Ep 103: Raj Bhakta Created WhistlePig; Now He's Reinventing the Whiskey Industry (Again)

0:00So I'm sitting there, I'm sitting there, I'm actually drinking some tequila with a body. and I'm like, what if I crossed the border? What if I could get an elephant and I could come into America like Hannibal, you know, on an elephant? And I said, what if I could get an elephant and a mariachi band, right? It sounds like a tequila inspired thought. It was, and then I was like, okay, we got to do this. So I call up my dad and I'm like, dad, we got to get an elephant from India. And my dad is like, why are you getting elephant from India? Get an elephant in America. I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:40Raj Bhakta is an American entrepreneur. He's best known for founding Whistlepig, an amazing whiskey brand. And he's building a new high-end whiskey brand right now. You know what's American? Greatness. And this is the greatest whiskey you're ever going to taste. He has a really colorful background. He rode an elephant across the border when running for Congress. He was a star on The Apprentice. All sorts of fun stories. I really enjoy drinking some whiskey with them, learning about the high-end whiskey world. Why did this international spirits merchant buy a college in Vermont? And after making tons of money on his first whiskey company, what's he trying to do with his second one?

1:12And what has he learned? I think you'll enjoy meeting Raj. I'm Joe Lonsdale. Welcome to American Optimist. Really excited to have Raj Bakhti with us today. Did I say that right, Raj? You got it, Joe. Awesome. Well, thanks for being here. Raj, there's lots of ways to describe you. You're an international whiskey merchant who's been really successful, amongst other things. you recently acquired Green Mountain College in Vermont building a world class hopefully university and spirit library it sounds like what's the plan there? Well Joe I bought it kind of with a couple of bucks in my pocket during COVID lockdown and I was a little candidly like the new company was going very well and I was like well you know if I create the greatest liquor business ever and they put statues of me in Kentucky and you know wherever it was right and I make a hundred billion dollar enterprise the i kind of was like um it wasn't truly that motivating as funny as that sounds in and of itself and i was like american education which you understand very well is screwed up here's a college going up for a whole physical infrastructure going up for auction down the road i like i need big anchors and big projects to to ground me but otherwise i and um this was one of those things that I got and developed a vision over time for it to become a place of, I would call like fundamental education based on, um, you know, seven virtues, faith, hope, love, temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence.

2:41The classical virtues, the four classical and the three religious virtues. So folks know you, of course, as a founder of Whistlepig Whiskey. We're going to get back to that. But tell us about your new venture, Bakhtar Brandy. What's this? And so I exited Whistlepig in the beginning of 2019. Never had any idea that I would, you know, just sit on the beach. So I had a couple of bucks in the pocket and I was like, OK, well, what's the next big thing? Whistlepig was based on two factors. One, there's so many stories here. I lost the race for Congress when I was young, was very ashamed in my defeat.

3:21And so I kind of ran off and bought a farm in Vermont to hide. This is the race where you, I think, did you ride an elephant across the border? Well, the idea was, well, it's a whole thing. Like, you shouldn't be able to just get into the country illegally, right? So, you know, they talk about build the wall. So we got to build the wall and widen the gate was my point. So you can come in legally. But so the real issue was, is it's September, October of the coming up to the election, right? Polling's terrible. I'm in the wrong county. I got convinced to run on this by political consultants, right?

3:55Who wanted money. And of course, at the same time, I think, oh, I'm Raj Bakhtar. I'm a star. I can overcome whatever. You'd been on The Apprentice is a star. Yeah, I got it. I got it. I'm reading about Lyndon Johnson, Path to Power and all this stuff. And like actually his early years. And I'm like, I can do this. I can overcome all the odds. And, but I needed, I needed, I needed a, I needed a rabbit, right? out of my hat because i'm a republican in a democratic district named raj bachda who just came off a reality tv show right the press wasn't good it's complicated the and so i need to and i couldn't get the philadelphia press to write about me so i'm like i gotta get national press and bush was not too popular by that time in 2006 that's a bad worst time the republicans lost 40 seats it was a disaster they developed a good relationship with our own inspector who you know and he didn't didn't have a uh a good end but let me let me answer the question the so i'm like what the hell am i going to do to get press like i got to get national press and so it shows up in the polling numbers at the very beginning of this that this immigration issue is is beginning to be a big issue so what can i do about education i mean what can i do about immigration so i'm sitting there i'm sitting there i'm actually drinking some tequila with the body and i'm like what if i crossed the border you know on a donkey and then and there's yeah that's one thing the the what what if what if i could get an elephant and i could come into america like hannibal you know the the the on an elephant i said what if i could get an elephant and a mariachi band right and basically it sounds like a tequila inspired thought it was and then i was like okay we got to do this so i call up my dad and i'm like dad we got to get an elephant from india and my dad I was like, why are you getting elephant from India?

5:42Get an elephant in America. I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I start calling up these contractors for the circuses. And I'm like, I need an elephant in Brownsville, Texas at this time. I had a buddy who had a buddy who had a ranch. So we didn't have to. We were on. Brownsville, you know, we call it Starbase around here now because of Elon. That's funny. You did it there. Oh, I did it in Brownsville. I had a whole crazy. Anyway, that's a story. So I did it. Make national news, front page of the New York Times. Did it help you a little bit with the poll? I mean, it helped me in that I felt that I didn't just like go down, you know, doing nothing, you know?

6:17So I like took a swing and I can tell an interesting story and did everything that I possibly could to win. But it was basically an impossible race at that time. Impossible. And so you're recovering from this race. I'm recovering from this race. Then I go to India. I think I probably told this story before, but I have this big party, defeat party. and i ended up misbehaving a little bit with some of my donors you know anyway it's the the the the bad night right i'm waking i'm bathed in shame i'm there and i'm with you know a a young lady the who is the daughter of my donor and my um and my uh am i like he's like my concierge i guess He's my chief counsel, good old friend from college.

7:03And he sees that I'm down and he needs something to pull me out of it. And he goes, you know, wouldn't it be funny? Steve Irwin had just died that day or the day before. And he goes, wouldn't it be funny if there was like an Indian character for Crocodile Hunter? You know, I was like, I will catch the tiger. There is no such animal that I cannot charm and you're going to put him in the thing. I said, that's it. I'm going to go to India. I'm going to find the guy. I'm going to make him a star. I'm going to take 20%. I'm going to clear my campaign debts. And I just want to get out of Dodge, right?

7:35Yeah, get out of there. I go to India. I travel all around the country. I figure there's 1.4 billion people. I've got to find the guy. I go to all the different national parks. I can't find the guy. There's no Steve Irwin in India. No Steve Irwin in India. It's just not in the culture. They're like, why do you want to play with the tiger? He can kill you, you know? They're too practical. They're just not making any sense to them. So I come back and I feel like I'm such a loser. I can't win a TV game show, a simple TV game show. You can't go on a game show and win a game show on TV. This is The Apprentice, where Trump fired me.

8:12Then you can't win a congressional race. And in a country of 1.4 billion people, you can't find one son of a bitch that can fit the bill. So I'm feeling like maybe you're a loser. Maybe, you know, so that's in that mindset, I bought the farm. But I still had a couple of bucks. was from some different stuff so i could like i could i don't know eat and drink and pay the mortgage the the but then the economy tanked and that's when you know i needed to figure out how to hustle my way out of the situation saw an opening in the high end of the american spirits which is rye was what it was well just an opening in the in the in the category right america has no it's a big rich country with a deep distilling tradition but we've nothing to compete with McAllen?

8:55Nothing. So that was the big picture. And I said, well, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? What's the vehicle? And the vehicle was that rye whiskey was just getting hot in the cocktail bars in San Francisco and New York and Chicago. Supplies were running out. And I found a great stash in Canada and basically hustled the hell out of it. And, you know, got pigs in Manhattan walking down the street and, you know, what was the pig thing? Why pigs? so uh i lived in vale um i was doing a project with my dad and he's beaten me up you know did i raise some you know rich white boy you don't have the hunger of the immigrants in you anymore and you know you're giving people like 15 an hour to work in the front desk how did you become so soft and um i could do that in his accent which is a little bit funnier you know but I don't want to be racially insensitive to my own father, right?

9:54So I end up going for a walk, and this guy, I'm going to make a long story short, pops out of a bush, strange French guy, and starts talking to me like, in the middle of nowhere, right? I'm in the middle, I'm not in like... No, your farm. No, I'm walking in the Rockies. Oh, wow. This guy pops up, and he goes, Could it be a whistle pig? Just like that. Could it be a whistle pig? And he keeps talking to me like this, and I'm like, I'd had a little bit of an herbal touch of things while I took my walk in the Rockies. so i'm trying to calibrate happened no i was sure it wasn't a heavy just a little puff the the and so but i was still trying to calibrate like are you actually reading the situation correctly this seems very strange but maybe maybe your perceptions are slightly off and i'm like no no no no no no this is certainly odd he walks off and i'm like what are the chances that this is happening and i said practically zero right that somebody pops out of the side of the road and starts talking to you in french accent about something called the whistle pig and you don't even know the word in English, but he's not, it's not his first language.

10:50And I said, this is God. And he wants me to do something with the name. This is O4. So when I bought the farm, five years later, four years later, three years later, I called it Whistlepig. So I had the name. Got it. And that's why it's also Hogsworth for the new stuff too. So it pays respect to it. I have good luck with the porcines. That's cool. I'm Jewish, so we don't eat those, but they're nothing. Well, this is the only kosher pig you can have. That's perfect. There we go. Let's go back to the start a little bit. First of all, I want to get your background. Raj so your father immigrated to the U.S.

11:20from India and you were born raised in Philly tell us about your upbringing that's right um well we were talking about it a second before so I grew up classic American dream story like actually many uh most Gujaratis who came to America and Indians who came to America very successful immigrant group as you know um kind of a model immigrant group we seem to have a lot of really smart ones that came which is that they're all smart or the smarter ones came which was which i think it's it's it's it's the latter it's the latter smarter ones i think there are a lot of you know we got the cream yeah that's great well we definitely got some amazing people there so that makes sense yeah um so indian not particularly religious um father who is an amazing coming to america story um i'd say medieval irish catholic mystic mother immigrant as well um and i mentioned to you before so i have this you know grew up with a in a with a lot of indian influence a lot of let's say irish catholic influence and the woman who kind of was effectively my grandmother um was a jewish immigrant um austrian jew uh one of this from this old thing called the austrian empire quite a combination of cultures interesting combination of cultures yeah yeah you know i got the irish catholic on my dad's side too that's that's the other side it's like a double drawlop of guilt you know guilt and good drinking and stuff yeah yeah good good bullshitting at the irish too some poetry yeah somehow this led you to the marines to start off after school oh yeah your people did a good research actually um chris right here so i'm reading a book you're to john keegan the military so i'm reading i was going to go off to investment banking because that was the thing right you go to school you gotta go you gotta work at goldman or whatever the and so i was on that path and um i read this sentence and it was something like this i gotta find the exact sentence but it was like some men are driven by fame some men driven by fortune the warrior is driven by the desire for the esteem of his fellow men who know his fiber and timber in the midst of battle yeah i was like that's the shit i want yeah the the i want to go in there and so then i go into the marines which by the way i walk into the marine corps right i'm i'm reading all my history books you got your history books around you the and i'm like okay you know i'm a special guy right so they should hand me effectively my command and i will take my troops and take me to some war games and I'll show you that I'll whip your ass.

14:01But with these very wrong ideas in my mind, I walk in, I managed to get into the officer candidate school, which was difficult at the time because they were downsizing the military. And I walk in and all these other guys, I mean, like six foot two strong guys, I thought that they were my, they assembled some men for me to command. That's funny. In my head, I'm jacket and tie walking there. I'm like, I look up there and I'm like looking at them with my best martial bearing like letting them know that i am their leader and they shouldn't look so directly into my eye the and i say to the to the captain captain are these my men and he's like he goes no rog these are your fellows fellow officer candidates i'm like oh shit because now we're going away for a weekend yeah and they're gonna all want to kill me which they all wanted to kill me and then they make me platoon commander the the and then the gunny sergeant wants to kill me everybody wants to kill me but truly of the moments that i'm most proud in my life i came out of that 48 hours the rest of them went in the bus the back home the captain called me over and he was telling the story this crazy guy that came in there and there's a lot of stories here so i'm not gonna tell we don't have time the and he goes raj come and he brought me into the officer's car and you know dropped me back home and i was like oh made for it and then i basically so i go in i have my i'm i'm supposed to show up in ocs but i before and the guy tells me the captain tells me i'm gonna you gotta like tell me if i'm going too far into these things because there's so many different stories the the don't go skiing for whatever reason you know like don't go skiing i'm like what do you mean don't go skiing there was a girl that i wanted to complete some things with before i went to war you had to go skiing with her so i take her to the i go over to austria james bond pick her up in the airport you know the go to my friend's little you know chalet in the alps and it's like bam everything's going so great first run first day she goes off ahead i go to like you know show off my skis cross i pop out of my skis slam into the side of an ice mogul shatter everything on the right side like snap crackle pop and that was the end of my marine but i have my discharge papers i was actually in the marines but i can't pretend that i went and blew anything up that's rough but you recovered fine though after that year you were yeah you're just gonna go to the marines good genes amazing and so and you also you also started the dot-com that was kind of a thing to do in 2000 is that right yeah so actually this was the only time i came out to palo alto because when one of the jobs that i had is um i was like a young analyst in a small boutique m &a shop and one of the clients wanted to buy a chip maker in palo alto called watkins johnson was the name of the company old chip maker this is like this is 99 and um i'm a little banker and they send me out there because i'm young and i must know things about the new things because i'm young but i don't know anything about anything of these things it's complicated put a deal together the got the financing in place the the guy buys the company for like 100 million bucks and takes it public six months later for a billion so i'm like fuck you're like this easy money this is the wrong i'm in the wrong business yeah i gotta go do that yeah so i come out to california and anyway very long story short i we created an interesting solution be able to price cars online so you're going to buy a car remember everything in 19 and everything was going to get a happen online right and then And rubberdogshit.com was worth$2 billion, right?

17:43So the car business, big business, the problem was you're going to buy a car. How are you going to trade your car in? We provided a trading solution. We could lock in a price and tell you what your car was worth so you could do the entire transaction. This stuff eventually was worth a lot 10 years later. Yeah, which was an interesting lesson, you know, that I learned kind of jumping around. Like, stick around. and I would have been in a much, you know, I would have been in a different kind of trajectory of business if I had stuck with it. Seems like you've done really well in business. Humble farmer, liquor merchant.

18:16Well, you did also acquire the world's largest stash of Armagnac recently. Yes, that was a coup. That was a coup that took big balls because I got into Armagnac and then when COVID broke out, you know, everybody panicked. Oh, yeah. All the prices of this stuff. everything was you know they were dumping good wine for cheap too everybody there was about two month period there was a legitimate panic and in that period this is when i was like i was like baby the good lord is looking after us i mean it was the middle of a pandemic but i had a little bit of a different mindset okay we're loaded for bear we're all cash yeah and you just sold you just sold your company there's a global economic crisis we're going to get 20 times leverage off as cash compared to what it was before.

19:02And at that same time, I literally started buying up all the oldest spirits from all these French nobles who've been collecting it for, you know, generations. And we bought, listen to these numbers, of the global stocks of spirits. It takes a second to wrap your head around the nature of this coup in my business. 19th century spirits, 85 % bought. 100 year plus spirits 70 and 50 year plus almost half that's crazy crazy right of the global stock i mean how much is that how many how many how much liquid is that is how many barrels how many bottles how do you even think about the size of that oh you if you put it in the bottle and sell it it's worth about half a billion how many bottles is how many bottles is that you know what bottles like okay so that half a billion number is basically selling it over with a four percent annual i i'm not good at math you're probably better at this but like to give you an idea of stock we've got um lots of full chateaus and farm in vermont and places that are you know i don't want to like so basically basically over security issue over 10 million over 10 million bottles or something though at least because it sounds like that'd be 500 that'd be five that'd be that'd be 50 or maybe not over 10 okay no so over a few million okay so let's take let's take really good to take 500 million and divide by 100 divide divide by a thousand right that's 500 000 then okay 500 000 bottles but at that at those price points got it and you're mixing some of this with a good american stuff too right so you have part so in some cases it's good to drink part american American whiskey part of Armagnac or what's it?

20:44How's that work? You want to pour you one? Yeah. Tell me what this is. So this is Hogsworth, right? So I'll, I'll, I'll read you. And how do you figure out how to mix it? Like who's on your team? Is this you now? Me. This is you, you've learned. When you started Whistlepig, you had like some top guy from Maker's Mark helping you. Did he teach you? Dave Pickerel. You know, Dave taught me many things, but blending wasn't his, you know, he did. He taught me, we put together this 12 year old called the old world. He taught me a lot. He, I kind of though on the blending side you just have a knack for it.

21:17Which side does that come from? Is that the Catholic or the Indian side? I think it's probably the Catholic side. I think so. So here's the story. I created Whistlepig Whiskey, sold it, severing all ties. But I remain fond of pigs. My work felt incomplete. This while American whiskey needs a shake-up. So I present Hogsworth. It is the finest bottle you'll find at even 10 times the price. Taste and see. We're going to do this in a second. the hogsworth marries america's best bourbon with exquisite armagnacs from france some over 40 years what kind of bourbon are you using here two different ones a tennessee from a great supplier that we have down there and some really unusual organic stuff from minnesota that's a beautiful flavoring great and it mixes well tell me about mixing you do you like go and try a bunch of different combinations yeah you taste a bunch of different stuff right and then you say okay okay this seems good with this this might be good with this and then you start blending them all and then you have to leave them for a week is this like wine like i noticed on some wine you'll have like oh we're just gonna have like three percent of this little thing to mix to affect it somehow why is that three percent of your matter can you how can you tell what's well sometime when you're back on the east coast you'll come to my blending laboratory and i'll show you that you can put in of the right flavor you can put in two or three percent and it'll change your flavor profile but that's a lot of you know it's not like um edison staying awake all night or whatever but it is a lot of trial and what are the really high-end places get right so you you're obviously really good at this one of my other favorite ones is pap papi's one of the other ones that's really good out there obviously but i gotta i gotta we gotta fix you the papi thing okay maybe it's not that good you have been misled sir that's fair i just i just taste things and and you said you had like the 13 papi rye i think you told me that right yeah that's a great one But the 23-year-old stuff, stay away.

23:04Yeah, you don't like it? Cheers. Cheers, why not? It's just over-oaked and it's total hype, you know what I mean? Like they go around and be like, you can't get this, but the Pappy people are going to be pissed off at me now. They seem like nice people. This is very good. Yeah, so you get a lot of balance. You get more, if you do a blend, okay, so put it to you this way. A Pappy 23 or a 23-year-old barrel of bourbon is very unilateral and it's very oaky, all right? there's good parts of that but if you do a blend i think of it this way think about being able to you're still young right and the i'm still youngish 42 so imagine add another 10 years these so you know things are a little bit not quite as good the the and you confuse right your 50 year old brain with your 18 year old body it's like it's like those creepy guys that get the blood from the young people and put it into their what's that crazy son of a bitch he's like a tech guy who's trying to live forever brian johnson you're there for dinner early yeah oh yeah but he's crazy no it's a sad thing he's impressive but it's a little it's a little he's aggressive he's aggressive he's just got to find god and he'll realize there's no point in living god obviously i think it is interesting to work on longevity but you have a good point there just focus on eternal life brother i'm gonna work on converting you to catholicism now well that's my practice of faith my i'm jewish my my my grandmother was very catholic my father was brought up that way.

24:29All right. We do have a lot of Catholics in the family, for sure. We've got to do some work on it. The institutional side of Christianity versus the other side of it. The Catholic Church, I'm not so sure. You're going to have to do some work. Every wretchedness in the history of the world has been perpetrated by the Catholic Church. On the other hand, the entire modern world really is a result of the Catholic Church, which saved civilization after the collapse of Rome. The Irish Monastery has definitely preserved a lot of civilization from the Catholic Church. That's right. the sixth century irish we wouldn't have a lot of the renaissance probably if it wasn't for them so that's that's definitely true and it was pope gregory who when rope rome was imploding you know deeply and justinian was coming in to try to you know reassert um the roman empire through you know byzantium the the he created what the economic engine um from which pre-created enough resources so that you could have a bunch of guys writing stuff down, right?

25:27Because when the lights are out, you don't have time to... So I have the greatest respect for these extraordinary men who ran the Catholic Church and the things they did. There's also, obviously, you said some really evil ones. But isn't an institution itself naturally not of God? Because it can become corrupted. How is the institution itself become the thing that you focus on? That's the trick, right? Because you have... The church is Christ's, let's call it, bride on earth, right? So on the one end, you have this deeply holy institution that has an unbroken line from Peter. By the way, started by all Jews.

26:02From Peter to Francis, who I'm not a huge fan of.

26:09But they're human. And they can go way, way off base and be susceptible to the deadly sins like anybody else. But it doesn't mean that their mission isn't divine. And so like, you know, Joe Biden can be whatever out of it. But it doesn't mean that America is whatever. But what makes America great, of course, is... By the way, great day in America. This is a great day in America. We're recording this right after the election. Yes, indeed. Appreciate your invitation to the party. Cheers to that. I got some people a little liquored up last night. Give two Irishmen some alcohol. We're going to start debating religion.

26:46I got to be careful. but uh no well i definitely i i have such huge respect for christianity i brought up in those it is funny being jewish that there's a sense that but did you make a decision to that you you were going to go with one side of the other side but i had the same thing i didn't do ism and catholicism i was raised jewish i had a bar mitzvah i'm raised in the tradition and the culture and it's it's uh it's uh it's it was just the way the way our family was brought up and it's okay it was the same kind of thing it's who we are and i and i have a lot of respect for you say it's who you are but your father's oh your mother's jewish my mother's jewish my father was not religious and so same thing happened to me on the catholicism side there's these like there's probably some like parts of judaism they're a little bit elitist which is like both good and bad also and they you mean chosen people thing you know like there's probably some i'm not i wouldn't say this but just like you know you needed to create christianity so everyone else could be civilized and attack us things like that it's horrible but it's really positive but I love I mean look I think everybody needs to get together and be like listen you can't go to heaven without you know without believing in Jesus so I gotta like I gotta try to I gotta try to I gotta work on you because I have an obligation but you know the joke with Jews is that every young Jewish man thinks he's Jesus that's what his mom tells him it's a problem it sounds like you had a little bit of that conflict too I don't know where I came from your grandma but it's like yo come on it is That is because, you know, when I was an Indian Irish kid, right, growing up outside of Philly and then going off to boarding school, they put a hell of a pounding on me.

28:18The, the, and so you had that, um, I guess Jewish matriarch really, who's, you know, saying you got it kid, you know, you are really special and you're amazing and you have this and you feel it. So I benefited that from one of the best elements of, and it's a duty and it's a duty. It's a duty to go and do good things and to help fix things. Right. That's right. And you can do anything you want to. there's no stopping you we're in america now you know like well that's the great thing about this country there really is that cheers to that cheers to that i have to ask because i love the name of your podcast by the way i have an inspirational message on this but i don't want to yeah i want to i'll ask you at the end about optimism as well it's one of the core things here but i have to ask because donald trump did just get elected president and you work with them directly on on the apprentice like how how was that oh my god like okay i have to set the stage and at least a simple boy, you get on this reality TV show.

29:10So I go on this reality TV show. It was my exit from the family business, right? I couldn't stand working with my dad. I love my dad, but we did not gel, you know, in the business world. Yeah. He was at hotels? Hotels, yeah. Cars in the beginning and then hotels. And I'm looking for a way out and a buddy of mine, who I'm bitching to all the time about my life. First of all, I picked a hotel in Vail because I thought it was going to be fun, right? Living in a ski town. but I don't know if you know the demographics of a ski town between girls and guys it's bad oh really there are like seven guys to every three girls at least at that time that's not good throws the market off bad and so I'm coming out of New York and Miami and I move there and opposite of what you're used to opposite right and and the the moves that I have are not it's not the right moves for the for the for the girls who are living and you know they want to go mountain biking and all this stuff I don't know so um he goes what are your two biggest problems in life roger i'm like well you know i can't stand working with my dad and i'm gonna put this politely in case my kids ever listen to this i'm having trouble in the love life yeah the end he goes i got a solution for them both he goes you go on the apprentice it's gonna give you a piece with honor exit from the family business your dad's gonna think it's cool you're gonna learn real estate from trump and you're gonna have no problem with the chicks because you're famous on tv and my first reaction was like no no i'm a serious man i'm not gonna go on some reality tv show like these jokers but then i thought about it and it was a great piece with on our exit and it would solve those two problems so now we're going to try the night i'm excited about this this is amazing by what does this cost it's free it's like i got a low self-esteem product well i know it's free from you but like it's no i mean like no i mean it's it's free on the shelf too like this is 50 bucks like everybody's gotta go get their hogsworth like literally it's way too cheap for like three for 150 i think i said on the site yeah online so it's you'll be able to buy this in the shelves between 40 and 50 bucks depending on the markets we're just rolling it out it's very good that's congratulations that's awesome thank you this is because you were able to buy this stuff cheap earlier so you can sell it cheaper still now it's good huh that's yeah my cfo who's jewish doesn't like the pricey says we should get more margin that is this is my catholic side i'm like alex alex karp who co-found a pounder with is also a jew he said you got to be careful making your cfo at you because they can get tricky on you i kind of want a wasp man you're in vermont find a wasp i know i know but but then i they burned them out and like you know there you go that's fair you need it fast the no my cfo named josh moskowitz is um smart guy uh moskowitz is one of the facebook co-founders to m.i.t and worked at the bridgewater on on on macro that's the stereotype this is 1928 this is 1928 so this is have you ever tasted something hundreds well i know you're a rich guy so you probably have not from the specific year 1928 but i have to have some old old armagnocs oldest vintage in here is from 1928 but this is a blend also is steel so you're getting the only other spirit in the world listen to this joe the only other spirit in the world that you're able to get like you know louis trey the fancy bottle of the stuff there's a drop of a hundred year old spirit that's like three four or five g's this is i brought this to the american whiskey drinker as a gift this is a rye whiskey paired with some ancient french brandies up to 100 years old you're gonna say well how much is from 1928 My wife loves old Calvados.

32:26That's funny, yeah. So this is the greatest blend I ever put together from like, no one would ever do this. You have to be totally... I love it. My wife, I bought her some really old Calvados. She loves. So when we drink, we drink that. Cheers. I'm going to try this. This is a little punchier. This is good. You could taste the apples. That's really cool. That's really cool. Amazing. Yeah, my boobie passed last year at 103. She was born in 1920. And so we used to, sometimes with my cousins, when we'd see her, we'd bring like an old 1920 drink. This is better though. You've mixed it really well.

32:58Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. That's amazing. Is this, is stuff like this for sale too? Or is it only? Yeah, you can buy, you can buy this. This is, this is like, so this is the entree into the world of Bacca, which is a house of vintages. Yep. So to give me an idea, right? You think of like, okay, you buy a 12 year Macallan. Every year is the same 12 year Macallan. Yeah, so there's not a vintage. There's not a difference. So we're bringing vintages to the world of spirits. The high-end spirits do vintages, yeah. Yeah. But not really much. You should buy a vintage. So that which has driven the wine world for centuries, as you know, is single estates and vintages.

33:36When I went to Diageo a long time ago, they don't do this, but there's a special thing with that. In 1991, Lago Long was particularly good, and we bottled after 28 years. Same thing. So that's the idea. The bottle of 82 Armagnac that I gave you, if you didn't have it right after a, what was it? I was drinking tequila with margarita last night. Shame on you. No, I tried it again. I tried it again. It was good before I went to bed. We had to celebrate before I went to sleep. It's a good night. It was fun. It was fun. I looked at my watch at a certain point. It was like 11 o 'clock. There was, man.

34:04Got to get some rest. What time did you guys... It was locked in. People left about 1 a.m. The election was done by 11. You can kind of tell. Yeah, yeah. We were looking at your doohickey, which you were telling me about the betting. The poly market, the betting markets. They knew. They were all right this time. They were right a week or two ahead of time, which is impressive. So these guys, these guys, when money's on the line, people get good at this stuff. They focus. They focus. The data it averages out. Markets are powerful things, man. You know that. Teach us more about whiskey. So, so vintages, just like with wine, matter for whiskey as well.

34:33Like what, like what are, like, are there certain years that are best for? Absolutely. Like tell us what years are the most. The crown jewels in the world of spirits are really Armagnac, right? So to give you an idea, like why should you drink Armagnac if you're pulling out an interesting bottle? Well, I think I mentioned it to you last night when we were talking to the senator from Wyoming.

34:54The bourbon distilleries, whiskey distilleries, they run 24-7. They make amazing product and there's nothing wrong with it, but they run 24-7. Yep. The Armagnacs are the result of maybe three or four different days of distillation. So that that bottle of 82 that I gave you, your birth year, wouldn't have been produced in the year of 1982. It would have been produced based on the harvest of that year. So in terms of rarity, it's like 0.000000, one one hundredth at least. And what is Armagnac for a year or so? Armagnac is, you've heard of Cognac. So it's a French, it's distilled from wine, southwest region of France.

35:30Oldest region, oldest recorded spirit in human history, 1307, I think, by a cardinal of the church who was sent up by the Pope to do a catalog of what does Christendom make. This is a great part of the church. They were very good at these things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. you would also you would also mock one of the lines that he writes back to the to the uh pope he was like holy father i found the greatest stuff and you can tell he's used to drinking like five six seven percent alcohol wine and now he's getting hit with 50 you know percent alcohol and he's like whacked while he's writing the letter and he's like it makes everything so much better you feel great the it recalls memories you feel bigger and and it enlivens the member and enlivens the member what did he mean what member was he talking about he was supposed to be i mean he must have been drunk to be writing about a boner to the church yeah maybe it was a liberal pope wow that's impressive isn't that cool that's impressive like no shit these guys had a little wow so it's the old so why doesn't armagnac make it out of uh the region why this is the oldest category on earth this is the best stuff you can get yeah why doesn't he make it out people there love it no one knows about it huh why don't they know about it because there's not enough fit to sell it before or what kind of i'll tell you the story the the so major french port in the southwest of france that sends a lot of wine out begins with the b bordeaux bordeaux um in the hundred years war is taken by the english right so they got used to that and the english then develop an empire yep the the lafitte was the thing all the aristocrats knew because that was like the nice thing from Bordeaux yeah and so the wine while the wines were flowing out of Bordeaux the spirit that was contiguous to the Bordeaux region and connected to the the river the Gironde the was Armagnac I mean sorry was was uh was Cognac yeah so Cognac gets spread throughout the world Cognac was called back then Champagne Cognac I remember they called it Champagne for some reason for a long time they got confused a lot of the old bottles have you seen that There is a Champagne Grande Cognac, which is, to tell you the truth, I don't know.

37:43Yeah, all the old ones I've seen all say Champagne. There's a Champagne region within Cognac. I believe, right? So now I'm in an area that I'm not 100 % in, but I believe. There is still a Champagne Cognac. Got it. I believe. But the Armagnac's not getting sent out because it's not there. It's landlocked. It's not connected to the river. number one number two so during the hundred years war there's all this strife if you're the fourth son of an english duke right the what are you getting bubkis yes you gotta go do business primogenitor so first son takes you gotta go do business it's a great thing to go do business you gotta do the business you gotta go to war the first son goes into the takes the plot right inherits the you get everything you get everything second son family's got connect connections he goes to the church third son you know he becomes a bishop the third one you know gets a commission at some point you got to give him you got to give that yeah i gotta go work you run out of patronage in the family your connections at court run out and you'll be like kid sorry you're sucking hind tit you got to go you got to go you know we're doing a war uh over there go over there and see what you can figure out yeah the this is hennessy basically so you had this hustling blood that goes into the area so you got hungry immigrant blood effectively during the hundred years war that go in there they're trying to merchant they're trying to trade ba ba ba ba whereas armagnac landlocked and rich so food in the belly yeah no need for them to go hustle you need to go hustle you know you have a nice foie gras the so why go run around and so you know until i showed up amazing i want to i want to loop back so you so you showed up you got all this you're building the business uh you know you're in vermont what are you doing with the college what's the next step there so by the place in you know covid time you ever want to go nuts buy a college in the middle of nowhere and try to figure out what to do with it and have a bunch of people give you their ideas is it still like is it like shut down for now not functioning it basically it looked like when we bought it like the rapture had taken place and you know pencils were on the tables etc yeah i saw a couple of these there's a bunch of buildings they're for sale for pretty cheap because because the things blew up basically you got to go in and fix it now yeah so uh i mean bought it bought it super right the the but you know the maintenance on a basically a town of its own that's the problem is you got either maintain it or knock them down right your your basis goes up quick the so um i really thought about it i mean i had this moment when i made a couple of bucks right i got very sad um and i was expecting the exact opposite the which i think began a bit of a i would say a spiritual journey the business like there's nothing that i can build on this earth that's going to endure people talk about legacy you know put up the statues the statues come down the the everything goes to dust in the end like what the hell's the point the feeling sad basically and pointless and you know all that.

40:48And so I looked at and what's happening with our civilization, I think while it's a very happy day and we have hope in the republic and our civilization, et cetera, today the trajectory is, I don't think necessarily a completely good one. I don't think that's a contentious statement. And the fraying of the moral fabric of society and the creation of the basic building blocks of civilization itself, which is a family. We're losing a lot of these traditions that kind of were core to our civilization. Yes, yes. And actually provided the very basis for you and I to be sitting here right now, which is basically functioning society.

41:28So what creates functioning society? I think it goes back to the great faiths, right? Yours, mine. Although I will still work on converting you because we want to get you to heaven. I got to do it. It's a duty. The, the is, we got to go back to these deep fundamental basics. And so the school is dedicated to teaching those and, um, it's faith-based, particularly Catholic. The, uh, which I know it was starting by Jews again. The, um, when you practice the faith. We don't try to convert others. So we're safe to bring it and include a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. It's a difference. You're a very elite.

42:09Well, we, we, we, we gotta, we gotta try to pick up market share. Yeah. That's fair. Because the salvation of our souls and yours is a good incentive. It's a good incentive. Yeah, it is. But making a serious point here. I realized in a couple of years, we started a school, which started for our kids. um the vision is to bring together to create a community that is driven with a mission of not just um profit and abundance to use that word which we'll have plenty of the but to like really creating a flame of revival um where the deep values that you come there whether you're a, whether you're a Jew, whether you're a Hindu, whatever, you'll see good things in action.