Speaker 3: 1:30

Hello everybody and welcome. You are listening to the Restaurant Guys. I'm Mark Pascal and I'm here with Francis Shot. Together we own stage left in capital Lombardi, restaurants in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We're here to bring you the inside track on food, wine, and the finer things in life.

Speaker 4: 1:44

Well, hello, mark.

Speaker 3: 1:45

Hey Francis. How are you?

Speaker 4: 1:46

I'm doing well. I'm actually enjoying being back in the saddle again after my long trip abroad. I say, you know, I'll tell you. Walking around the dining room, uh, and saying hello to people and having people come into the bar, it's, uh, away from it for two weeks. It's different. I kind of view the whole world as a maitre d or a bartender, you know, I was at, I was at other restaurants and I was, Telling people thanks for coming and leaving and, you know,

Speaker 3: 2:10

well, Jennifer makes fun of me'cause I'm like, I'll say hello to people out on the street. And she's like, you know, people don't do that.

Speaker 4: 2:15

Yeah. Well it's, I have a special thing at the restaurant door though. Like, as people are leaving, I'm like, goodnight, thanks for coming. You know, I just, I still, it's a way to connect. It's, uh,

Speaker 3: 2:24

you know what really troubles me though, when we're open for lunch, I still say goodnight. Thanks for coming. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's all part of my. My end of the evening. That's why

Speaker 4: 2:31

we don't open for lunch very much because you get it wrong. That's why,

Speaker 3: 2:35

We work together in the restaurants, we work the floor all the time. And unusual things happen when we're on the floor. And I think that's one of the things that, that I love talking about on the show, the unusual people and circumstances that happen in this restaurant.

Speaker 4: 2:48

Sometimes good, unusual, sometimes bad. Unusual

Speaker 3: 2:52

indeed. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Speaker 4: 2:54

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 2:55

So I had a guy the other night, and we did not talk about this'cause I think it was probably right before you went away, had a guy come in. And he sat down at the table and, and the, you know, we obviously we have a lot of steaks on the menu. We have a lot of the Italian side of the menu as well. He came in and all his friends ordered steaks and he, he ordered one of the, no meat pastas.

Speaker 4: 3:17

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 3:17

And he said, uh, and I need to be sure there's no meat in there. And I said, oh, are you vegetarian? And he turns to me, he goes, not by choice. And I'm like, well, what do you mean not by choice? He said, well, uh, I'm allergic to meat. Wow.

Speaker 4: 3:31

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 3:31

There's no cure for this particular. Affliction.

Speaker 4: 3:34

That's why I started wearing long pants and socks on the beach. It's embarrassing.

Speaker 3: 3:40

So apparently this guy, I think he lived in Montana or somewhere out by the woods, got bitten by one of these ticks six years ago.

Speaker 4: 3:51

Wow.

Speaker 3: 3:52

Six years ago. And he said, yeah, so if I have too much meat, I will die.

Speaker 4: 3:59

Wow.

Speaker 3: 4:00

Okay, so this is not, I'm gonna feel ill, this is not, if I have too much meat, I will die. I am like, how did you find out? He is like, I had too much meat.

Speaker 4: 4:09

Oh

Speaker 3: 4:10

yeah. And so literally he had, he had meat and got terribly ill. And found out that he was afflicted with this particular disease that was caused by a tick bite.

Speaker 4: 4:23

Jesus. I'm not going to Montana.

Speaker 3: 4:24

I mean, it's, can you imagine that, how life changing that is from a tick? I

the-restaurant-guys_6_01-21-2026_135716: 4:30

Okay, you ready for this? Yeah. There are over a hundred thousand cases of people recorded right now that are allergic to meat, and they're thinking that it may be as high as half a million. That's what the c, DC? Yeah. Oh my goodness. Isn't that crazy? That's crazy.

Speaker 3: 4:46

Never eat meat again. I could deal with Lyme disease. You know, I see joints aching every day. No problem. But I can never have steak again. Oh no.

Speaker 4: 4:56

I can say PETA's, secret Weapons lab where they're collecting these sticks too. Don't let that give you an idea as peta. yeah. That's horrible. That's horrible.

Speaker 3: 5:03

Yeah, And he just was like, this is it. This is what, what my life is now.

Speaker 4: 5:07

So my college girlfriend who, who you met,'cause we went to college together.

Speaker 3: 5:11

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: 5:11

was vegetarian. so I, I met her again years after college. she said, by the way, I know me being a, a vegetarian college annoyed you a little. It really didn't. Mm-hmm. She was great about it. she said, you know, I. I had always been a vegetarian since I was like 12. It's just, you know, it turned meat, turned me off, turns out I'm allergic to meat. I was like, what do you mean? She's like, I, I said, all right, listen, I'm gonna try

Speaker 3: 5:31

mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: 5:31

And eat meat. And, uh, I couldn't, I couldn't, turns out I'm allergic to meat. I, I don't think it's the same kind of allergy. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 5:37

I mean, I think

Speaker 4: 5:38

it was a mild, you know,

Speaker 3: 5:39

and I think inflammation out, what happens is that the, your gut bacteria changes.

Speaker 4: 5:43

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 5:44

So if you don't eat meat for a long time alive, I've heard this from a lot of people who gave up meat, who used to eat meat, who gave it up that. Now they don't feel very good when they eat meat.

Speaker 4: 5:53

You are forgetting some of our proudest achievements, which is converting vegetarians back to meat eaters because over the years our, our burgers are so great and our steaks are so good. I mean, how many people is it who came to work for us as vegetarians have been long time vegetarians and after a year or two work and they're like, I need a burger. All right,

Speaker 3: 6:10

it we need to out Jane, one of our mare ds, oh, we need to out her.

Speaker 4: 6:15

Yeah,

Speaker 3: 6:15

so she's been a vegetarian for a long time and she went out with her parents over the holidays and she said. The duck looks so good. I just had to have some

Speaker 4: 6:24

just, she stepped one toe off the wagon, but we've had people who were full on vegetarians who are burned turn them around.

Speaker 3: 6:31

Oh, that's true.

Speaker 4: 6:32

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 6:32

that's a hundred percent sure.

Speaker 4: 6:33

Well, listen, I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tuck that feather in my cap and then you're gonna take a quick break and we're gonna be talking with Noah Rothbaum about his new book, the Whiskey Bible. When we come back, we'll be back in just a moment. You're listening to the Restaurant guys@restaurantguyspodcast.com.

Francis: 6:48

Hey there everybody. Welcome back. Noah Rothbaum is here to talk about his brand new book, the Whiskey Bible. Noah is one of the world's leading experts on spirits and cocktails. Don't believe me as writer, editor and producer, he and the project he's worked on have won countless awards from, don't know, the James Beard Foundation, tales of the Cocktail, and also the American Library Association,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 7:09

uh,

Francis: 7:09

which gave the Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails. It's Dartmouth Metal for the best reference book of 2021. Not the best cocktail book, the best reference book of 2021. he was associate editor on that project. He's a fellow of the James Beam Institute for Kentucky Spirits at the University of Kentucky. He's bartender, magazine's editor at large. He's a men's journal's spirits editor. He's the founding editor-in-chief of one of our favorite websites, liquor.com. He is also a Kentucky Colonel. Chicago Magazine says Rothbaum knows drinking like Newton New Gravity. Noah, welcome to the show.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 7:46

Thank you for, for having me and, and for reading, such a bloated bio. Uh, yeah.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 7:52

what our listeners need to know is I cut a lot of shit out. That that was really great. Um, so I, I have to say, first of all, mark and I both, read this book. It just came out right? Like we got an advanced copy or an immediate,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 8:05

It, it came out fairly just this fall. So you guys got one of the first copies out there.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 8:10

now it's only January is our, both of our favorite book we've read this year. and it's also, it is a unbelievable book on whiskey. and it's just tremendous. Can you, I'll tell you what I really enjoyed about the book to, to start off and then we'll, talk about some of the things that are in it. I really enjoyed that. It doesn't matter from where you come. That you can read this book if you're just, Hey, I like bourbon, I like Irish whiskey, I like Scott, whatever. You can read this book. And there's nothing so complex. There's nothing so unusual. There's nothing, you have to be in, in the in crowd to know this, these particular facts, that you can come to it from that perspective. But you can also come to it from the perspective that you're an expert and you want to get a little more detail on this distillery, on, on, how this is done on the sherry casks. What, whatever the, topic may be, you can delve deeply into it if you want to, or you can just read it for fun.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 9:09

Well, thank you. I mean, that, that was definitely the goal. Like I, I think traditionally that there are a lot of barriers, you know, for people to enjoy whiskey and a lot of them are totally made up, right? I wanted the tone of the book to be as welcoming as possible and for people to kind of see me as their like drinking buddy who knows a little bit more. And in like a totally judgment free zone, I truly believe there are no stupid questions when it comes to drinking cocktails and spirits. you know, you usually when I do a talk, you know, somebody will raise their hand and they'll be like, oh, this is like the stupidest question. I'll be like, no, no, no. the bravest person in this whole room because everybody else is trying to Google the answer on their phone, like under the table. So please ask it. You know? So, and, and to be honest, over the years, all those brave souls who've asked questions, that definitely informed how I wrote the book and also the content of the book because I, you know, people, you know, not everybody is like us and thinks about food and drink, you know, 24 7.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 10:21

Yeah,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 10:21

they're, they have a lot of other things going on in their lives, so,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 10:25

I, I don't always think about food and drinks. Sometimes I think about hospitality.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 10:29

alright. Fair, fair.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 10:30

So, uh, you, the thing about this book, and I, and I, I, I don't want to spend the whole time blowing smoke, but you are an excellent writer and it is a friendly and engaging book in the way that, I'll tell you, I was thinking about why is this so pleasant? Um, uh, you, you know how to turn a phrase, you know, how to make things accessible while not dumbing anything down at all. But everything in this book, it's a story, it's a collection of stories that are told and it reminds me of. The history guy on u on YouTube who was a guest on our show. He makes history, a story. Um, uh, the rest is history. Uh, those guys make it a story. And so I don't know anything about Battleship Design in World War ii, but I find myself listening to those guys talk about, you know, the battle at Waddle Canal and how, you know, battleships work and, and airplane engines changed over time. And I'm, I'm down this rabbit hole'cause I like this story. It's like how shit works. It's not that I am an aviation enthusiast. And I think you wrote with this, right, with the same kind of engaging

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 11:32

Well,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 11:32

thing about the story, which is, which is refreshing and really exciting.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 11:35

well, that's high praise. I, I truly appreciate that. And I mean, to be honest, it's like, you know, I love obviously drinking whiskey, right? And cocktails and the activate I, I truly enjoy. But what makes it even better is hearing the backstory, right? I mean that's, that's, that's why we listen to podcasts, right? That's why we watch movies, right? That's why we read books because like knowing the backstory and the story behind something it even more fascinating. You get that personal connection. And when I started writing about cocktails and spirits, I don't know, 26 years ago, give or take, which sounds like a long time, um, shocked me was that there were all these amazing stories about distillers distilleries. Bartenders restaurants. I found them fascinating and realized that a lot of other people would find'em fascinating too, but nobody really knew them and I didn't understand why we didn't know these stories. And you know, in many ways it was kind of being right place, right time, stumbling upon this goldmine of, of material, um, that had either never been told or had been told and forgotten. And, you know, I was in the, the perfect place to like essentially mine all these, this, this amazing knowledge.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 12:55

Well, contextualizing the story is such an important part of what we do, but it's only important if there are two factors that are taken care of. The first one is the story has to be real, right? It's gotta be a real story. It's gotta, it can't be a made up. It can't be, you know, revisionist history. It's gotta be a real story. And the other one is the product has to be really good, otherwise nobody cares about the story, right? It's, it's those two things. And if those two things are in place, then contextualizing it for people, people really enjoy that and they connect to it.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 13:31

And I think for, for far too long to your first point, so much of whiskey history was created by like the Don Draper of the World, you know, on, you know, in Mad Men, on, you know, in boardrooms on Madison Avenue. you know, we conflated ad copy with actual historical facts for so many brands and just to the point where, when Workman approached me in the January of 2020, almost exactly six years ago, they were like, Hey. You know, we have Karen McNeil's incredibly landmark book, the, the Wine Bible we want to add. We have a beer bible, we want to add a whiskey Bible, which of course terrified me because like, you know, I've used Karen McNeil's book basically since it came out in 2001, um, all the time. And I still have my original dogeared copy with Post-it notes from different stories. So de really scared me to follow in her footsteps, but I was like, okay, this isn't gonna be that hard, right? Like, I just gotta, I mean, it's gonna be hard enough. I gotta like get all the knowledge of my mind down on paper. And I thought like, okay, I knew like most of what I wanted to write. And then of course, you know, I start to sit down and you know, what you're saying is you want to add context, you want to add quotes, you want to add like. You know, the, the act like quote from that historical document, then you realize, oh my God, it's all wrong. Like, none of what it, none of what we thought was right was right, or facts had been jumbled up or edited in a certain way. usually the real story was way more fascinating than the story that I knew, or these old chestnuts that had been told over and over again in other books, some articles that I might have written, you know, where nobody really went down the full rabbit hole to explore

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 15:36

So how did you do that? How did you, how did you find out the, the deep dark secrets?

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 15:41

well, I mean, I, I wish there was like some kind of like magic trick, right? Or algorithm or, you know. This is not something that AI can really help Right. So, I mean, to be honest, a lot of us involved, um, essentially old school, know, digging into libraries and archives, like I felt like a whiskey detective. Right. You know, like a gum shoe hitting the pavement. Some film, more movie, you know, going, you know, looking at all these books nobody had opened ever. Right. And, and at the time I started working on this book, I thought, okay, I'm gonna have to travel a lot. But then COVD happened, um, which to be honest, during that period, so many libraries dig, digitize their collections. Right. Or I was suddenly allowed into libraries collegiate libraries, like the library, Princeton or Harvard or Columbia. Right. Which have. Those libraries are so large, they had these treasure troves of books and pamphlets and like government documents that like I, I'm not sure I would've ever discovered before. So, and then also government archives and just all types of libraries were digitizing their holding so quickly during COVID. It almost went from like too little information to an overwhelming amount. So, I mean, to be honest, spent most of my time like looking through types of archives, lawsuits, uh, congressional records, uh, records from the House of Commons, you know, in the uk. all types of books and pamphlets, technical books. I mean, I was the world's worst chemistry student, I think. And you know, it was kind of hilarious that for this book having to delve into all of these like. Kind of technical treatises that like, you know, I don't know, engineers would read right. About the actual, methodology of distilling and fermentation. So again, I mean, some of the stuff like, you know, in a lot of the libraries wouldn't like send me the whole book, but they'd send me part of the book. Right. And, and sometimes, you know, these sort of fishing trips that I would sometimes take place, you know, in the early hours of the, of the morning or late at night, you know, would yield like a book on oil distillation fascinating, but not for me. Right? And then other ones you'd be like, this is like Hiram Walker's employee manual that they put out in the forties. Like Like full of all types of information material. And then I was able to then track down a copy of like that actual employee manual or Seagrams put out manuals like that. Or, you know, annual reports for different companies and buried in all these things is all of this information. So suddenly, you know, you go from the like very romanticized version of history that we normally hear to the very, very mundane, practical side, and that's usually where the facts lie.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 19:02

I have a story, story about a frame of reference that happened to me yesterday. We've been reading your book for a couple of days. Mark had it, and then I had it and I stopped into, um, uh, a little store that's, been well, been next to us for many years. English is not their first language. And I, and I put your book down as I reach for the money and my change, and I, and I think they are Christians and, and they said, oh, Bible. I was like, oh no. And then I, your Bible and my Bible are, they're different books. It's, uh, he was crestfallen when I told him that it was a whiskey. It doesn't, it's like it's about the size of the copy of the New Testament that I had in high school. So So let, let's get into the, yeah, I wanna, I wanna talk a little bit about the book and some of the stories in the book, if you don't mind sharing some of them. Uh, like we said earlier, a a great read, fun to go through. I was surprised at how much of the history of, in this book has happened in the last 40 years. That was, that was shocking to me. Because, you know, you think about some of these brands, like they've been here forever. They've, they've been doing their thing forever. But how rich the story gets over the last 40 years. were you surprised by that?

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 20:11

Yeah, I mean, I think part of it's that the three of us have lived it, right? So it's often very hard to that these are like historically significant moments. I mean, sometimes it's humbling when you realize like, oh my God, this is a watershed moment that I either witnessed or was part of. Right? But then often sometimes these things pass by and you're like, wow, that was crazy. Like, I can't believe I was there.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 20:36

what were some of the watershed moments?

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 20:38

looking back like over the, the history of whiskey, right? Which goes back centuries, but to your point, really. One of, I think the common mistakes is that we all think that people in like 1400 were sitting around drinking gin beam and Macallan, right?

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 20:53

Mm-hmm.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 20:54

And it's like, nah. Like no, like, I mean a scotch would tasted more like gin, right? It was like a flavored clear spirit with herbs and spices in Ireland or Scotland sometimes sweetened with raisins or honey, right? So like, no, like people were not drinking what we consider whiskey then. But really like modern whiskey history starts I'd say in the early 18 hundreds, right? That's when we really get into like what we know is whiskey. to your point, I think part of what really accelerates the history over the last 40 years is that. In the seventies, the bottom falls out of the whiskey market, right? the high water mark for American whiskey sales in America is 1970. The high water mark for scotch sales is 1975. It's basically years straight down of declining sales, right? So by the time that we wake up from that, there have been all types of mergers and acquisitions, you know, players like Seagram's, which was, know, the largest liquor company in the world, or the second largest, and Schenley, you know, the one in two there, Seagram's has sold off its liquor portfolio, which was a cataclysmic, event for our industry, right? Which sort of reshapes it. It's almost like an asteroid hits, right? And. The portfolio gets split up, right? they sell their portfolio, they sell their company to Vivendi. Vivendi doesn't want to be in the liquor business. sell off, all of these brands, which essentially reshapes the industry, right? So Per No card gets some of the brands, Diageo gets some of the brands, right? Bacardi gets some of the brands, LVMH, right? So it, it reshapes everything. The same thing with Schenley, same thing with like, you know, Diageo's predecessor, you know, one of the companies that becomes Diageo wants to exit the American whiskey industry. sell Heaven Hill Bernheim, they sell off brands like, you know, a, a whole bunch of brands like Weller to, you know what essentially becomes Buffalo Trace, right? So you get of nowhere, suddenly all of these new major players and the formerly major players have disappeared. it's almost like you're writing like a, a play.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 23:20

Alright, let me take you into the, into that play. So what you had was the end of prohibition, then you have, we come back, uh, we're, we generate whiskey stocks, we age whiskey. It becomes a huge amount of whiskey. 1970 to 75 things fall apart. Everybody's drinking vodka and wine coolers.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 23:37

yeah.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 23:38

And Mark and I opened our restaurant in 92. We start bartending in 86. We fall in love with whiskey in the late eighties, early nineties. And then after we're opened, the sale that you talked about happens, which, which releases all this stock and ba basically the lake of whiskey. A lot of age, spirit, a lot of old stuff.'cause nobody gave a shit. So it aged. and. And so in a way, we had this golden age where as a whiskey drinker, we had access to old whiskeys. We drank some pre-prohibition, old whiskeys in the nineties and the au We were like, I wish I'd saved those bottles if we were 30,000,$40,000 right now. But they were delicious. Um, but, and then so we, we got to a point where you couldn't, where whiskey got very expensive and we'll talk about expensive whiskeys after the break. Um, but you didn't have those old stocks really anymore. Well, we're in a similar situation now. Where I want to ask you about is whiskey has taken a big hit in the last couple of years and it looks like it might be a generational adjustment. And there's a, there's a, they call it the whiskey lock. There's a lake whiskey in some, some owned by companies that went outta business before they sold their first barrel. Mm-hmm. But quality whiskey in barrels, much more of the world's gonna wanna consume in the next few years. Bad news for distillers, right? Bad news for the whiskey cells overall. But is this possibly, this new whiskey lock? Is that I, I think that may present in the next 10 years. Um, these whiskeys are gonna go somewhere. They're not gonna dump'em out. And I think you may, for a whiskey drinker, it might turn out to be a golden age of whiskey drinking if you're still interested in it.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 25:12

I mean, I think it's very hard to sort of say what's going on today. Right. And I think I'm particularly bullish right? About whiskey drinking and maybe that's optimism, but you know, I don't believe that people in their twenties aren't drinking cocktails and spirits like, you know, looking at bars, I live not far from the Columbia campus. Bars are packed. Right? Like I imagine if we went to the University of Indiana or University of Minnesota or you know, Ann Arbor, university of Michigan, we would find bars packed. Right? and

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 25:44

Yeah.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 25:44

also, know, when I was in college, we are drinking gut, right? We are drinking Everclear. And after shock and forties of, beer and, know, gold schwager, I mean, these college students now, young adults way better

Mark: 26:02

Well, there's no question. drinking, they're drinking better than than we drank, but again, they have more access to better products than we do.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 26:11

I mean, I haven't heard, thank God in years. Anybody ask me, oh, tequila, that's the stuff with the worm, right? And that was like every time I'd say tequila, right? It was everywhere, right? I remember drink mixing, barring somebody's blender, mixing up frozen margaritas with like, it looked like antifreeze, you know, with the cheapest tequila that we could afford at though, which was very reasonably priced, but was horrible. thank God that doesn't exist anymore, right? it is very hard to predict whiskey, right? This is an age product. Um, Sidney Frank, who. Started Greg Goose, his famous quote was what he loved about vodka. You make it today, you sell it tomorrow. Right? And he, and this was, this was a man who had run Schenley, which was the first or second largest, um, liquor in liquor company America. they owned like doers and other famous whiskey, um, brand. So he definitely knew about Barrel Turing. Um, but the hard thing about whiskey is predicting the future, right? I, I don't like doing it either. Right? And, um, very hard to be right. So when you're, when you're talking about even for American whiskey, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 years down the road, it's very hard to say how much you'll need or how much people will drink. With scotch, it's even harder, right? Minimum. Most scotches are 12. 18, 21, 30 years down the road. trying to figure out what people in 12 years will want is very hard. I think we got into a little bit of a pickle as an industry because during COVID, were drinking a lot,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 27:50

Yeah. Yeah.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 27:52

hard to say. If the world was ending, let's, let's drink. Let's at least have a good

Mark: 27:57

Well, we had more time than we'd ever had before.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 27:59

an incredible amount of time on our hands. I was in the best shape of my life, I think, you know, running every day, that wasn't sustainable, right? and unfortunately, I think as an industry, we modeled consumption off of those boom years. folks like Jim Beam have been running 24 7, 365, right? They're running multiple shifts a day at the distillery. out the COVID years, you know, were in aberration. I was talking to the president of W-S-W-A-A few months ago, he said at the time, which is the big distributors organization. Um, he was saying we're, we're just behind 2019 in terms

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 28:35

Mm-hmm.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 28:36

Right. Which makes a lot of sense to me. You take out the COVID years, we're basically back where we were. Unfortunately, we've made a lot of whiskey in the last few years assuming that people drink more. So don't, I'm not that alarmed that some of these brands like Jim Beam pump the brakes and saying like, look, we're gonna pause production for a few months or maybe even a year. have plenty, right? I mean, we've got plenty. So, your point, I do think that there is a surplus right now and you know, I remember the golden days for us, they weren't the golden day history industry where folks like, you know, LA Freud. For, you know, they were putting older whiskey their younger bottles. I mean, that's legal, right? You can't put younger whiskey into a bottle and say it's older, but you could put older whiskey and say it's younger because they could, and they, they didn't know what else to do with it. So we might see some of those scenarios where prices come down, which I think they should for many products, um, and supply. Also, maybe we won't have to jump through so many hoops you know, to get a good bottle of whiskey anymore,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 29:48

I'm gonna, go take your point further. We see people doing that for, for qualitative reasons. We see people putting older whiskey

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 29:57

Right.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 29:57

make, there's putting 14 year bourbon in their 10, in their 10 year bourbon because they want to have this, this really rich style of, of bourbon that's their mixers 10.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 30:09

I mean, mixers. I mean, I, I adored their old master distiller, Willie Pratt. what the sales team used to call him?

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 30:17

No.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 30:18

They would call him Dr. No,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 30:20

Oh yeah.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 30:20

the bond villain, right? I mean, because would say, Hey, Willie, like we've already pre-sold all the 10-year-old bourbon. is it ready yet? And he'd be like, no. be like, come on. And he'd be like, it's not ready. And the, and, and the brand wisely listened to Willie and they wouldn't release until Willie said it was whether or not it was 10 day, you know, 10 years in one day. Or maybe it was 14 years old. Whenever Willie said it was ready, he was ready. Right. And that, I mean, that's incredible,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 30:51

micers turns up in this book and we think Micers is one of the amazing, newer brands, a resurrection of an old brand, and we're actually doing a tasting, February 5th. We have a, a micers tasting, a shameless plug. You can go to stage left.com events and, and find it. yeah, we're gonna be tasting all sorts of cool things, including the, the mixers 20 that just, just came out. We're pretty excited about

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 31:10

so

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 31:11

doing that. The, the whole rundown of, basically all the products that are out there right now,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 31:15

I just, I just named their 10-year-old the best bourbon in, the Men's Journal Spirit Awards. So, it's very, very hard to beat

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 31:23

I have to tell you the 10 year bourbon is extraordinary, but I think I even like the 10 year rye better,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 31:30

yeah.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 31:30

man. The 10 year rye is, it's, it's the thing I'm drinking whenever I'm upgrading myself is the Michter's 10 year rye is what I'm drinking.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 31:38

Yeah.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 31:39

I just wanna go back to a point that you guys were talking about earlier with young people today and, and hope for the future. You know, when we were younger, um, I, I, alright, I'm gonna pat myself on the back here'cause I was crazy and maybe, you know, pro alcoholic back then, but I was the only guy I knew my age who knew about mm-hmm. Whiskey. Whiskey. Mm-hmm. I mean, PE people knew about, oh, I'm gonna drink Jack Daniels to get drunk. I'm gonna drink Wild Turkey. Yeah. Because it has a Turkey on it. I dunno. But for, but I got a job in a, sorry, he's talking about me right now. I'm talking about every Then are you the first convert over to my side of RH people? I was also the guy saying, I'm drinking wild Turkey because I just got three strikes in a row. Yeah, you did both. You still did that. I still do that.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 32:20

I mean, I, I remember standing in a liquor store with my best friend in college, that was probably senior year, we were looking at Evan Williams and Jack Daniels, and at the time Evan Williams was the design of the packaging was incredibly similar to

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 32:37

Yes.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 32:37

Daniels and the determining factor of we got Jack, or if we got Evan Williams, how much cash was in our

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 32:44

Yep.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 32:44

Like, I mean, it was.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 32:45

extra$2. Well, and the, and the point was,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 32:47

Yeah.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 32:48

the point was, back then I didn't, I think the guys who were drinking the, you know, the two insurance guys used to drink Johnny Black. Mm-hmm. On the rocks. They drank it because it's what they drank. And, there was not really that much of an interest in whiskey. any young people who are drinking whiskey today, they want to know the story. They wanna know why this one versus that one. And they have all this available to them and they're interested. So, I mean, there's a little of a hope for our future of our,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 33:11

absolutely,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 33:12

yeah.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 33:12

well, I think it, the rebirth, I think tapped into a lot of different kind of trends. It was sort of a perfect storm. So that, I mean, I think for whiskey to, for anything to come back, right? It had, it almost died. Right? And we love comeback stories,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 33:27

Absolutely.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 33:27

Um, so you know, it's circling the drain. And you have all these hipsters who rediscover whiskey in the nineties and people, you know, whether they're watching Sex in the City or they're watching the movie Swingers or other things just as swing dancing and the rat pack and all the zoot suits and hats come roaring back. does whiskey, right? Because like that whole generation in the seventies, eighties, you know, the yuppies, who had turned their back for this sexy Scandinavian, vodka. Thanks a lot to Andy Warhol and Basquiat for making it popular in Studio 54. Their kids though, like kind of rediscover whiskey. And you know what your parents drink is usually not cool, but what, like your grandparents, your great-grandparents drink is cool. suddenly you get like this whole rebirth and these people are really into it they're, you know, they're also into things like. handmade and, farmer's market stuff. So it's like this perfect confluence of trends.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 36:20

Well, when we come back, We're gonna talk about exactly what happened in the early nineties that gave us this, this potpourri of whiskeys.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 36:29

Yeah,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 36:29

Uh, you're listening to the restaurant guys@restaurantguyspodcast.com. hey there, everybody, welcome back. We are with Noah Rothbaum and his wonderful book, the Whiskey Bible. I can't recommend it highly enough it works as a, a reference on the shelf, and also each of collection of stories that are amazing. You take this book and you divide it up into, geographic regions to start, right? but is whiskey like wine? Is it, why? Is it geographic regions? Is it just traditions that says that bourbon is made in America and Tennessee whiskey is made in Tennessee, and can, could you make a. Bourbon under a different name in Ireland. Why geographic if, if whiskey's so manufactured?

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 37:08

It's a great question. And to be honest, the hardest, one of the hardest parts. There are many hard parts to this book'cause it's so big. One of the hardest parts was figuring out. how I would structure it, geographic seemed to be the most logical way to do it. But you're right. I mean, you know, thanks to an act of Congress, bourbon can only be made in America. But before that, which takes place in the 1960s, which isn't that long ago, bourbon was made in Canada, it was made in Mexico at certain points, you can make bourbon anywhere in the world. You now just legally can't call it bourbon. But we have seen what's fascinating, I think over the last 20 years, even less really, that, you know, single mall for so long we associated with Scotland and Ireland. Bush Mills obviously has been making single mall probably longer than anybody else has, but now people all over the world. I have suddenly started to produce single malt again, you can't call it scotch because you can only make scotch in Scotland. I am sure the Scotch Whiskey Association probably is kicking themselves for not protecting the word single

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 38:17

Yeah.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 38:17

Right. Um, because now we're getting single malts from America, from India, from Australia. Oh, amazing. I mean, the, and, and to be honest, I'm glad that they didn't because now, what's fascinating is that each area is sort of putting their own spin on it. I think it's the saddest thing when people just try to make scotch. Right, because it's, you know, the late great Dave who was sort of the Johnny Appleseed for craft distillers, people would always say him, I wanna make Maker's Mark'cause he'd been the master or maker's Mark. And he would say no, because you know, it's gonna take a lot of money at the end of the day. We may or may not get to that quality, and you're gonna have to charge three times as much, and we're never gonna be able to compete with Maker's Mark, so let's just make something really cool and unique. I think that's kind of the same thing with a lot of these single malts in these new areas that never really produced scotch or whiskey before.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 39:17

I think it's important that we make a distinction here because a lot of our listeners are super knowledgeable about whiskey and, and spirits and the like. But, um, to, to clarify, so when we say a scotch, that is, a word that is owned by somebody and trademarked by somebody. It has to be from Scotland. Uh, when we say Irish whiskey, it's not good enough to just be from Ireland. You've also gotta obey the laws that are laid out by the people who own Irish whiskey.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 39:40

Yes.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 39:40

But single malt is different that's not owned by anybody. It describes a whiskey. What makes a single malt a single malt? That that can be from anywhere.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 39:49

we have very romantic visions about a lot of this stuff, but single malt goes back to basically barley and I think of barley as the wolverine of the grain world, barley should be part of X-Men, right? Because it's the only grain really that has the enzymatic powers. Again, remember I was the world's worst chemistry student, so it's hilarious. I have to talk about this for another thing, but barley has, its, has enough internal enzymes to convert its starches to sugar. We're making booze. We want sugar. We don't want starch, right? barley, when it thinks it's about to grow. It, it, it uses, its its store of starch and it turns it into sugar and then it grows a chute. don't want it to grow chute, but we want it to convert it starch just to sugar. So traditionally in Scotland, Ireland, we do what's called floor malting, right? Where we spread the grain out, we'd wet it down, trick the grain into thinking it's about to grow. And then just before it starts to grow, after the starches being converted to sugar, we bake it, And we bake it either in an oven or we bake it over like a peay smoky fire. And that's where that peat intense peat flavor comes from. From things in like an island on the, which is an island off the west coast of, of Scotland. Things like Arba, Lare, bour, all kalila, all that intense flavor comes from the smoking. So at the heart of single mal is that we're making a whiskey exclusively from this malted barley, right?

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 41:19

many whiskeys are made. Started with malted barley, but other grains as well.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 41:24

Yeah,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 41:25

it doesn't have to be smoky and peaty.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 41:28

no, that's true. That's

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 41:29

just, a lot of conflate everything,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 41:31

it's either, it can be either baked in an oven that has no smoke or over a smokey fire, and sometimes a mix of the two,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 41:40

a single malt is all malted barley. It's

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 41:43

it

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 41:43

a hundred.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 41:44

to be malted barley. Right. you know, in Scotland, as you were saying, the Scotch Whiskey Association has very specific rules. to make single malt scotch, has its own dedicated set of rules that you have to follow. That it has to be, made. Aged bottled in Scotland, it's the production of a single distillery, right? As opposed to like blends, a combination of single malts from different distillers, plus what's called grain whiskey, which in, you know, the simplest form is in many ways similar to how we make bourbon in America on a column still. But you're right. I mean it's sort of like, and this is where I'm gonna get in trouble. a term like vodka or rum have very, very broad rules, Overall. There are often specific rules from country to country or region to region. overall, like the federal guidelines in America are very broad. At one point, some of the vodka producers wanted the eu. narrow the definition of vodka and they couldn't agree, right? There's so many different ways to produce vodka. So we're seeing a similar thing with single malt, Where you're having people all over the world put their own regional, local spin on their producing the whiskey. And I think it's a wonderful thing because as a result, we're getting this tremendous spectrum of flavors that we've never had before in whiskey.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 43:05

I wanna define the basic term whiskey in ways that, most of our listeners I think will know this, but I want to put the basic term out and then I want to ask you in a lightning round, in, one sentence or less, to, to describe the differences between the different regional whiskeys. We'll do a little

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 43:18

Oh God.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 43:18

quick

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 43:19

Okay.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 43:19

in how you describe them in a sentence or, um, and, and none of us in this podcast are good at a sentence or two, so, uh.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 43:26

I would just add that like all of this information is in the book, know this is the stuff that people hear and then lose because they have to focus on their jobs, their professions, their families.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 43:37

Or the car that's cutting them off right now. Yeah. Yeah.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 43:40

so the good news is it's all in the book. You don't have to memorize it. Like somebody asks you what the difference between bourbon and R go to that section. It's all in there.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 43:49

And for a small fee, you can have this book on your coffee table

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 43:52

Exactly,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 43:53

anytime and no part of that. Alright, so let me, let me put down the basic definition of whiskey. So, uh, what is, so when you ferment fruit, you get wine. When you distill wine, you get brandy. When you ferment grain, you get beer. When you distill beer, you get whiskey. It's as simple as that. It's a distilled product with a base, which.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 44:12

beer.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 44:12

Yep. Mm-hmm. So, in a, lightning round, I just wanna put some basic parameters for people to have. If you were to, I'm gonna ask you to compare Scotch Irish, Canadian, Japanese, and American whiskey. So for scotch, how would you differentiate scotch from those brothers?

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 44:29

It has to be made in Scotland. and by their rules,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 44:33

Okay. Next topic. We go to Irish. How do you distinguish,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 44:36

Okay.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 44:36

than being from Ireland, is there a way that you could distinguish from

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 44:39

Yes. So essentially, would always say that Irish whiskey is sort of honeyed and lighter. It's usually triple distilled instead of double distilled, but not always. But now thanks to the crazy boom in distilling in Ireland over the last 20 years, I feel like all of that's been thrown out the window. And now Irish whiskey is all over the map. So, um, it's very hard to say what is and what is Irish whiskey

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 45:04

Okay, let's move on to Canadian. Is there a unifying definition of Canadian?

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 45:09

that's, and that's the craziest part. Like my, my copy editor didn't believe me for this book. they're like, no, like what are the rules for Canadian whiskey? I'm like, it has to be made in Canada,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 45:18

That's it.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 45:20

They were like, what do you mean? I'm like, there are no, like there even for like subcategories, like rye, like there's no definition.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 45:26

Alright. Uh, Japanese whiskey,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 45:29

I mean, again, up until recently there were only two players

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 45:32

I think we're actually making him sweat Francis.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 45:34

Well, that, well, I, it's sweat because I'm trying to get down to one sentence Right,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 45:38

Yeah.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 45:38

hard for me. the beginnings of Japanese whiskey was based upon scotch. And one of the most fascinating parts of my book is telling the modern history of Japanese whiskey, really for many decades they were blending in whiskey from Scotland or other places. it also runs the gamut. I mean, they make super smoky whiskey. They make super, like fruity light whiskey again. I mean, the whole point was to blend these things together

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 46:05

I think that, uh, modern Japanese whiskey is, they're making, they're making tremendous innovations there. But when

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 46:10

Yeah.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 46:11

whiskey first came available again in the American market, um, I remember drinking it and thinking. This reminds me of my father's whiskey. It seemed like they, they froze a tradition in time for 40 years of the whiskey tasted that we had lost, just the same as Japanese bartending when we first started to experience it again in America was like, this is a style of bartending that feels like it's been around for 50 years. And now you know that 15-year-old Francis was stealing whiskey from his father. He out right here on the show. That's not true. Alright, that was a little, a little bit true. Um, and then finally, American Whiskey. Is there a unifying, uh, uh,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 46:49

I

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 46:49

American whiskey.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 46:50

so sweeter, more baking spice notes, vanilla notes for bourbon rye tends to be now in the modern era, have like a real black pepper note, more unc, anxious, oily, you know, fuller body, which is, makes it great for cocktails. then we have like folks making single malt too, and that's like, you know, it doesn't taste like scotch or Irish single malt. but it tastes really good. So, TDB and maybe in 10 years when I come back, we'll talk about that. What, what American single mal tastes like.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 47:22

Well, you know, what's, what's fascinating to me is because Francis and I watch this in the wine world, we watch it all the time, right? America's got everything. It's different than what, burgundy is, it's different than what Bordeaux is. It's different than Brunello is or, or Mancino is. But we have everyth. We're just doing it our own way. The the American way is we want it all, but we want to do it our way.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 47:49

no sure words have ever been spoken on a podcast. I think

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 47:53

but there are, but American whiskey does have to have that new treatment, which most other of the world don't have. So I, I think American whiskey is the, maybe the most identified a PD scotch You can get PD scotch, like whiskey from France, for example. But

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 48:07

Japan.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 48:08

but very few places in the world will make an American style whiskey because of that. New American Oak, which interestingly, um, feeds a worldwide barrel network. If America ever stopped having, if we stopped making bourbon, a lot of people are in trouble. A lot of people need new sources

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 48:23

Absolutely.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 48:23

'cause they buy our used barrels. I mean that's, uh, but I, I, I think that is kind of a signature. So, uh, one of the questions we've been geeking out a little bit here on, on all this stuff. Oh my. But your book is filled with kind of lighthearted, interesting stories about all, all of Americana. One of the stories I want you to tell is, why do we pay income tax today?

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 48:46

Well, I mean that's a crazy story in itself because essentially in order for prohibition to go through, of the big challenges from, you know, the folks who weren't like kind of on the fence about it was like, okay, if we banned of alcohol and the sale of alcohol where we can get money for the government, because all the money basically came. From the liquor industry. Right. I mean that's what Alexander Hamilton, right? He imposes whiskey taxes after the American Revolution. Right. But we're, you know, the liquor companies are carrying basically the load,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 49:23

our country,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 49:24

right? Filling the coffers.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 49:25

country.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 49:26

Right, exactly. so some, some dummy comes up with this great idea. Oh, like if we, if we shut down liquor companies, we can impose a personal income tax where everybody just pays a little bit of their salary and that way we can shut down the liquor companies. They're like, oh, great. Let's do it. So that's why we all pay income

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 49:50

See,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 49:50

crazy,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 49:51

prohibitionist bastards. See what? What happens?

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 49:54

right. Thanks a lot, Hoover.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 49:56

Thanks.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 49:56

then, then when, The crazy thing is, is that when prohibition ends, they don't repeal the income

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 50:05

Yeah. They never go the other way.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 50:06

No,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 50:07

the first person Noah ever on this show to say thanks a lot Hoover.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 50:12

And what's crazy is that we think that prohibition starts in 1920, it goes to 1933, but really the Temperance movement really in earnest begins like their prohibition when America enters World War I.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 50:25

Yeah.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 50:26

And that shocked me to the end, like to the ends that they went. And even after World War i's over, there are a couple of months between the armistice and the beginning of Prohibition, or when the Temperance Act has passed and it goes to the Supreme Court because the distillers are like, I wanna make booze the war's over. What's the big deal? Like, let us make alcohol. And the Supreme Court is like, oh, the government still has the right to like keep you closed. And then of course they passed temperance. So essentially. From when we entered World War I 1933, no. Like hard alcohol is produced,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 51:03

Yep.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 51:04

for a few distilling holidays for medicinal whiskey, which is when you really think it's much longer and it had a much effect, I'd say, our collective drinking knowledge

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 51:17

it also created organized crime in America. I mean, but think about,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 51:20

Absolutely.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 51:21

think about being a soldier coming back from World War I and you've been in Europe okay for the, for the last couple of years. And the only thing you've had to, to for pleasure was the potpourri of liquors that are available in Europe. And you come back to the United States and you're like, Nope, no more drinking. That's,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 51:39

Yeah,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 51:40

cra

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 51:40

crazy.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 51:41

also crazy because it was a substance that like, so many people wanted and it was never gonna stop. And it never did stop. And it just, you, you drove it underground. Alright, but let's, let's take this conversation back to happy times. So the end of Prohibition. So no, the beginning of our restaurant. So we started the restaurant in 1992, and we were, for a time, we were the largest, uh, single malt scotch bar in New Jersey.

Mark: 52:07

But you and I had a Uh, I'll, I'll say a vision, but just something we really, really loved. We knew, we loved the stories. Okay. Not just the story, the products that were available to us in 1992, Francis and I decided we, Francis was already big into single malts, more than more than me, but we're like, check out all these great new bourbons that have just become available.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 52:30

Great.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 52:30

know, bakers and Bookers and Blanton's and Elmer Elmer t Lee for the first seven or eight years we existed was our house. Bourbon. So if you ordered a a, a Bourbon Manhattan in stage left restaurant from 92 to about 99, you, it was made with Elmer Tea Lee Bourbon. And it just because it was available, it was$17 a bottle. It was well, but in fairness, the House Bourbon everybody else was pouring was$7 a bottle. So we were great at bringing cool stuff. We were not great at making money, I'll tell you that. We were not good at making money early on, but, so, but Elmer did. And, and I'm gonna let lead this into you. Story of small batch and single barrel bourbon. No one's ever heard of it. Booker No Invents a small batch Bourbon. An Elmer Lee.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 53:21

yeah.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 53:21

I'll take your small batch and raise you to a single barrel. And these were two lions of the industry. And we happened to get, because we were selling more, single barrel and small batch bourbon than anyone else in, in New Jersey at the time. Elmer t Lee himself, Colonel Elmer t Lee, came and did our first ever spirits dinner in 1992. We did a bourbon dinner with Colonel Lee. It was 93. 93, I'm sorry.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 53:45

amazing.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 53:46

And, uh, we did it in a blizzard and it was our first spirits dinner. So Colonel Lee came in, he was fantastic. He actually invited us to come down and visit him, which I took him up on that that summer and went down and had a great time down in Kentucky. But still nobody gave a shit about bourbon yet.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 54:00

No,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 54:00

what we didn't know how to do at that point was we had done a bunch of wine dinners, but we never did a bourbon dinner for us. We had all the single barrel bourbons, all of them, and you got to have them all with dinner.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 54:11

amazing.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 54:12

it was crazy. Right. And Colonel Lee himself was sitting.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 54:15

Yeah.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 54:16

and it was during a blizzard. Everybody got so fricking drunk. The whole restaurant was,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 54:21

Great.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 54:21

we were halfway through the dinner, we're like,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 54:23

We.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 54:24

you did this wrong and current horrified. But the bourbons were great. We sold a lot of bourbon. But his story is super important. And, and can you tell us the, the, the, the innovation that was there was no such thing in the 1980s. A small batch.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 54:39

No, now all these brands make a ton of different bourbons, right? back in the day, most of the distilleries, most of the brands made one signature spirit and that was it. Makers made one bottle, Jim Meam made maybe a couple of Jim Beams, but that was it. Right. you know, now that I look back, like, I think Booker No, was, was like kind of bored, I mean he's, you know, Jim Beam's great-grandson, right? Fred is what his great great-grandson, right? They're direct descendants from Jim Beam. He was running their second distillery in Boston, Kentucky. basically the same whiskey day and day out. He'd come up with ideas, he'd send them to the bean counters up in Chicago and Deerfield in the suburbs. They'd say, no. Like, shut up. Keep making the stuff. I think at a certain point he just was sort of like sad, right. That like, you know, am I just gonna spend my life making the same stuff every

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 55:38

Which is terrible to be producing bourbon every day and be sad.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 55:41

well, right. It's true. And, and for somebody that creative and like talented, right? And then this guy, Mike Donahoe, who I actually got the interview for the book, which was an incredible honor. He'd been in the NFL, leaves the NFL. This was a different time, right. You, you lead the NFL and you need to get a real job. Right?

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 56:00

Right.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 56:00

this is not today. So he leaves the NFL, joins, be. send him down to Booker to like, just so he'd understand like what he's selling, Like you can't sell anything, you don't know what it is. He meets Booker, they go on a tour, he comes back to booker's office, they start drinking whiskey, and he's like, what is this? like, it's Jim Beam White. he's like, no, it's not like, what is this whiskey? And it turned out that Booker basically took a barrel a year for himself, Because at the time nobody cared, these unicorns, the special barrels, they were more of a problem than a gift, right? Because there was no mechanism to sell them. Distributors didn't want them, stores didn't want them, restaurants, bars, nobody wanted them. People were just lucky if folks were buying the normal whiskey in the seventies, eighties, let alone special oddities. Right? That you'd have to explain. So, you know, it wasn't a big deal. Like most of the, you know, you know his son Fred, no once told me, how do you find all the best barrels in the warehouse? He said they're shiny. I'm like, what do you mean they're shiny? And he said, well, people's stomachs dust take off the dust as they're helping themselves to samples. Right. That was because, you know, these special barrels, nobody cared like they were, usually enjoyed by the workers. Right. Or they'd be blended out. Right. Which is very sad. Um, so, you know, Mike, Donna was like, you know, this is crazy. Goes back to Chicago. Doesn't really think about it. at some point they need a gift for like distributors and retailers and they're like, well, what are we gonna give them? They already sell our products. What are we gonna send them candy? So he's like, you know, Booker had this like funky barrel in his office that like we were drinking and it was really good. Let me call him and see if like we can get like enough bottles of it to give his gifts. And of course he calls Booker book, he's like, yeah, plenty of it. Like, what are you sure? But they have like no budget. So Booker finds some winery going outta business in Louis Hole. Um, so that's why they use that like funky kind of wine bottle bottle for Bookers. Booker writes the note, right? The handwritten note, which is essentially the label. So they do it all on a shoes screen. They give it out. People love it. And it's kind of like, okay. And then people start like, Hey, can you, can we get more of this? So it's all like, the bean counters in Chicago don't want this, right? So it's all like, just sort of coincidence and happenstance that it happens. And suddenly Booker who's sort of being pushed to the side in Boston, Kentucky's now thrust into the limelight traveling around the country and the world, like as the face of American whiskey and this new whole new category of small backs, right? Finally, admitting we're not making, Drake's cakes here. Each barrel tastes different. There's subtle differences in each warehouse, depending upon floor to floor, know, the hot parts versus the cold parts. It's gonna create differences and instead of like just blending it out, let's celebrate that, which was, now accept that, but at the time was a revolutionary idea, which is also what Elmer t Lee is doing. And Jimmy Russell at Wild Turkey where they're coming out with single barrels, obviously Eler, t Lee, Blanton's, sort of changes the game, but essentially was originally made for Japan their market was ahead of us in terms of, collecting special editions and stuff, but sells in America. Right. And, and that sort of really kicks off the rebirth of American whiskey.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 59:38

We, we have to just make a distinction between small batch and single barrel bourbon. you had a world in which would you picked up your bottle of Jim Beam or your bottle of Jack Daniels or your bottle of Golden Levi Scotch or your more likely your bottle of doers. You expected to taste the same every time and, and

Mark: 59:52

rather than embrace These cool differences from the rick or whatever. They were hiding them in the blends,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:00:01

but you get sometimes really extreme differences from aging. And you can have barrels that are filled. The same day from the same wood sequentially resting in the same warehouse don't taste completely different. Right. Most of the barrels will taste similar, but for some whatever reason, these taste

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:00:18

Barrels are still hand coopered, they're made from wood and people are still writing PhD theses on what exactly is going on in a barrel know. Right. So

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:00:26

know.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:00:26

we don't know everything. the way that distillers accounted for so many years to give you the consistent product that you want it to and be like, this tastes different. Gimme my money back. Um, was, they would dump many, many, many, many barrels at the time. and the distiller's job was to pick, if one was an outlier, one way he'd pick something to counter, he wanted your doers to taste like doers. Right? Right. He wanted your doers,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:00:46

yeah.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:00:47

Black, to taste like Johnny Black. You wanted things to taste exactly the same. So the distiller's job would, make it all taste the same. And now we're talking about dumping small batches of, you know, three barrels, five barrels,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:00:57

there is no said definition of what is a small

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:01:00

but.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:01:00

It could be as small as two barrels, or it could be a hundred barrel, it could be a thousand barrels. It depends. There's no definition.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:01:06

But if if it's a single barrel.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:01:07

barrel, then it's literally just one barrel.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:01:11

So in talking about what's happening now, there's a, there's a fun thing happening in, in our restaurants now that I, that I've really been enjoying over the last, oh, I'm gonna say six months to a year. let's take bookers and, uh, as an example, people stopped ordering bookers and it kind of faded in the everyday drinker. part of it, I think is that, you know, because it's a bottle that's such high proof and they started going to Weller and Blanton's and you know, those were the Pappy Van Winkles and those were the darlings. I'm seeing a whole new generation of people moving back to bookers and, you know, trying that. again and, and revisiting that. And it's been really fun to see this kind of little new wave of bookers drinkers, go back to kind of the beginning, the origin story of, of all of this.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:02:04

It's a wonderful whiskey as you, as you alluded to, the high proof, because it's bottled at Castran, which just means basically it comes out of the barrel. don't add any water, they don't proof it down. according to Fred, his son. That Booker, the way that he would most often drink bookers was in what he called Kentucky Iced Tea, which was bookers branch water, spring water, and ice. And depending upon the type of day he had at the distillery, he'd vary the proportions, right? He'd vary the ratio so he could make it stronger, weaker, I love for many reasons, because A, that's delicious, right? But b, it also should empower all of your listeners, to drink whiskey any way that they want, right? So if Booker, no, this is a legend who, we basically wouldn't have American whiskey if it wasn't for his innovations is essentially telling you if you want to add ice, add ice.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:02:57

Yeah,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:02:57

want to add water, add water. Like you know, you, you should feel empowered to drink whiskey any way that you

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:03:04

and maybe your first drink is gonna be different than your second drink different

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:03:08

and and what you want might not be what I

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:03:10

Mm-hmm.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:03:11

But there's nothing less valid about the way that you want to drink whiskey. as I always say, you wanna drink Macal with Mountain Dew, the only question should be is like, what kind of ice do you want? Like, do you want to garnish with that? Like, will we drink that? I don't know. I mean, I probably wanna try it once, but like, is that gonna be my signature drink every night? No, but like if you really enjoy that, you should drink it that way. You know what I mean? And I feel like that's often a message that doesn't get out there.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:03:38

So I, I, uh, was able to ride my motorcycle down to Kentucky the following summer after the

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:03:43

wow.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:03:44

dinner. And, uh, yeah, it was crazy, man. the thing about inviting Francis to stop by sometime is don't do it unless you mean it.'cause I might just turn up. Yeah. Um, so I turned up and, uh, Colonel Lee couldn't have been more accommodating I learned so, so much from hanging out for that with that guy for a couple of days.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:04:00

Yeah.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:04:01

but one of the things I learned is he drank all of his bourbon at 20% alcohol. Mm-hmm. He proofed it all the way down. And whether he was tasting it or he was drinking it, he, he always proofs it all the way down. So to your point of like, oh, you can't add water to that, I'm telling you from Colonel Elmer Deley himself, you can add as much water as you would like.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:04:19

and a lot of blenders do that. Like people who actually have to taste whiskey day in and day out proof it down. And a lot of it is they use their nose, there's difference between tasting and and drinking. Right. And most of us are drinking. We're not tasting, this isn't a lab setting. should have fun. Like, this should be fun, right? I don't know why

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:04:36

What,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:04:37

drinking has not become fun,

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:04:38

what's

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:04:39

be

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:04:39

what's funny is almost always I spend the first 60 to 90 seconds tasting and then the rest of the evening,

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:04:48

Yeah, but that's, that's totally normal. Like and it opens up, there's a chemical reaction that happens when you're adding water

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:04:55

oh.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:04:56

right? You're breaking the bonds aromas open up. This is why folks like Elmore Tealy and all the blenders and distillers had a little bit of water.'cause they want that. and usually most bottles, whether it's, you know, the minimum is 80 proof in America. Right. You know, they're adding water to hit those proofs. And I didn't really think, oh, who cared? 86, 85, 84 didn't make a difference. And I did a blending exercise with Old Forrester once, um, with Campbell Brown and it, we went Proofpoint, by Proofpoint down. We were trying to to set the proof for the birthday bourbon or whatever it was that year. was like blown away at how big of a difference. Adding a little bit more water makes right. So it, it does make a difference. And even for yourself, when you have a high proof whiskey add water, right? Slowly add it to the point where you really like it.

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:05:48

Alright, so I wanna end our little podcast with the, the story that I've saved The end. First of all, I, I can't recommend the book highly enough for yourself. We so much enjoyed it. It was one of those books that, that, as I was going through it, when we first got it, I was like. Hey, hey, hey, Francis. Yeah, we, we got, we gotta read this. We gotta read this book. We gotta read this book a little deeper. Well, and the side of the book, the page edges are all color coded. So each chapter, you know exactly how long it is and each one is like its own little story or just have it on the shelf as a reference.'cause it's beautifully indexed. Lots of charts and maps. It's, it's a lot of fun. but one of the stories that we contained in here that I think is a perfect way to end the podcast is can you talk to us about how Pappy Van Winkle, which drove the luxury Bourbon whiskey craze, how that happened and where it came from.

Francis: 1:06:59

thanks for coming on the show. It's been great talking to you. Uh, we haven't covered one 10th of what's in this book. Lots of great stories. Uh, yeah, we are, I'm on question two, just so you know. It's great.

noah-rothbaum--he-him-_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:07:10

amazing. Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate

the-restaurant-guys_1_01-21-2026_120806: 1:07:12

That's terrific. You can find out more about the Whiskey Bible, know Rothbaum, and find links in our show notes. We'll be back in just a moment and you can always find out more about us@restaurantguyspodcast.com.

Speaker: 1:07:36

Hey everybody. Welcome back. Uh, boy, that was fun.

Speaker 2: 1:07:39

It was a lot of fun. You know, we talked about a guy during the show and we didn't really talk about who he was. There's a guy by the name of Dave Pickerel. Oh, Dave, who started a distillery called Whistle Pig.

Speaker: 1:07:49

Yeah, yeah, Dave.

Speaker 2: 1:07:50

he is the unfortunate center of one of the most. Crazy

Speaker: 1:07:57

coincidences,

Speaker 2: 1:07:58

whiskey coincidences, stories that from, from my career that I can remember.

1:08:03

Yeah.

Francis: 1:08:03

Super great. Uh, whistle Pig was an amazing distillery. He was a brilliant and, and forward thinking distillery lit a lot of cool stuff larger than life.

Speaker 2: 1:08:12

every year Dave came out with a, his Single year. Whistle Pig. And the boss Hog five, he came out with one called Spirit of Mauve.

Speaker: 1:08:23

Mauve his favorite pig had died. And so that year The Boss Hog five was released in a casket shaped box, which was kind of a tribute to his, fallen pig.

Speaker 2: 1:08:33

Yep.

Speaker: 1:08:34

Sadly, uh, right before that whiskey was released, Dave himself passed away. And so here he is releasing this.

Speaker 2: 1:08:41

His preeminent whiskey is coming to you in a coffin

Speaker: 1:08:45

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:08:45

Shaped box.

Speaker: 1:08:47

that was a, a coincidence, but it was also really poignant. and everybody in the whiskey business. Mm-hmm. Everybody in the drinks business loved Dave Pickel. He was. Great to everybody anytime you met him. And it was, uh, it was really moving.

Speaker 2: 1:08:58

And spirit of Mauve crazily was my favorite of all the, Boss Hog. Incarnations to that point.

Speaker: 1:09:05

Yeah, no, it was good. Good, good whiskey. It's great. End to the story Mark. It's kind of like, uh,

Speaker 2: 1:09:10

so I brought y'all down now. Wow. Welcome. Uh,

Speaker: 1:09:12

we talked

Speaker 2: 1:09:12

welcome all the way down with me. Thanks.

Speaker: 1:09:14

And then we drank it and got drunk and that a great old time. And that's the end of the restaurant

Speaker 2: 1:09:18

and we toast to Dave Pick roll every time we have that whiskey.

Speaker: 1:09:21

And uh, we did actually, we had that bottle for a long time. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed the podcast all about Whiskey Today and the Restaurant Guys podcast. I'm Francis Shot.

Speaker 2: 1:09:28

And I'm Mark Pascal.

Speaker: 1:09:30

And you can always follow us, like, subscribe and all that cool stuff@restaurantguyspodcast.com.