in New York City before City approached me about that and was like, yeah, that sounds amazing. So I took and passed their diploma course in American single mall whiskey.
So and that's how I, that's the certification, I guess you're thinking about. And after I passed that, I was vetted to become a course provider. So I'm glad. And how often do you teach those courses?
Quarterly, they're big. They're big. They're big. They're, they're usually one to two full days of coursework for me and the students.
So I would say that I teach those quarterly. And my favorite, my favorite course that I teach with them is course in sensory appreciation. It's just so amazing. So describe it a little bit.
Well, it was developed in conjunction with a French food and whiskey writer named Martin Nuey and it takes a seasonal approach to whiskey tasting evaluation, which I am all over. I think that's a really smart way to approach sensory evaluation of whiskey. So it has a lot to do with food pairing. And it's great for people in the hospitality, food and beverage industries.
And they just love it because it really relates to them on their own level. They're, they're working restaurants, you know, oftentimes high-end restaurants and they like to be able to speak knowledgeably about whiskey to their guests and clients, either behind the bar or from perspective of being a white staff or front of house or GM or beverage manager. So the course covers exactly how similar whiskey is made. So I take about two or three hours to walk them through the process and logistics of how single-malt whiskey is actually made and what are the steps and all those things.
And then we do some exploratory tastings after that. And the second day we dive, we take a deep dive into the sensory mechanisms in our body. So the cool thing about it for me is that we don't realize that our sense of smell is actually the strongest sense that we have. We can detect through our noses hundreds and hundreds of different smells.
Whereas in our palate, there's only really, there's only five things we can kind of differentiate from those are sweet, sour, salty, bitter and someone say umami, savory note. And our noses are super advanced. Part of our sense is that I think people have really forgotten about it quite a bit because it's harder for people to to to verbally describe what they're smelling than it is for them to say what they see or hear or taste. It's way harder.
People get all, you know, they get caught up. They're like, oh, when it comes to smelling whiskey, there's this kind of, I don't want to say reticence, but it's almost like a fear because it's something that we we stop paying attention to, right? So when we're kids, we're smelling everything. But as we grow older, we stop, we figure, well, we know I know how everything smells.
I don't really need to work on it anymore. But it's like you were saying before, I think you just said, you know, about your palate, you know, if you don't, if you don't make a point of bringing it, it's just not going to else, you know, if you stop playing violin, you're not going to pick up ten years later, and you'll be like, oh, whatever. So I urge people, I really urge people to keep sense, diaries of what they smell every day, literally from the minute they wake up to the time they go to bed. In New York City, that can be a little rough.
Yeah. Do you feel like, I find it really interesting what you said, the difference between smelling and tasting. And it's like, obviously, your sense of smell can hone in on way more different smells than your, maybe your palate can taste. So that's part of it.
Do you feel like there's maybe the reticence that you're speaking of is like, they can't put their finger on what the smell is because it's because they can't equate it to taste? Well, that's part of it, Kip. But also the super fascinating part of the way that this whole olfactory system works in our bodies is there's an olfactory bulb, right, which is attached to our brain. Okay.
So here's a very small thing. Right. So, but that, that olfactory bulb, when we smell things, it's directly connected to the part of our brain that processes memory and emotion. Okay.
So, I mean, it's directly connected with that part of our brain. So it's really cool if you can get people to start vocalizing the things that they're smelling without inhibition. It's like, Oh, I remember, you know, when I was a kid and blah, blah, and you know, they start going back into their memory banks and realizing that they actually do have a vocabulary for, or there's no, they just haven't just forgotten that they've just have an access in a very long time. Yes, because they're so content these days.
And yeah, it's got, yeah, that must be harder these days than ever, right? Like, because we have our senses are on overload all the time with everything else that's grabbing our attention. The other thing I always think is like, the reason I was asking that question is because sometimes when I'm teaching like a wine tasting or whiskey tasting course as well, like the one thing that like people have a much easier time describing what they're tasting than they do describing what they're smelling like, because you always teach people to, to nose it first and then taste it right. And it's like, nose, it's like, there's always, and maybe it's just what you're saying.
Like, like some sort of fear of getting it wrong or not describing exactly what they are smelling or not being able to put a word to it. But it's always like a lot of, Oh, I can't smell like, yeah, what does that smell like? And then they taste and I'll be like, Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Like whatever, like vanilla or whatever it is, right? Like, yeah. So that's really interesting that them. Yeah, I mean, you just forget.
But once you remember, it's like the, you can see light bulbs going off in people's heads literally. I mean, I tell people, look, a lot of the tasting notes in single malt scotch, right? You always hear these, especially if they're, um, Sherry cast finishes, you get a lot of tasting of nosy notes, like dry currents or dried apricot or, you know, dried plums. And I say, look, you just forgot how those things smell, but you know how they smell.
Go to a local store that sells those dried fruits and bins and just bring whole bags of them home and smell them, you know, smell the dried cherries, smell the dried blackberries, smell the raisins, learn to differentiate between golden and black raisins. You know, it's, it's sort of, I like the whole process because it's very much like what a chef would train his staff to do. You know, you have to have your finger on the pulse of your own palate and your own sensory and your own memories. I mean, no one can tell you what you're experiencing.
So true. And I can be suggestive too, because there's many, many times where like if somebody in the group says, oh, I'm getting this and all of a sudden you'll notice how several people are tasting the same thing or smelling the same thing. Yeah. It is highly suggestive.
So I have everybody to do that part of the, um, evaluation and silence. Yes. I was people could pipe up and you know, you get a lot of really crazy stuff too. And that's totally okay.
You know, especially when you come to the, the eyelate peated whiskeys and stuff like that, we go into like rubber and John Band-aids and stuff that sounds awful, but it's actually delicious into it. It's a lot more wine. That's the other thing too, is that people forget or maybe need to remind it is that, or maybe just never knew is that your palate develops over time. So the more, the more that you feed your palate, it's going to change.
Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah.
I mean, it should be adventurous. And I want to learn to love the things, learn to recognize the things that you don't appeal to you. Just as a, one of my philosophies of life is that, you know, the things that you don't like in life and the things that you hate are just as important in a lot of ways. And as telling about your character as the things that you are passionate about, this, that helps you to kind of go, oh, well, I don't like the smell of minerality or I don't like a funky, I don't like the funky rum smells.
That helps you to sort of round out the picture of your, well, it also, I think especially if you're in and like what this show is generally tailored to is like, if you're a member of the service industry and you're trying to sell this stuff to other people, you have to learn to be able to sell them on stuff that you might knock yourself like. So there is an important, I always try to tell people the distinction in not liking something and saying it's not good. Yes. Yeah.
That's really, that's a really brilliant comment. Yeah. I totally, I totally get that. I mean, all the more reason for front of house people and bartenders and beverage managers.
To know those things for themselves so that they can pass on a sense of authenticity to their customers and their clients. They're not just reading from the script, the hospitality company you told them to refram. That's right. And also, I think most guests now appreciate it if you're just honest with them too.
So if they ask for a recommendation, give them your honest recommendation, it doesn't have to be something you particularly like the best, but just be like, this is like objectively good. Yeah. And you learn now by taking these courses, everyone should take the course of two because it does teach you a lot. But the other thing I was going to ask you while we have you is, and you get to start taking this in any direction you want, but with all the whiskeys you've tasted, if you could give recommendations because we love getting them from experts for say, maybe from a distillery that most people wouldn't know about or, and this is like more leading back to like now that you've taken the courses, sort of your favorite sort of high end whiskey to enjoy.
You can give one, two, three of them anyone. And like maybe a more favorite one that's in a lower budget class. Well, I'll start from Leopold Brothers in Colorado. So Todd Leopold, he just said, Denver brought to life a historical type of still called the Three Chamber Still, which nobody had ever actually built since, I think, the 19th century.
And he brought that back and he makes this phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal whiskey called the Leopold Brothers Three Chamber Rye. So that's again, your spicier whiskey. So rather than bourbon being 51% more corn, it's mostly rye in this case, but it's also made on the still and that distills things a lot slower than what we're used to tasting and experiencing. So I think the bottle is probably probably about a 200 buck bottle.
Okay, so that is on your higher end. So that's a good recommendation for that. That's an American whiskey that I urged anyone to try at least once for a special occasion if they have the budget. It's amazing.
I always guide people to find whiskeys that are local to where they live. I think that's really important. You know, there's this new American single wall category coming up. It was passed actually by the alcohol tax and trade bureau in January of this year.
And it's the first time in over 50 years that a new American whiskey category is emerged, which is huge. Yeah, it's crazy. Americans, American distillers are on a level playing field with Scotland in terms of making single malt whiskey. It's not going to be called scotch because it's not made in Scotland, but it's American single malt whiskey.
And I think rather than give a specific recommendation to people, I would just say I urge anybody that's out there that's interested in the future of American whiskey go out there and talk to your retailers and look for those beautiful bottles of American single malt. Can you just even give us a couple of them already out there to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be. Yeah, sure. So Brother Justice in Minnesota makes incredible American single malt whiskey with a cold peating process, which is freaking phenomenal.
So I would say Brother Justice American, excuse me, Westland out in the Pacific Northwest in Oregon is amazing. And closer to home in West A of New York, there's 10 mile distillaries. So Shane Fraser, who came, this is a cool story. Shane Fraser came from Scotland, right?
He's a Scotsman and he was practically born and raised in the distillian industry over there in Scotland and worked for most of the major single malt distillers over there. Has come to New York State and is now making American single malt whiskey in New York. Awesome. Thank you very much.
Amazing. So Leopold Brothers, beauty for rye Brother, Justin, American single malt whiskey. And Shane Fraser's that 10 mile distillary, he has American single malt whiskey. That's awesome.
Well, thanks Leopold. Honestly, I can say here I talked about you about whiskey,. No. Probably another full hour so maybe we'll have you come back on if you're interested in that.
But we're running out of time here, so what I'm going to do is ask you where our listeners can follow you. Follow what you're doing with barrel strength and then also you personally. Oh, absolutely. So at Barrel Strength Talent on Instagram, pretty simple.
Barrelstrengthtalant.com is my website. my website. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm available on LinkedIn as well under my name, Leah and Ms.
Ginnam. And all the information you need about me will be in those three places. I'm on Facebook, but those are the three places anyone that wants to talk to me or reach out about events or classes can do so. That's awesome.
And people should seriously do that. I can recommend enough. Like if you're a company looking for a cool thing to do with your staff, like what, like reach out to Leah. That's an awesome way to do it.
You know, like exercise like honestly, it's super fun. You get to try and you get to try booze. It doesn't like that. No, just so I quick note that corporate family is a really good team building.
Yeah. It really goes. I mean, it gets people out of their shells and it's losing a little bit of verbalize and talk about stuff that doesn't have to do with catchrooms. Well, I'd be surprised about how, like, how many of these sort of things interrelate when you're talking about like building an office culture and like how it's so reworks like you be amazing.
How many cross over there is there? But you get to do it in a more fun atmosphere. Where you get to drink at the same time and talk to an expert like Leah, like we could do forever. Anyway, thanks so much for coming on Leah.
We really appreciate it. I'm not joking. I'm trying to get you to come on again because I feel like I have a hundred more questions for you. So this was super fascinating.
Thanks for giving us your time. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Dan, so much. Have a great night.
Thank you, Senator. Thanks very much. I appreciate it. Bye, Che.