Scott Yeates established Mythology Distillery out of his passion for spirits, producing, and bringing people together. The idea came to him while he was on a ski trip in Haines, AK, and he saw potential in creating a premium spirits brand that fosters shared experiences. Scott is in charge of Mythology Distillery’s vision, expansion, and branding, while also taking part in the spirits production. Before SW Development Group, Scott was involved in the design and building of several market-rate commercial and multifamily properties. As President of SW Development, he has been responsible for the creation of more than 600 units of affordable housing in Colorado.

Chris Ritenour is the Head Distiller at Mythology Distillery and has a great appreciation for the history and craftsmanship of distillation and blending. His journey began with an interest in absinthe, but soon expanded to encompass gins, brandies, and whiskeys. Hailing from Indiana, Chris ventured back to the Midwest to start his career at Blaum Bros. Distilling Company. His work earned the company national recognition, leading him to his next role at Doc Porter’s Distillery in North Carolina. In 2019, he joined the team at Mythology to lead their production.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

• Scott Yeates is the Founder and President at Mythology Distillery
• Chris Ritenour is the Head Distiller at Mythology Distillery
• This is a special tasting episode of Legends Behind The Craft
• Scott was inspired to start Mythology Distillery after a ski trip in Alaska
• Chris has been professionally distilling for 9 years and previously worked in corporate transportation
• They plan to create something unique that reflects their location in Colorado
• The blending process takes different components and creates something interesting
• How the population is receptive to craft brands
• Purchased a former brewer in Steamboat Springs to consolidate production operations
• Incorporating natural humidity through earth and floor and sonic waves to activate whiskey inside the barrels
• Blending allows for the creation of a new product from existing components
• Collaborative effort with different wineries and local craft breweries
• Creating products that represent the Rocky Mountain region

In this episode with Scott Yeates & Chris Ritenour

In this episode with Scott Yeates & Chris Ritenour, Scott & Chris discusses their passion for whiskey distillation, how they started their craft gin brand, and its collaboration with the Denver Botanic Gardens. How Mythology Distillery’s unique blending process enables them to create a new product from existing components?

Scott Yeates is the Founder and President of Mythology Distillery and Chris Ritenour is the Head Distiller of Mythology Distillery. Scott and Chris shares their stories before they joined the industry and tasted through some of their spirits while chatting about how Mythology came to be and where it’s going.

In today’s episode of the Legends Behind The Craft podcast, Drew Thomas Hendricks and Bianca Harmon are joined by Scott Yeates and Chris Ritenour for a special tasting episode, Scott is the Founder and President of Mythology Distillery and Chris Ritenour is the Head Distiller of Mythology Distillery. They share their insights on craft distilleries that produce digestifs and apertifs, as well as a unique spirit made from sap. Tune in to this episode as Scott and Chris and learn the art of barrel-aging whiskey, including experimenting with different barrels to create high-quality spirits that capture the essence of the Rocky Mountain region!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

• Drew Thomas Hendricks on LinkedIn
• Barrels Ahead
• Bianca Harmon on LinkedIn
• Scott Yeates on LinkedIn
• Chris Ritenour on LinkedIn
• Mythology Distillery
• Angela Zuba on LinkedIn
• Waters Edge Winery & Bistro – Kalispell
• Barrel Craft Spirits
• High West Distillery
• Midwest Grain Products Ingredients
• Wood’s High Mountain Distillery
• P.T. Woods on LinkedIn
• Deer Hammer
• Copper and Kings Distillery
• Cameo Cinema
• New Belgium
• Odell Brewing Co
• Fort Collins Brewery
• Dominio IV
• Patrick Reuter on LinkedIn
• Malahat Spirits Co.
• Denver Botanic Gardens
• San Francisco Herb Co.

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Barrels Ahead.

Barrels Ahead is a wine and craft marketing agency that propels organic growth by using a powerful combination of content development, Search Engine Optimization, and paid search.

At Barrels Ahead, we know that your business is unique. That’s why we work with you to create a one-of-a-kind marketing strategy that highlights your authenticity, tells your story, and makes your business stand out from your competitors.

Our team at Barrels Ahead helps you leverage your knowledge so you can enjoy the results and revenue your business deserves.

So, what are you waiting for? Unlock your results today!

To learn more, visit barrelsahead.com or email us at hello@barrelsahead.com to schedule a strategy call.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Drew Thomas Hendricks here. I’m the host of the Legends Behind the Craft Podcast. On this show, I talk with leaders in the wine and craft beverage industry. Before I introduce everyone, I got to do a sponsor message. Today’s episode, it’s sponsored by Barrels Ahead. At Barrels Ahead, we help the wine and craft industry scale their business through authentic content.

Go to barrelsahead.com today to learn more. So, last week we talked with, Angela Zuba of Waters Edge Winery & Bistro, and she shared her, amazing story about how, the Waters Edge collaborative business model was key to founding her urban and winery in Kalispell, Montana. If you haven’t listened to that episode, you gotta give it a listen.

So, today we have Bianca Harmon on the show joining us. She’s our DTC strategist. How’s it going, Bianca? 

[00:01:01] Bianca Harmon: It’s going great, very much looking forward to this episode today, here on Friday. 

[00:01:07] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yes. Today we have Mythology Distillery on the show and I’m super excited to talk with Scott Yeates and Chris Ritenour. Scott’s the founder of Mythology Distillery based in Denver, and I think they’re kind of relocated or they’ve got another shop going up in Steamboat, Colorado. And then Chris right now is their head distiller. How’s it going, Scott and Chris? 

[00:01:28] Chris Ritenour: It’s going great. Thanks for having us on. 

[00:01:30] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. Welcome to the show. So we’ve got a little, a special show today where we’re gonna actually taste through some of spirits, along with having a good conversation about how Mythology Distillery got started and where it’s going. 

[00:01:41] Chris Ritenour: Oh, that’s great. 

[00:01:42] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So starting off, Scott, tell me a little bit about yourself and how Mythology came to be.

[00:01:48] Chris Ritenour: Sure. Yeah, you know, mythology distillery, this really started as a passion. A passion just for drinking whiskey, for drinking cocktails, hanging out with friends. who knew that, I don’t know. you know, a decade or two decades of drinking whiskey would lead to a career in whiskey.

I guess it just shows how much we liked it. but where it came about is, we were on a ski trip and, we were up in Alaska. we were drinking whiskey. It was some pretty gnarly days. ski, 

[00:02:16] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Where were you staying in Alaska? Were you up by Gerd Mountain, or? 

[00:02:19] Chris Ritenour: No. So we were in Hayes, Alaska.

[00:02:20] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Okay. 

[00:02:21] Chris Ritenour: So, we were backcountry skiing in America. and, really cool, kind of funky town, small town. Not a lot to do in the winter, other than skiing and exploring. And we ended up at this, craft distillery, each night and drinking whiskey. And one thing led to the next, and it was like, Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we created a distillery?

Hmm. and to give you a little bit of context, so, my partners we all grew up in Colorado, spent a lot of our time growing up, camping, rafting, skiing, just like really focused on exploring an adventure. And as we got older, it seemed like whiskey started going hand in hand with that, you know, you go on a rafting trip and you kind of all come together at night and someone is picking, a cool cocktail Oh, yeah. To serve the group or you’re on a hut trip skiing and, you know, you’re sitting around, you’re taking poles of whiskey and then it kind of culminated with like, you know, we travel, we’re into sharing stories. Whiskey is something, we’re all beer drinkers as well. But whiskey’s something you can pour in a glass, you can kind of take a step back and, I don’t know, it kind of takes a little bit of time to reflect. It’s like a slower drinking beverage. So we see it as like a way to kind of build community and it helps build our community. cocktails go hand in hand with that as well.

So , that was the inspiration to start mythology. 

[00:03:43] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, wow. What did you do before that? That’s the question. 

[00:03:46] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. So totally opposite. I developed affordable housing in the Denver and Boulder markets, for about 15 years. 

[00:03:53] Bianca Harmon: How many years? 

[00:03:54] Chris Ritenour: About 15.

[00:03:56] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh man. Wow. Yeah. And Chris, how about you? How did you get your start into distilling. 

[00:04:01] Scott Yeates: Close to 15 years ago, I just, I’ve always been kind of a nerd for science history, that sort of thing. And I just started becoming interested in old European, like botanical spirits, just curious about ’em, wanted to know more. and just that kinda led me down this rabbit hole. Started researching it, ended up making friends in the industry, spending time at distilleries, bugging people who knew a lot more than I did. And then I’ve been at this professionally for, about nine years now.

Oh. So, yeah. I always say there are worse ways to spend your day. 

[00:04:36] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, absolutely. And what, did you do before this? 

[00:04:39] Scott Yeates: No, nothing related to this at all, right? Like everyone else in this industry, I worked in corporate transportation. Yeah, I don’t know. Helping arrange stuff all around the world for different, like pharmaceuticals. That sort of thing. So, yeah. So we’re, 

[00:04:57] Bianca Harmon: So this is way cooler is what you’re saying? Yes. 

[00:05:00] Chris Ritenour: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:05:01] Bianca Harmon: Moral of the story. 

[00:05:03] Scott Yeates: Yeah. Chris Understates, his passion for this, I’ll put him on the spot. I mean, he’s learned how to read French. Like, just so he can read on distillation which was pretty impressive.

[00:05:18] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. Along with getting into all this, started collecting old distillation manuals, so. 

[00:05:24] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh wow. That’s a cool. 

[00:05:25] Chris Ritenour: Just at spending a bunch of time on eBay, France, buying, you know, old antique stills and old antique. Yeah, distillation manuals, from the 19th century, early 20th century. Yeah, 

[00:05:39] Bianca Harmon: So, you can read it. Can you speak it too? 

[00:05:42] Chris Ritenour: Oh, for sure. I cannot speak. It 

[00:05:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Is the nest Mythology gonna be a Chartreuse? 

[00:05:47] Scott Yeates: We have talked about, something in that vein. Not, an exact copy, but, yeah, we’ve kicked around similar ideas to that cuz yes, that’s the sort of thing that I really spurred my, passion for this whole industry.

[00:06:02] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I love the going down. We gotta jump into the bourbon, but just a backstory on the botanicals, there’s a Montana, distiller that does like a fernet that’s absolutely delicious. I forget the name of it, but, I love the craft distillers are going into these more kind of digestifs and apéritifs.

[00:06:18] Scott Yeates: So fun. 

[00:06:19] Bianca Harmon: There’s a great one. I would love for somebody to recreate, I don’t know, you can’t really buy it anywhere. except for in Greece and it’s from I actually have a bottle I could show you because my mom just got it and one of my best friends is Greece and it’s from the trees out there and it’s made from the sap and so you literally can’t make it anywhere except for on that island in Greece where these trees are.

And they’ve tried to plant the trees in other parts of Greece and they can’t. And it is one of the best digestifs I’ve ever had in my life. And it almost has that like piny-ness taste to it too. But yeah, if you’re into that kind of thing, check it out. I mean, it’s seriously so good. 

[00:07:01] Scott Yeates: It’s one of my favorite things about, yeah, distillation is how, just hyper regional you can get with it. And that’s a lot of times when it gets, probably not widely interesting, but for a nerd, it’s one thing that makes it a lot of fun and something that Scott and I have talked a lot about wanting to do something in that vein. Something that is very much of the location that we’re in. 

[00:07:29] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So it’s such an amazing area of the country in Colorado. 

[00:07:33] Chris Ritenour: Yep. So especially once we’re up in Steamboat, there’ll be, I think a lot of opportunity for stuff like that. 

[00:07:39] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. Well, before we talk about that, let’s, jump into the first one of these tastings and we can kinda maybe go into the, kinda the blending and the, your passion for it.

[00:07:47] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. So the first one will be the bourbon. 

[00:07:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So this is the mythology best friend bourbon. 

[00:07:54] Chris Ritenour: Yep. And then Scott, do you wanna, yeah, 

[00:07:57] Scott Yeates: I’ll give kinda a background of, why we decided to become a blending house. Cheers. Of course. Cheers. I’ll go into a little background of why we became a blending house.

I’ll then kind of hand it off to Chris just to talk about kinda the blending process and this product, you know, so we started this brand really as a reflection rate of coming together and bringing people together to enjoy great whiskey. But when we, as I mentioned, I came from affordable housing.

I wasn’t, you know, other than maybe a really good taster and a good sensory. I didn’t have the technical expertise. And so when we sought out and we said, Hey, what do we want to be, you know, we love so many different whiskeys that are out there in the market. And one thing that started inspiring us was really what like Barrel Bourbon has done or what High West, who’s a little bit closer to us here in Colorado, what they’ve done by taking and looking at whiskey as, take different components blend them together and create something really interesting where the sum of all parts is better than each individual part. We really compare it a lot to cooking. I mean, from my side of just, you know, let’s find a really interesting ingredient. So I’ll hand it over to Chris, but I’ll talk maybe about this one first. So, the best friend bourbon. What we do on this one is we take a five-year high-rise MGP bourbon, which is exceptional, right? That bourbon is gonna have those nice rye cinnamon spice notes to it. 

[00:09:30] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, definitely pick that up on the nose. 

[00:09:32] Bianca Harmon: Oh yeah. It’s a beautiful nose. 

[00:09:35] Chris Ritenour: You’re gonna have the oakiness, you know, some vanilla notes to it. I mean, to me it’s just an exceptional bourbon on its own. I mean, quite frankly, it’s why there’s so many much mgb product out there in the market. We said, okay, how do we make a twist on this and make it a little bit more interesting. 

[00:09:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: What does MGP stand for? 

[00:09:53] Chris Ritenour: Midwest Grain Products. 

[00:09:55] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Okay. 

[00:09:56] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. It’s, the old Seagrams Distillery but they are just but they, are a large, whiskey distillery. It’s been around a long time after Seagrams got sold off, that distillery changed hands a few times, but, they were providing, barrels of whiskey to what Scott was alluding to, to a lot of, distilleries and, blenderies around the country.

[00:10:21] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, okay. 

[00:10:22] Scott Yeates: so we start with that five year high rye. Then we blend in a two to three year bourbon and, you know, a two to three year bourbon on its own. to me, you know, to you maybe it might be a little bit hot, so it can be hard to really find the nuances and the character of it. But a two-to-three-year bourbon really has exceptional like honey and cornbread notes. And so by blending in that with more age whiskey, you know, we add the tannic structure of the older whiskeys to it so that all we’re really capturing is that honey and cornbread in it. So, at that point we’ve made a blend that it’s, you know, cornbread honey evolves into this, more cinnamon notes, some nice oak then we blend in a 15-year Kentucky bourbon. Oh. And the intent of that is on the finish. That you get some of those richer tobacco notes. after you’ve had a couple sip, you, you like, feel like you’ve drank whiskey. Whereas if you’re drinking, you know, maybe a three-to-six-year whiskey, you might, it kind of, it kind of goes and falls flat, this gives it a little bit more character 

[00:11:34] Drew Thomas Hendricks: In a lot of, like a lot of small craft distillers when they’re just starting, you’re not getting that deep tobacco end cause this hasn’t been around long enough. 

[00:11:42] Scott Yeates: Exactly. Yep. And then one thing that we do is, you know, we really speak a lot about blending the art of blending. Chris was just in Nashville teaching a seminar on the art of blending. We also put the blend on the side of the bottle Oh nice. So that our customers can see and they can see, okay, this is where it’s from. This is the Nashville and this is the age of it. Really, so we can just speak to that like, hey, we’ve taken different components together to create something interesting.

[00:12:10] Bianca Harmon: And where does the name come from? 

[00:12:13] Chris Ritenour: Good, good question. So, I dunno if you can see. So our bottles on the front of each bottle, we have half human, half animal. so we have quite a bit of fun with this. This is best friend bourbon. It’s a dog, and his loyal companion. and then we write a story on the back of the bottle.

That speaks to the connection between the animal and the human. So in this story, it’s a corn farmer. his loyal farm dog, kind of talks about, you know, the farm dog, taking shade by an oak tree, you know, alluding to the oak barrels that this whiskey rests in. But then each day that they come together, they watch the sunset, they drink a glass of whiskey and just reflect on, you know, they don’t have to say anything.

It’s just that reflection on like a good life. 

[00:13:02] Bianca Harmon: I love it. 

[00:13:03] Scott Yeates: Yeah. So that’s best friend bourbon. Yeah. 

[00:13:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Now, was the best friend bourbon the first, product that you released? 

[00:13:09] Chris Ritenour: No, so it’s actually Hell bear American Whiskey, which is gonna be next. 

[00:13:13] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh. Oh, okay. Oh, So the but the best friend, it is, I

mean, it’s everything I expect in a bourbon.

It has a little bit more of a delicate quality to it that I love, right on that mid pallet. It’s really, really, really nice. 

[00:13:25] Bianca Harmon: The nose is incredible to me. I mean, it’s just 

[00:13:30] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Now, it was just in Denver last weekend. It was just popping through right before the snowstorm.

The last snowstorm. Yeah. Those that are listening, there was just a hundred car pileup right before this episode that we’re recording. This’ll be out in a few weeks, but last weekend we were in, Denver and should I stopped by, but I actually didn’t know. It was very quick. We were driving down south to a, conference in Alamosa where a big ranch we were by the Great Sand Dunes and it was a beautiful trip, but as we were driving by, we stopped in Salida and there was another craft distillery down there. Wood’s High Mountain Distillery, yeah. Yeah. Now just super impressed talking to them about all the craft movement in Colorado. Can you guys talk about that?

[00:14:12] Scott Yeates: Yeah, and it’s, funny that you mentioned Wood’s. So Wood’s is run by PT Woods and he’s really been a leader for the Colorado craft scene. another distillery in that area in, Buena Vista, right next Toda is Deer Hammer. So it’s kinda interesting that part of Colorado, those are two of those are kind of two of some of the original distilleries, craft distilleries in Colorado. They’ve done a really good job. Colorado, I don’t know, Chris, you might know, I think at this point we probably have somewhere around 35 craft distilleries. 

[00:14:40] Chris Ritenour: Sounds about right. It seems like it’s, you know, increasing all the time in a positive way. It’s awesome. it’s a great, state, to be in the craft business, whether that’s beer, spirits, 

[00:14:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Is it the population that just kind of really appreciates that sort of artisan aspect of it?

[00:14:57] Chris Ritenour: Scott, maybe you can speak to it more but I’ll say yes, you know, even when I have been at, worked at distilleries outside of the state. We would have Colorado circled as a desirable market to enter because, yeah, the population here is so receptive in embracing of craft brands.

 It is hard to know, did the craft beer, really take foot here because of that? Or is this a response? Just people, because of the craft beer here in Colorado. They’re open for craft distilleries as well, but the results the same, I mean, it’s just a really, really good, market to be in the craft business.

[00:15:41] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. we had 10th Mountain on the show about last year, about this time. 

[00:15:44] Chris Ritenour: Oh yeah. Yeah. From Veil, they’re awesome. 

[00:15:46] Drew Thomas Hendricks: All up in Veil. And you guys are now building a campus in Steamboat? 

[00:15:49] Scott Yeates: We are. So, yeah. So we started, when we started the distillery, we started in Denver. We built a tasting room and a distillery. It’s an urban distillery. So we saw that as a huge opportunity to have, you know, people know about us, have a more walkable environment to come have a cocktail and get to know the brand. That came a little bit at the expense of the distillery. So because of this, you know, being urban, we couldn’t take as much space. So we now have a second warehouse where we do our, barrel chain proofing, blending all that operation, and then we also have to rent several other warehouses for additional rack house there and storage. So, yeah, not the most efficient. and it’s been a little bit tough. I’m also based in Steamboat Springs.

Okay. Which is just about two and a half hours northwest of Denver, kinda the northwest part of the state, resort community, but population of, you know, it’s probably expanded the past couple years, but population around 13,000. So we have a really solid community here, and it came time to say, Hey, we really need to consolidate like our production operations. And everything. we were looking and then this, former brewery in Steamboat called Butcherknife Brewery, he wanted to sell and we were a interested buyer, so we purchased it last year. We’re really excited. We’re under construction right now. So by next summer we’ll have a large distillery and cocktail bar.

 Nice Asian dumpling restaurant. Ooh. So there’s, 

[00:17:25] Bianca Harmon: Oh man, you’re speaking my language. 

[00:17:28] Scott Yeates: We’re so excited. you know, living here, we have great food, but Asian food is something we do kind of lack in Steamboat. So we’re hoping that the soup dumplings will be pretty good addition. Um, Cool. And then we’re building a big rack house, which is so much fun building a rack house from the ground up because we get to play around with the environment and, 

[00:17:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And, you know, what sort of things are you implementing there? 

[00:17:52] Scott Yeates: Yeah, so we have an earth and floor. So that means a natural floor, pretty typical in like the highlands in Scotland promote natural humidity through that we’re a really dry climate, so we think that’s a great way to promote the natural humidity in the environment.

Sure, we also are gonna play around with sonic waves. We’re all big music lovers. I saw this initially at Copper and Kings in Louisville, Kentucky at Brand, and you go on a tour and you just hear this like, I don’t know, like, just like, when I was there, Alabama shakes was playing.

[00:18:28] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Okay. So it just like nurture the whiskey through the, it’s like throaty. It’s not like whale sounds, you’re gonna do actual music. 

[00:18:36] Scott Yeates: Yeah. So actual music, Yeah, but we’ll play really cool sets and we’ll just play music to the barrels. And if you think about it in the winter as it gets cold in the environment, like Steamboat, those barrels are gonna contract that whiskey’s gonna sit there and it’s gonna sit there pretty idle, having a sound system with a lot of bass components to it to allow that whiskey to still activate inside the barrel. 

[00:19:01] Bianca Harmon: You guys are gonna need to get there’s a little tiny movie theater here where I live and they have this bench out front and it’s just a two-person bench and it has copper on each arm handle. And you sit down on it and you hold hands and it starts playing music and it’s, you let go of your hands and it stops and it’s like the copper running through. And you can move it depending on like your weight and your pressure, and you need to have like some of those seats. 

[00:19:25] Scott Yeates: Oh, that’s awesome. That would be fun.

[00:19:27] Bianca Harmon: It was a STEM project that like the high school students did, and it is the coolest thing. You just like sit down on this bench and it tells you like it doesn’t do anything, and then the second you hold hands, it starts and you can rub your fingers on the copper and it sounds like a piano playing different key.

[00:19:46] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Where’s that at? 

[00:19:47] Bianca Harmon: Here in St. Helena, right outside our movie theater. 

[00:19:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s crazy. 

[00:19:52] Bianca Harmon: So if you’re into like the whole music and the copper and all of that, that would be kind of cool to just have planted somewhere like in your tasting room and 

[00:20:00] Scott Yeates: Oh, that’s amazing. I just wrote it down. So you said St. Can you name the town again? It’s 

[00:20:04] Bianca Harmon: St. Helena. Oh, I can send you, I’ll send you Yeah, they’ll send you link. I’ll take a picture of it. 

[00:20:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: The show notes. 

[00:20:10] Bianca Harmon: Yeah. I’ll take a picture of it. It’s outside the cameo movie theater. I’ll take a picture of it and then send it to you through an email.

[00:20:16] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’ll be a great one for that. So the vibrations are a lot like, kind of the ocean where they send the whiskey around the world and have it rock around for a year. Yeah, 

[00:20:24] Scott Yeates: That’s right like Jeffersons and, 

[00:20:25] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, I think you guys gotta do an AB test and like get two different sound environments, same whiskey like do in one and Alabama shakes and the other.

[00:20:35] Scott Yeates: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, we recently formed a partnership with the Caro Symphony. So we’re very excited once we are open to have them contribute, to this maybe hold some kind of small quartet or something. 

[00:20:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, that’s fantastic. I love that. 

[00:20:50] Scott Yeates: And then we also have, I should add, we have this large outdoor whiskey garden. So similar to what you’ve seen across the country with beer gardens. 

[00:20:57] Bianca Harmon: Beer gardens 

[00:20:59] Scott Yeates: With whiskey, big fire pit, outdoor bar. We have slides that go down this kinda mountain hillside. 

[00:21:06] Bianca Harmon: Wow. So it should be great. This is like an all in one stop. 

[00:21:10] Scott Yeates: Yeah. An adult playground. That’s my goal. 

[00:21:14] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I love seeing the blending of the hospitality. That’s fantastic.

[00:21:17] Bianca Harmon: Man, Colorado though is the place to do it. I think the people, you were talking about like the craft area out there. I don’t know, there’s just something about the people in Colorado, they’re super easygoing and they’re like up for anything new and adventurous and I love it.

[00:21:35] Scott Yeates: Yeah, I think it’ll be really cool. I went to college at Colorado State University, which is where New Belgium, Odell’s, Fort Collins, I mean, so many great breweries started there and New Belgium was pretty large when I was there, but they were, you know, Odell’s was pretty small. 

[00:21:52] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Odell’s, oh yeah. We see those everywhere now. 

[00:21:54] Scott Yeates: So, I mean, now, you know, we’ve kind of just influenced by those awesome brands and just what they’ve been able to grow into they give back to the community and they’re all about just like, you know, their employees and creating a great team and that’s something we strive for.

[00:22:10] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. I’d like to talk a little bit about growing the brand, but Chris, you wanna, talk to us about the next one, Hell Bear? 

[00:22:16] Chris Ritenour: Yeah, 

[00:22:17] Bianca Harmon: The first one, the original. 

[00:22:20] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. So, I don’t know. I always say, I think I drink more of the bourbon. I love Best Friend, but Hell Bear just has a special place in my heart for the complexity. It’s the one I go to when I wanna, I don’t know, spend some time and think on a glass, so, yeah. It’s a blend of three different whiskeys again. In this case it’s primarily a three-year-old rye whiskey and then there’s a four-year-old high rye bourbon and a five-year old weeded bourbon. Here as well. 

[00:22:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s like a floral nuance or a piny nuance on the front. 

[00:23:01] Chris Ritenour: Absolutely. And so that like floral kind of perfuming note on the nose, it’s one of the things that I just really, really love about it. That and dry spice, you’re definitely getting from that, three-year-old rye. That four-year-old bourbon, you’re gonna get a lot more of those like caramelly just like classic, like round sweet bourbon notes that really just kind of gives it some weight. and then that Bourbon comes in. There’s these really kind of delicate, fruity notes that it contributes, but it also, this tannic structure to it that just pulls it all together so 

[00:23:41] Bianca Harmon: I get some nuttiness on it when I taste it. 

[00:23:44] Chris Ritenour: Absolutely. It’s just, to me, there’s, like I said, a complexity to it. And I use this as an example, a lot of times when I’m talking to people about just how exciting blending can be. It’s, you know, clearly at this point it’s not a ride, it’s not a bourbon but we’re pulling in, select portions of each of those to bring together this thing that’s, you know, different than any of those components individually. 

[00:24:16] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Sure. Now, is this something that’s distilled? Are you distilling this or are we again, is this from 

[00:24:22] Chris Ritenour: Yeah, same thing. So Mythology, our approach has always been, the focus would be primarily as a gin distillery and a whiskey maker. So we’re constantly looking for, like Scott said, we approach it in a culinary way. So we look at it as looking for new ingredients. So we’re always on the hunt for interesting barrels that may come our way different components, ingredients that we can use to build something new and exciting.

[00:24:53] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And I guess I should have asked, when was your first release? When were you founded? 

[00:24:57] Scott Yeates: 2018. 

[00:24:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: 2018, so we’re four years in. And that’s always the challenge if you start with whiskey, how do you launch a product day one? You do a white whiskey, you gotta kind of have it, so blending actually gives you the avenue to like use the right ingredients to create your vision from the outset. 

[00:25:14] Scott Yeates: Yeah, it does. And I mean, from a business model, maybe, I don’t know, you could probably make an argument either way, but it’s a little bit more capital intensive upfront, I think, because you have to invest in the barrel to make a consistent product. I don’t know, over time and I guess you could probably make an argument either way, but yeah, we really made that like very like, direct approach for a whiskey blendery gin distillery, because there are a lot of distilleries and great distilleries out there that start with, maybe a source product and then they move into their own product. We more kind of see it as we wanna just continue with blending because we think it’s interesting. 

[00:25:54] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah, I like that. 

[00:25:56] Bianca Harmon: Well, but also it allows you to start, I mean, at some point it’s a business, right? And you wanna make money and when you’re doing just your own, I’ve talked to a lot of these spirits guys and they’ve been waiting like 15 years and they’re just now getting their first products out and it’s like, wow. So you’ve just been sitting there like obviously they haven’t just been sitting there, you know? But like nothing, they can’t do anything cuz they’re waiting.

[00:26:19] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Mm-hmm. 

[00:26:20] Scott Yeates: Yeah. That’s tough, that’s right like all you have to do is just keep making whiskey, you know, another thing we do, and we don’t have a sample of this today, but I’ll kind of mention it cause it’s something that we do with blending. We do a fair amount of wine finished. 

[00:26:33] Bianca Harmon: I was actually gonna ask you about that one, the syrah.

Cause I was like, is that wine? I wanna know. We aren’t tasting that one, but I wanna know about it. 

[00:26:43] Scott Yeates: Okay, the next one, we’ll taste the wine finish one. Yeah. 

[00:26:45] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Talk to us about that. 

[00:26:47] Scott Yeates: We’re really fortunate to have a collaborative partner, Dominion IV. It’s a small boutique winery in the Willamette, in Oregon, and we work directly with the winemaker, Patrick, and his team. And, this started about four years ago that, you know, we said, Hey, you know, it’d be really fun. We’ve seen so many cork finished whiskeys. I it’d be fun to play around with something a little bit more creative than that maybe.

 And so he suggested Syrah for the Hell Bear. And the reason, you know, this is what’s cool to talk to the winemaker. He’s like, look, our Syrah, it’s like, it’s big fruit. It’s big blackberries and chocolate. Now it’s a little bit of mint. We then, you know, that really counterbalances, the American whiskey, which is more rye for it, more spice.

 So a couple things we do unique. So, you know, they dump the barrels on a Monday. Those barrels are shipped to us right away, they have no time to oxidize. 

[00:27:44] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, yeah. They’re still wet and juicy. 

[00:27:46] Scott Yeates: Yeah. I mean, you open the barrel and you kind of wanna become a winemaker for a day, 

[00:27:50] Bianca Harmon: For a split second. 

[00:27:51] Scott Yeates: Right. There’s just, I mean, it’s so good. It’s like, oh my word. We fill those up with rye then so that’s a little bit unique is being able to work directly with the winemaker, pick the barrels, have that great relationship. What’s also unique is that we let the whiskey rest in that barrel for about 10 months. Then let that whiskey really integrate in, you know, we’re not picking up early any age from the wood, we’re picking up just those notes of that wine. Having that time because a lot of maybe wine finish whiskey that you see on the market, maybe it’s been in the barrel, in the wine barrel for two to two to six weeks, 

[00:28:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Or the barrel’s been dry for a long time, 

[00:28:30] Chris Ritenour: or it’s been dry, right? Yeah. I mean, we, 

[00:28:31] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s really reminiscent. Like, I know there’s Jameson has a Chateau Montelena Finish. barely tastes the wine finished but yours has like almost a deep wine color to it. 

[00:28:42] Scott Yeates: It does, yeah, picks up that like huge purple color. I mean, it’s a fan favorite. I love it. Every time I pick up a bottle, it doesn’t last very long.

[00:28:52] Chris Ritenour: And just on the production side I’ll say too, yeah, like these finishes. It’s a lot of fun cuz again, it goes back to that just building flavors. And so, yeah, as Scott said, those barrels will work with the winemaker. The day they’re dumped, they get picked up, come here the day they get here, we have the whiskey blended ready to go. We’ll dump out any wine remnants that are in there, right? C uz that’s the other thing, it’s, all this balance. You don’t want to just be like, hit over the head with that finish. So fill that up and my favorite thing, it’s some of the coolest stuff, in this industry are unfortunately the aspects that most people will never get to experience. It’s so fun and interesting seeing the way the flavors develop in those barrels. So I always say it’s like early on, the flavors are very disparate, right? You can taste the whiskey and you can taste the wine. But they’re not integrated at all. And it really takes some time for those flavors to integrate and really marry.

 But then like on the flip side of that, you can let it go too long. And really, yeah.,Just become so heavy handed with that finish that you’ve muted all the interesting characters out of the whiskey. And just kind of like deadened everything. Yeah. So, 

[00:30:17] Bianca Harmon: So there is a, crucial time period is 

[00:30:19] Chris Ritenour: Absolutely. And you can see it coming right? So it becomes like we’re checking it like every, you know, versus like, check it three months in, then five months in, then six months, and then by the end checking it like every other day or every day because you can see it, it’s getting closer, closer, closer. And that’s, like I said, the real fun part is just going like, okay, now let’s pull it out.

[00:30:45] Bianca Harmon: Time to pull. And so how many barrels are you guys getting from them, approximately? 

[00:30:51] Chris Ritenour: I mean, it changes more and more every year. 

[00:30:54] Scott Yeates: Yeah. I mean, the first year it was just a small project. It was just a couple barrels and now we’ve increased it quite a bit because we’ll kind of take as many barrels as they good us because we would like it to be a product that we can have more readily available.

It’s just so good. they did, Dominio IV did send us some Tempranillo barrels. 

[00:31:13] Bianca Harmon: Oh, cool. 

[00:31:14] Scott Yeates: Oh my word. I mean, like, Chris and I had no idea what it would do. To me it just gives this like, it like coats my mouth with like a fig kind of note. And it finishes with whiskey. I absolutely love it. 

[00:31:27] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I think that’s a great combination like the wine finished whiskeys. I have a lot of experience, drinking beer finished or some beer collabs. One of my favorite craft distillers down by us is Malahat. And they’ve done some, great collaborations with some local, craft brews where they’ll get an IPA and they’ll finish it off or even a coffee. They have a coffee finished whiskey that has been good. But I really wanna see more of these wine ones. 

[00:31:51] Bianca Harmon: Well, the way you guys are doing it is so impressive. I mean, cuz a lot of the times these living in Napa Valley, these guys are selling their barrels to distilleries and some of them are, are like over a year old and then they’re buying ’em and then, 

[00:32:07] Scott Yeates: We did that once and it didn’t go well. We didn’t fill the barrels, you know, those barrels just sit, we have these two like massive grenache barrels. I don’t, we might make a hot tub out of it or something, you know, we received them and they were just completely dry. I mean, it wasn’t gonna add anything, and we just were like, no, we’re not true.

[00:32:29] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. It had, it turned, you know, ascetic acid had like, started in there and so that is something that’s really hard. So we do other finishes as well, and throughout my career I’ve done other ones, you know, whether they’re other spirits like rum or, you know, like fortified wines, like port, yeah, a lot of portwood cherries, stuff like that, which I love all those too. But, they’re just much more stable. 

[00:32:56] Drew Thomas Hendricks: In all your career? What’s a finished like, I’m never gonna try that again. 

[00:32:59] Chris Ritenour: Oh, actually, I know why Scott’s laughing now. Sorry. 

[00:33:03] Scott Yeates: We have, 

[00:33:04] Chris Ritenour: He’s about to say, yes. 

[00:33:07] Scott Yeates: Sometimes we experiment and we decided to take like, it was a whiskey barrel that someone had finished a gin in. Oh. And then, you know, so, it was barrel aged gin and then we decided to put whiskey in it and, I don’t know, maybe it’s like three years old or something. I don’t know what it’s at this point, but we laugh about it a lot.

I tend to, I tend to say like, this is probably like the dumbest decision we made, but it’s, I mean, you have to make those decisions. It’s not dumb decision. It just was like, 

[00:33:39] Drew Thomas Hendricks: what experiment? 

[00:33:40] Bianca Harmon: You don’t know until you try, right? 

[00:33:43] Scott Yeates: And it’s not bad. 

[00:33:44] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. Here’s the good news is like with most stuff, you just have to think on your feet and get creative with it, right? So it had been in that gin barrel for, let’s say it’s six months and it wasn’t great. And it’s like, well, let’s just let it ride, because, you know, sometimes you’ll see things like pull up out of it, you know what I mean, and you’re like, and got into about a year and it’s like, it’s not doing anything good. So hold it out and put it in a old, bourbon barrel to just kind of give it a chance to like

[00:34:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: find itself again.

[00:34:19] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. Yeah. Like reset and what’s really cool now after being in there a year, it’s like, come around. It’s like, it’s hard to describe. It’s so perfumey, 

[00:34:31] Bianca Harmon: Probably from the gin. 

[00:34:32] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely from the gin. But so it’s, you know, mellowed out, tamed down in a much more interesting way. But we haven’t found its final form. That’s all, that’s all I can say is like, I feel like there’s a light at the end of this tunnel.

[00:34:48] Drew Thomas Hendricks: There’s a turning point 

[00:34:49] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like going, okay. It went from being like, well this is hopeless to, Hey, I think we got something we can work with here. So now it’ll just be figuring out the next barrel to throw it in.

That can complement that it and round it out. And, yeah, we won’t release it 

[00:35:06] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Eventually be your $400 bottle, cuz it’s been in so many barrels. 

[00:35:10] Scott Yeates: I know. Well, we were joking around that like, more than likely we’ll probably make it into some really cool like bottled cocktail. And we were joking around that after like four or five years, it probably becomes this like, exceptional bottled cocktail that we never will never be able to do again, 

[00:35:32] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I wanna move into gin while we saw some time here and perfect segue is, until last week, I’d never really heard of an aged gin. 

[00:35:39] Chris Ritenour: Oh really? 

[00:35:40] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. I t was in Salida. 

[00:35:42] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. We actually, we haven’t released any yet, but we have, some fun ones, here. So aging away. 

[00:35:51] Bianca Harmon: Do you guys do any of the gin? I mean, this might be crazy, but did you do any of the gin in wine barrels? 

[00:35:56] Chris Ritenour: Actually yeah. We have gin in a, chardonnay barrel. 

[00:36:01] Bianca Harmon: Interesting. Yeah. And do you get it just like you get the syrah? 

[00:36:05] Scott Yeates: Not that one. no, you know, we should reach out to the video for that. We’re still debating if gin and a chardonnay barrel is a good idea. We think it’s gonna be a good idea. And we think that, like, we think the chardonnay, the butterness of it like, can really compliment a gin, but we’re not sure how, we’re not sure what to do with the end product. It’s been sitting in there for maybe about two, two and a half years. I think that one has a little bit more time too. 

[00:36:30] Bianca Harmon: Wow, this smells incredible. 

[00:36:32] Chris Ritenour: I’ll say, before we get into this, just to finish on that, the one I’m most excited about, we have some of our gin in a Spanish orange wine barrel. 

Ooh, ooh. 

[00:36:43] Scott Yeates: I forgot about that. That I am really excited about. 

[00:36:45] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. 

[00:36:46] Bianca Harmon: Ooh. I’m excited about that. And I haven’t even tried it, 

[00:36:50] Chris Ritenour: So I forgot, like right when we were getting it, I’d done research on it, but they do a solar method and they put actual, like orange peels into the barrels, or, you know, into the wine masser it, and the barrel smelled amazing, just, it’s like very like marmalady and like syrupy. And it’s tasting pretty cool, but yeah, just, it’s gonna have to bake away for a while, but I’m excited about that one. 

[00:37:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. That’s really exciting, when do you anticipate maybe that coming out. I mean, have you released an aged gin? 

[00:37:23] Chris Ritenour: No, no. No. Not yet. 

[00:37:25] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So we’re all just in, they’re all behind you. 

[00:37:27] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. I mean, literally these two barrels are, gin, actually. So yeah, 

[00:37:33] Bianca Harmon: Tell us about this gin. I’m a gin lover. 

[00:37:35] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. 

[00:37:36] Bianca Harmon: It smells incredible. 

[00:37:37] Chris Ritenour: The same too, like I said, my whole entrance into this, weird world was through botanical spirits and, you know, gin being one of those. so, I know I’m biased here, but I’m a really, really big fan of the gin that we do. One of the things you’ll notice about it that I think, makes it stand apart from a lot of other gins. We use sage in it. 

[00:38:01] Bianca Harmon: Yeah, you can taste it. 

[00:38:02] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. but that we also have grapefruit peel so that like sage and grapefruit peel, I think pair in such an interesting way. W e use an Italian juniper, which has this really neat, kind of fruity note to it, and there’s some star anise in there, which I feel like really comes through on the back end.. 

[00:38:22] Bianca Harmon: Well, it’s interesting cuz we were, my fiance and I were at lunch last week and we always go to this restaurant and I get a dirty martini gin and we were talking about, gins and how, you know, all of the different gins out there. And he’s like, it’s not very often these days you can find a good gin that you wanna sip on. He’s like, but when you find ’em, like they’re so good and you can just sit there. And sip on ’em. But it is, a lot of these gins are made to go with vermouth or you know, with a martini or some crazy cocktail that they’re making now. They’re not known to people as like a sipping liquor. And they’re, yeah. They can be if they’re done well. 

[00:39:01] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. 

That’s 

[00:39:02] Scott Yeates: what’s so exciting about the craft distillery side of gin that you can make cause you’re absolutely right, Bianca, like everything’s made it as a dry gin. 

[00:39:12] Bianca Harmon: Yeah.

[00:39:13] Scott Yeates: Whereas, I mean, In craft ceiling, it’s like, well, let’s make a more full body gin. Let’s make something that, you know, someone wants to have it just a martini or they just want to have on the rocks, you know? 

[00:39:24] Bianca Harmon: Yeah. I would just drink this like, this is great. This is what we’ve been looking for. 

[00:39:30] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah.

[00:39:30] Chris Ritenour: And you’ll notice like there’s a lot of like sweetness and body to it. 

[00:39:35] Bianca Harmon: Yeah. 

[00:39:35] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s very round. 

[00:39:36] Chris Ritenour: Which is, it’s definitely not an Old Tom Gin, but it has this almost Old Tom like quality to it. But what’s neat is Old Tom Gin, generally has sugar added back into it to contribute that. This is all just through the distillation technique. 

[00:39:53] Bianca Harmon: Wow. 

[00:39:54] Chris Ritenour: So all that sweetness, that mouth feel, that richness is just the amount of oils that are being carried over in the distillation that contribute to that. So

[00:40:05] Bianca Harmon: It just kind of sits on your mouth too, and like, we just keep tasting different things as it’s sitting there. It’s beautiful. 

[00:40:12] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. I can see why we tasted this last. It is, yeah, very, very complex. 

[00:40:17] Scott Yeates: Yeah, it’s complex and it kind of takes over. It’s, my martinis have gone from two ounce martinis to three ounce martinis now. 

[00:40:24] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Now how does this needle pig compare to the foragers that you have? 

[00:40:28] Chris Ritenour: So yeah, totally different. This is our standard year round. just. Flagship Gin, foragers is a collaboration that we do with the Denver Botanic Gardens, which is something I think we’re all super excited about. I know obviously selfishly I am cuz it’s such a fun project. funny enough, earlier today he’s actually playing around, working on next year’s recipe. So yeah, it’s just a fun collaboration. Scott went to school with one of the main horticulturalists there and, yeah, it’s just like for this latest batch, it was something that where, Scott Blake from the Botanic Gardens, and I could sit down and work on formulating this recipe together.

which again, just selfishly is a lot of fun to, yeah, like work as a group on this project and come up with something that I don’t know, is both taste good and is fun to do. That’s, 

[00:41:30] Bianca Harmon: So is gin truly you think your passion because of the, you know, all of the herbs and, 

[00:41:38] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. It’s hard to say. I mean, this isn’t a cop out. I don’t just have like one, I find there are particular aspects. So for the whiskey, it’s the blending. It’s that I think it all comes back to like building flavors because gin’s the same way. The most fun part about gin is you’re sitting here with these different ingredients and flaring them together, right? And trying to get them to act in harmonious ways. One just like nerdy side note about all this, that I think about constantly with blending and with gin, one of these old distillation books, they use the analogy of musical notes, and intervals when it comes to flavor building, you know, like a major third or a minor third, major fifth. And with like, sweet, sour, bitter, savory in trying to combine these different, intervals in ways that make a harmonious chord as opposed to something that’s inharmonious, right? So, yeah, I don’t know. Like I said, it’s not. It’s not a cop out, but for me I see it’s that aspect of it.

And I see it in the, blending, and I see it in the like, botanical selection. 

[00:42:55] Bianca Harmon: Cool. 

[00:42:56] Drew Thomas Hendricks: That’s fantastic. On the needle pig, how many, different iterations did you have to go through to find your final, like, house style? 

[00:43:03] Scott Yeates: Oh, quite a few. I would say, I don’t know, I think we probably went through, we knew Italian juniper, right off the bat. Italian juniper’s really interesting, I mean, it has this oily component to it. I eat the berries. I like them like, I think they’re 

[00:43:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Where do you source that? Is that just to a company? I mean, do they come in from Italy? 

[00:43:25] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. so a company called San Francisco Herb. Different botanicals, we go through different sources. It’s like anything, I don’t feel like there’s any one place you go to for everything. 

[00:43:38] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s where the best. 

[00:43:39] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. But San Francisco Herb is close to that, right? They’re one of those like big, botanical brokers who can get all sorts of stuff, but yeah, this Italian juniper, like, 

[00:43:51] Drew Thomas Hendricks: And It feels like it’s almost a more of a berry flavor than kind of that really, juniper-y taste.

[00:43:56] Scott Yeates: No, it gives us this like sweetness. That’s really nice. Sage like we wanted to pick a botanical that really like, spoke to the Rocky Mountain region a little bit. And although it’s not mountain sage. We think just sage in general does, kind of speak to that like, just environment maybe.

[00:44:17] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So that kind of bright sweetness on the nose, it’s not sweet, like sweet, but it’s got a pleasant smell. That’s that Italian juniper and maybe the grapefruit. 

[00:44:24] Chris Ritenour: Yeah. Yeah. I mean it’s a real combination of ’em, but leading that charge is that Italian juniper. And then to me this, the sage is the other component that really like shines through stands out. 

[00:44:40] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Yeah. This is, this has been fantastic. I’ve learned so much and we gotta have you guys back on to taste some of these age gins when they come out, but as we wrap it down, is there anything we haven’t talked about that you wanna share with the audience? 

[00:44:52] Chris Ritenour: I mean, do you want to talk about the rye that’s coming out?

[00:44:56] Scott Yeates: Oh, yeah, sure. Let’s do that. I’ll intro it a little bit. So sometimes when you’re finding component whiskeys, you come across something that’s, almost too good to create in a blend with other whiskeys, and an instance of that is we picked up a, pretty significant number of eight-year, 95% rye barrels.

 It was 95% rye, 5% barley, and they just were exceptional. And rye is one of those whiskeys that a lot of times you find rye on the market between three and five years. It just has a component to it that it’s, I mean, it’s exceptional, I love rye, but you can release a five-year rye and it’s really pretty exceptional. So a lot of times you don’t find older rise on the market. So we have this eight year rye and we thought it was so great. We kind of decided we’re only two years away from 10 years. Let’s just see how these progresses. And, these barrels turn 10 in mid-October. And, we’ve obviously been moderating them pretty much monthly for the past two years and, these are just, they stand out on their own.

And so we just are releasing that this November. It’s called Thunder Hoof Rye. Ooh. that stands for a bull, a female bull rider, which we’re really excited to introduce a female into our, Mythology. 

[00:46:16] Bianca Harmon: You’re manly Mythology group. 

[00:46:20] Scott Yeates: We need a little bit more softness to it. So, but yeah, she is a bull rider, so she’s kind of a badass.

But, so it’s pretty cool. We’re releasing these and the way that we’re releasing them is, we have released several single barrels and, you know, a single barrel is just a barrel within that lot of barrels that just stands out and it’s just exceptional on its own. And so there’s several of those single barrels going out. Those will go out at cast strength coming in to us. It’s really exciting, they’re coming in at like 126 to 140 proof, with the whiskey world. I mean, this is like, oh, like our eyes brighten up. We get so excited. and then the remaining barrels, Chris, is blending into eight separate batches. Chris, maybe I’ll let you talk about those. 

[00:47:05] Chris Ritenour: Yeah, you know, like Scott was saying, a very small number of these barrels, were just kind of so exceptional on their own. We wanted to hold those aside, other ones are all very, very good, but just goes back to, I think, the importance of blending.

Most barrels aren’t single barrels. It doesn’t mean they’re not good, but they are served much better by being combined with other barrels to really coax out more interesting flavors. so that’s what we’re doing. We’re going to, like Scott said, have, eight releases of these. We’re not quite sure our timeframe on when we will be doing it, but somewhere over the next year or so, you know, small batch. And we’re just really, really excited about it. We’re actually just gearing up to send out our first release to our distributor the next week. So, yeah, it’s coming up, but I’m really excited to yeah, hear what people think about it. But inhouse we’re for that. We’re really excited. 

[00:48:08] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Gotta keep an app for that. Well, Scott and Chris, where can people find out more about Mythology? 

[00:48:14] Scott Yeates: Yeah, so our website, we try to put as much information out there. 

[00:48:18] Drew Thomas Hendricks: It’s a great looking site, by the way. 

[00:48:20] Chris Ritenour: Thank you so much. I appreciate that. So our website, our social, we’re active on social, if anyone has a question, they can also reach out to us info@mythologydistillery.com. We have our tasting room in Colorado. Obviously, we’re super excited about this campus with Steamboat. so we try to be accessible. We’re right now, you know, we’re distributed in Colorado, Kansas, Missouri. Tennessee, California. Oh. I’ll have to keep in California. And then people can also purchase our products, online from our website.

[00:48:50] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Oh, great. Ever thought about doing like a whiskey club or a subscription-based gin? 

[00:48:54] Chris Ritenour: We have. and we’d love to do it. it’s a matter of finance. 

[00:48:58] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Just getting it done. 

[00:48:59] Scott Yeates: Yeah, just getting it done. But many things, but we’d absolutely love to do that club or gin. 

[00:49:05] Drew Thomas Hendricks: I think a gin club.

[00:49:06] Bianca Harmon: Or both. 

[00:49:07] Scott Yeates: Or both, that’d be great. 

Well guys, thank you 

[00:49:09] Drew Thomas Hendricks: So much for joining us today and we’ve gotta have you back when the aged gin’s out there. 

[00:49:13] Scott Yeates: Cool. Awesome. 

[00:49:14] Chris Ritenour: Thank you so much. 

[00:49:15] Drew Thomas Hendricks: Thank you so much. 
[00:49:16] Scott Yeates: Yeah, it’s great to meet you both.