Charlie Nelson

00:00Trust20 is the new standard of restaurant safety and diner comfort. Trust20 restaurants are part of a national network of restaurants that meet a high standard of cleanliness and safety, giving diners confidence in the measures you're taking to keep them safe. Trust20 restaurants receive expert guidance, operational resources, and benefit from diner-focused promotion on behalf of the Trust20 network of participants. So how do you get certified? It's easy. Go to Trust20.co and request a certification appointment. A Trust20 specialist will reach out and arrange a visit. The specialist conducts a 60-minute review and consultation according to Trust20 tactics. If adjustments are needed, the Trust20 specialist will provide guidance to assist. Now that you're certified, have peace of mind knowing that you're doing everything you can to keep your restaurant safe. And start enjoying the benefits of Trust20 certification. Remember, visit Trust20.co and request your certification appointment today.

01:10Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City. And welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll and I am your host. And we have got a fantastic story for you today. Our guest today is Charlie Nelson, who is the founder, refounder, if you have it, of Nelson's Greenbrier Distillery. They produce the Nelson's Greenbrier Tennessee Whiskey as well as Belmead Bourbon. And his story is one for the ages, ladies and gentlemen. I just I was telling somebody just yesterday about his story and they were like, what? And I said, you got to listen. You got to listen to the show on Wednesday because you're going to love it.

02:11Really just like such an amazing guy. Just enjoyed talking with him. We talked for a long time, but man, so much fun. So anyway, I'm excited to bring this to you guys. But first I will continue to tell you about Trust 20. They are doing amazing things out there. It's so hard to know exactly what to do in your restaurant. Are we doing the right thing? Is there some way to measure whether or not we're doing the right thing? And yes, yes, the answer is yes, there is. Trust 20. Trust the number 20.co is the website you need to go to to to make sure you're doing all the right stuff. You're keeping your customers as well as your staff safe. That's the name of the game right now, right? Safety. Got to be safe. Also, I would love it if you guys out there would use the hashtag Nashville hot list. We are putting together our hot list for November. And I would love to know where you've been going, where the newest hottest places are.

03:15Are you getting to go food from the Continental? I'm so excited because Hathorn is opening tonight. Brand new back and they're not just doing to goes anymore. John Stevenson, friend of the show, love the guy. He is such an amazing dude. Please go out, support Hathorn. They're over there off Charlotte Pike next to the Clementine. So excited to have him back open. Lots of cool stuff going on out there, y'all. Let me know about it. Use the hashtag Nashville hot list and hopefully your favorite restaurant can make it on the list for the month of November. Remember, we had the number one restaurant in our city last month was Yolan in the Joseph Hotel. Number two was Bastion and number three, Lachlan Table, who was the best restaurant choice for the readers. The Nashville scene and the best of Nashville issue. It just happened.

04:16So we are really excited to bring this episode to you today. We have an all new episode tomorrow of the Roundup. It's going to be live with Delia, Joe Ramsey and myself Thursday afternoon on Facebook and YouTube. We've got a we've got a pretty good show. We're going to be highlighting the 12th South neighborhood and some of the local restaurants as well as a new segment on brand with Brandon. See what that's like. It's kind of my version of what's the Delia. We also have T-shirts and hats now for sale. Every little bit helps support us. We thank you all very much. You can find our website www.nashvillerestaurantradio.com and I have talked way too long. Let's jump right in with Mr. Charlie Nelson. I hope you guys enjoy this one. Let's go. With much excitement, I want to welcome in Charlie Nelson, who is the founder and refounder of Nelson's Greenbrier Distillery.

05:17Welcome, Charlie. Thank you. I'm glad to be here. Appreciate you having me on. We are so excited just to kind of have you. I want to learn all about your story, all about what you do on a daily basis. I just want to jump right in with your story because I feel like I've heard your story a few times and I think it's well documented. A lot of people know your story, but will you give us just like the, you know, can you do like a five minute version of kind of how Nelson's Greenbrier came to be? Because it's such a fantastic story. But for those of you who haven't heard it, coming from you, will you just, let's just do that and then we'll go from there. Is that cool? Yeah. Yeah, totally. And, you know, if you want to go deeper into details, I could do the five hour story or the five minute or the five seconds. So, yeah, it starts with my great, great, great grandfather, Charles Nelson, who came over from Germany with literally nothing but the clothes on his back in 1850.

06:20His father actually drowned on the journey over and was taken to the bottom of the Atlantic with the family's fortune and gold sewn into his clothing. And he, Charles and the rest of the family make it to New York. Charles makes soap and candles for two years, moves to Cincinnati, becomes a butcher, and then around 1858 moves to Nashville and starts wholesale grocery business where he had three great selling products as coffee, meat and whiskey. His coffee being delivered by a guy named Joel Cheek, who went on to take that blend a few blocks away to the Maxwell House Hotel, became a pretty popular brand of coffee. And the story is that his butcher's name was Mr. Hill, who went on to start his own grocery business. But Charles, he was just bottling and selling whiskey at the time. He was one of the first to bottle and sell whiskey rather than selling it by the barrel or the jug.

07:23And so realized the demand far exceeds his supply, buys the distillery that's producing it, a patent for improved distillation, greatly expands and becomes one of the largest distilleries in the country, by far the largest in Tennessee. And it was known as old number five because it was registered distillery number five, which the federal government recognized and gave us an historic designation of DSP Distilled Spirits Plant TN Tennessee five. So we're really proud of that. He produced the original Tennessee whiskey, Nelson's Greenbrier Tennessee whiskey, which is what will become our signature product. He also produced Bell Mead at one of 30 labels he produced. But like by 1885 was selling about two million bottles a year, which is kind of crazy. That's a lot more than we're selling today. A lot of whiskey. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, there weren't that many people in the country then either, you know.

08:25But anyway, Charles died in 1891 his wife Louisa took over as one of the only women to run a distillery back in the day, which is something that we're incredibly proud of. And she ran the distillery until 1909 when statewide prohibition hit Tennessee forcing us to close our doors. And then growing up, I didn't know about the distillery. And I just discovered it 14 years ago when my dad went in with three of his buddies to buy a cow worth of meat from a butcher. And, you know, we're on our way to we go Andy and I my brother and I we go with our dad to pick up our quarter of a cow on our way there running low on fuel stop to fill up that the gas station there's this historical marker that says Nelson's Greenbrier Distillery one mile east on Long Branch Road Charles Nelson opened the Greenbrier Distillery. We're like, holy crap, that's crazy. I'm going to stop you for one second. Did you know previous to stopping there that your family there's a lineage in your family and you guys used to have this distillery.

09:31And then you get there and you're kind of you kind of know going into the Greenbrier area that that's there or were you completely because that's the part I didn't know like, are you do you learn about your history from them. Yeah, so I, I didn't know anything about it. My brother Andy says that he remembers maybe hearing something about it. My dad said that he remembered hearing a little bit about it when when he was younger and like being at family gatherings and, you know, his dad and his uncles and stuff been like if we could just find the old spring, we could bring back the family business. But I did not. I actually I went to college in California and I still had a semester of college left when we discovered it. And I, to be honest, I just, I wasn't super close with my family and I, I wanted to get away. I wanted to give it like go as far away from home as possible and just like travel the world and stuff like I just I didn't want to be in one place.

10:41So I wasn't even that interested in my family history until this point. So this was kind of this was kind of just a complete turning point in my life. So okay, so I thought there's a lot there. But so I'm sorry to interrupt you. You're right in the middle of the story. You're at the gas station and you see the sign that says Nelson's Green Bar and the guy's like, yeah, okay, go ahead. Yeah. So one mile east, Long Branch Road, Charles Nelson opened the Green Bar. So at that point it was like, it was like, I didn't really even know if like, it was like, okay, that's kind of a common name. Like, it didn't really click yet. And so we go into the butcher. He happens to live a mile east, Chuck Grissom. He was amazing. Big, big man. His calves were like the size of my torso.

11:43But anyway, so he shows us, we asked him if he knew anything about the distillery and he shows us across the street where there's like this old barrel warehouse that's like, this old barrel warehouse that's still standing. The original spring still running. We drank from the spring and then he sends us to a nearby historical society where there were two original bottles with my name on. And just like every hair on my body stood up. And my brother and I look at each other just like, oh my gosh, this, this is what we're here to do. And, you know, it was just kind of like a moment of clarity and like being struck by lightning. But did you know at that time, you said all the hair stood up. Did you know that that was your great, great, great grandfather? Because you're only like an hour removed from realizing that there's a distillery. And then you see it to like put all that together.

12:44Are you like on your phone Googling like who's Charles Nelson Greenbauer Distillery? Holy shit. This is my great, great grandfather. Kind of. I mean, I'm trying to think if I even had an iPhone at the time. I don't, I don't know if I did. I guess was. Or if you even had reception out there. Yeah, right. But, you know, at the at that historical society, they had a bunch of newspapers and, you know, we were just like reading through everything. And this lady, Sheila Watts, who was the head of the Historical Society, we start talking. And she was like, she mentioned that a couple of other Nelson's had come to see her and seen like over the years. And so like and we started talking with my dad about it and everything. And, you know, I wasn't that close with my dad at that point either. You know, so anyway, we we realized that, yeah, like we did the, you know, we went back and sort of did the math.

13:48It was like, OK, yeah, that was our great, great, great grandfather. That is such an amazing story. Did you do you even like drink bourbon? Was that like a thing to you? I mean, how old are you at this time? You said you have one more semester left in college. Were you 22, 23? I was I was 21 or 22. Yeah. And of course, I didn't drink any before I turned 21. Of course, but you studied it. Did you experiment? A little. I mean, I just I enjoyed reading the labels. You too. Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't alone. I thought I was weird for doing that. I. Yeah. So, I mean, when I when I was in college in L.A., you know, I like I kind of I enjoyed drinking whiskey. Like first starting out, you know, I I would drink just like, you know, not good.

14:48And then I then I was like, well, I'm from Tennessee. I should drink Tennessee whiskey. And so but I was like, but I don't want to drink Jack because that's too obvious. So I started drinking George Dickel and I really like that. And I, you know, visited the Dickel distillery. That was one of the first that we visited after we discovered it. And and then a friend of mine, he was drinking Knob Creek. And and then I started drinking Maker's Mark and and then kind of just like went up from there. That was before discovering the distillery. And then I bartended. I studied abroad in Paris, Paris, France, not not Tennessee. But and while I was studying abroad in France, I was a bartender there. And so, you know, people when we would talk about Tennessee, there were there were like there were three things. Yeah, there was Jack Daniels, Elvis and then Johnny Alliday, a famous French singer who had a song that was like, Quelque chose de Tennessee.

16:00And so like everybody knows Johnny Alliday that, you know, he's got like this. I probably totally sang that wrong. But kind of shows to Tennessee. And so his song was all about like there's a music video and there's like scenes of of I think Tennessee, like I remember seeing the video. But anyway, it was called Something About Tennessee was his song. So like a lot of French folks just kind of like I think there's a little bit of sort of romantic notion of Tennessee. So what was that car like? What was the car ride home? Right. So you get that you're probably trunks by full of meat. Right. You've got to have a cow back there. Quarter of a cow. Quarter of a cow. But you figure out during this trip, you're with your brother, Andy, right? Who's your older brother by like 16 months, something like that. Exactly. Yep. Yep. Your older brother, Andy's in the car with you and your dad, who you said you're not super close with.

17:02I won't get into all of that, but you're in the car driving back to your house. You got this half quarter cow in the car. What is that conversation like? So, I mean, we started talking about how we were like, I mean, there's only two other distilleries that we know of in Tennessee, Jack Daniels and George Dickel. And we're like, how many distilleries are there even in the country? And like we couldn't even think of like more than a few more. And we're like, this is wide open. And what year is this? 2006. So, yeah. So, I mean, at that time, there were maybe a dozen distilleries in the country making whiskey after doing a little bit of research, at least that we knew of. And, you know, I remember my brother said something funny.

18:05He was like, God, Lee, could you imagine if it had never shut down? Because like, you know, we see that we were selling 380,000 gallons a year in 1885. 1885. That's crazy. And like that was like 20 times the size of any other distillery in Tennessee, especially any notable brands that you might know of. Oh, yeah. And it was like, could you imagine if we had never shut down? And he was like, gosh, I'd probably be just like a terrible person and like have my own private island and like have a vanity plate that said something stupid like Whiskey King or something. And I was like, yeah, I'm glad that that's not the case because we'd probably be just like rotten. Not that, you know, it was just joking, but not that there's anything wrong with, you know, generational wealth or anything.

19:10But anyway, so you're not alienating anybody who's listening to this show, by the way. You're fine. Everybody else is like, yeah, you know, we're good. Yeah. So, I mean, we were just kind of joking about that and we like, we're like, okay, I mean, this is like, this is it. This is what we're going to do. But how do we get started? And so we started just like, you know, my dad was talking about like just like people that he knew that maybe we could go to and, you know, talk to family members and then, you know, we knew some folks. At like at Brown Foreman and at Jack Daniels and like, so we started setting up meetings with folks at pretty much all the distilleries in Tennessee and Kentucky that we could get in touch with. How long after that car ride home where you guys are like, wow, well, let's figure this thing out.

20:11You probably have some more conversations after that. You still have a semester. Did you go back to school? Did you finish that last semester? Yeah, so I actually, it's kind of crazy. So I mentioned that I studied abroad in France and I and then I like traveled around a lot of Europe and I took time off and I traveled around Southeast Asia and I fell in love with traveling. And so traveling is amazing. Yeah, yeah. And like I had been having these arguments with my dad about like, I didn't care to finish school because I was like, man, like real world practical knowledge is way better than theoretical knowledge. Like who needs school when you can just like actually see the real world? And I kind of agree with that. Yeah, yeah. And ultimately he convinced me that the combination of theoretical and practical knowledge or you know is is more powerful than either or and so I consented.

21:18But anyway, I wrote a paper to try and get a grant to go back to Europe and it was like the Eugene Escalier grant that the school, Loyola Marymount University where I went, they gave it out and I wrote a paper and I won the grant. And it was to study Paleolithic cave paintings in Spain, Italy and France. And so for two months, but the grant was for I think $2,000 and the plane ticket alone was like $1,000. So that's why I was in Nashville trying to make a little bit of money before my trip. So, you know, shortly after discovering it. I go to France, Spain and Italy, and I tour around all these like caves and study cave paintings and I actually in Italy.

22:25In an area like I guess north of Milan near Brescia in a place called Capo di Ponte. I actually ended up kind of stumbling upon this guy, Emanuele Natti who was like the world's foremost scholar on like you know Paleolithic cave paintings and we, we, I'm kind of going off topic here. You're good. But anyway you like he was Italian and he didn't speak English but he spoke French and I didn't speak Italian, but I spoke French so we kind of bonded talking about and I studied like philosophy and at the Sorbonne in Paris and so we talked about like French philosophy and poetry and he asked if I wanted to study under him. And so I told him that I was like, man, I would love to but I'm thinking about like starting this whiskey business. And so we ended up like having a little bit of Jack Daniels and you know parting ways and everything.

23:35I finished up my trip. And then I went back to school finished up my last semester. I took a business class. And that was like everybody had to write a business plan. And so I, like, and everybody thought I was crazy. Like, all the people in my class, like, there were a bunch of, you know, girls from Southern California who were writing business plans to start like little, you know, boutiques, clothing shops and stuff and here I am like saying I want to start this whiskey business and everybody was just like laughing at me. And who's laughing now. Yeah. Exactly. But my teacher was great. Dr. Kaz. He was great. And I think he actually passed a few years ago but he was he was awesome. And he was very encouraging and he was like, man, you're going to do this and your business plan in college.

24:41Yeah, and and learned of course everything that I needed to know about business during that one semester. Of course, so I'm going to take you back to Spain and Italy, real quick, because I haven't had this opportunity on Nashville restaurant radio yet. I want to touch on Paleolithic cave paintings for just a moment. Because we're an educational channel we like to talk about all things. Give us the one thing we need to know right now about Paleolithic cave paintings if you're just a novice out there like me because I'm a novice on those things. What's something I need to know about them, and then we'll move on. Well, so I would argue that it's like the, the, the cradle of human culture, that it's like it's the beginning point of, you know, it's the first way in which humans really started expressing themselves and communicating, you know and passing stories and myths about, you know, you know how they would hunt and best practices for hunting and how they would teach their children, and it was like sort of part of the beginning of human cultural development.

26:06And there were these amazing caves like the cave, I didn't actually get to visit the caves that last go because too many people had been visiting them and they didn't want the paintings to be disrupted but some, the caves Alaska or in France and I visited the caves in, in Spain at Altamira and also in the south of France, which was really cool. I mean they're, it's, it's basically like, you know, our artwork, but also like, you know, books. How old are those paintings just for some like 13,000 to 20,000 years old, something like that. What were they used to paint on the walls. Like so blood or berries. Yeah, yeah blood berries, really anything and like, you know, there were a lot there, you can see like, if you look up, you know, some of the, like the cave paintings or whatever they're one of the more common things that you'll see like just like the hands first like where you know they would maybe have like a hollowed out stick or something and like, you know, spray through and like, get the outline of their hands.

27:32And then they started, you know, drawing with and like with rocks and, and, and, you know, whatever they could use but Yeah, and some. That's good. Yeah, in Italy they did a lot more like hammer chiseling in anyway. Well, I just, you know, you mentioned the going around and having experiences in life and Good Will Hunting is one of like my favorite movies I've seen, or Robin Williams sits there with me because I figured you out, you can spout off Voltaire you can tell anything in a book is but you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel, and you've never left the city you haven't experienced life and I'm just thinking like, I've had a few of those experiences where I've been somewhere in the Hall of Versailles and you're like, I just was like, kind of smells kind of dingy in here and it has this thing like I can imagine that lifetime experience of being in those caves and looking at those things and actually being there or, you know, it's just a, it's a cool experience.

28:36I love that. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Alright, so you wrote the paper you get out of college, you get with your brother, and you guys do like this. Hey, what are you good at? What are you good at? What do you want to do? What do I want to do? I mean, it was kind of, yeah, it was kind of natural, like we kind of knew, I guess, like, so once once I graduate and move back to Nashville, and we work on refining the business plan and trying to raise money and at the time I first started bartending, we're actually bussing tables and then bartending at a place in Hillsborough Village called the Trace. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right next to Cabana. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I bartended a lot of brunches.

29:37And, yeah, one unforgettable experience was where we ran out of champagne flutes for mimosas, and I started pouring, you know mimosas into wine glasses and Ken started yelling at me because he was like you're pouring too, you're giving too much champagne. And I was like, man, it's the same exact amount, just in a different size glass. Like, anyway, eccentric dude. Yeah. Is he still in Nashville? Does he have a restaurant or anything? I not to my knowledge. I mean, not to my knowledge. I know that I used to work with them. I used to sell the Trace all their produce back in the day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah art and sunset grill that was like the most happenin cool like Hillsborough village b in the day to go to Jackson there go to the villager and play dark hang out th is there was Jonathans before i was Sam's, and boss goes, and you could just hang out in the village and it was totally like the local. That's where you hung out that's where you hung out that was the place in my opinion yeah I loved it yeah it was great I loved it too and I lived right near there too so sorry we got off on a tangent yeah um but uh anyway you were bartending at the trade

31:37while you guys were figuring all this out yeah and um I I had actually um I had gotten in a uh like a scooter accident in France um in 2004 and my shoulder was still like destroyed and I finally was like okay now that I'm not traveling anymore now that I'm in Nashville and I've got my parents around they can help me pay for for shoulder surgery so I had shoulder surgery and then I couldn't bartend anymore so uh we my brother my dad and I we continued refining our business plan and trying to raise money um and we were you know like nights and weekends um trying to uh still learn as much as we could about the distillery and the or the distilling business and the and just whiskey and and going around to the distillery spent a lot of time in state and county archives and um you know my brother was uh working as a video editor um and and he was learning he was kind of focusing more on the production side of things and the operations side of things where I was focusing a little bit more on the sales and marketing side of things just because like our personalities I'm a little bit more outgoing and and um you know that sort of thing and and he's and a little bit more of like a big picture general thinker and whereas he's a lot more of like attention to detail perfectionist and that sort of thing and um so and also for some reason like there was some law which I don't think is the case anymore where like you can only have one person uh who is uh to be officially raising money within a 12-month period and so um I was the one uh started out

33:41um actually calling on people to raise my I don't fully understand that but uh for some reason I don't think that's the case anymore yeah there's probably a ton of laws you had to uh figure out going into this business I imagine right yeah yeah a ton and and ever-changing laws and and like um I remember there was also you know we could only raise money from accredited investors and then there was actually a law that was passed um that uh sort of negated that and um like after we had raised some money but um and so this this was like leading up to and then during the recession too so it was brutal um and um I was I was working a day job um helping uh teach Arabic language and culture to soldiers before going to Iraq through a software program um which was kind of crazy um yeah I mean that's like a 30-minute conversation right there yeah yeah it was it was crazy um I spent a little bit of time in Kuwait and Dubai and um it was really fun I actually ended up becoming like a voice actor for uh a soldier uh playing I was Arif Lopez uh Sergeant Lopez uh yeah I on what uh on the it was called Talon Tactical Arabic Language Online Network um and so we it's a long story um but ultimately like you know during the Iraq War you know there were a lot of different companies that were trying to get government contracts for whatever reason um and

35:44uh at Little Planet Learning uh had done a long time ago a Chinese language program that was teaching Chinese uh students how to uh speak English and then it was supposed to be swap where teaching uh American students how to speak Chinese uh never would have guessed it but apparently the Americans weren't interested in learning Chinese um and but anyway it was a successful program and so the government then came to Little Planet based here in Nashville to to work on on Talon got a tiny contract um like that was a fraction of what other companies had and then but uh we were able to actually uh effectively teach people like I learned just working on the program I learned how to speak um read write and and speak Arabic not necessarily understand it all the time but I didn't even have any formal training um and um do you speak I mean I I used to be like totally fluent in French but I haven't really spoken it since like 2004-2005 so and then I French a little Farsi Arabic yeah I mean and I could say pleasant trees in probably 15 or so languages you know a little bit of Thai a little bit of Lao a little Vietnamese and like I could you know we have a lot of Ethiopian uh Uber drivers and stuff and so I can say you know like thank like almost say good nada you know thank you and nice um just a lot of like a few words of a lot of different languages I guess how many countries have you been to how many countries have you traveled to do you have a couple um yeah probably I I'm somewhere in a box I've got like little flags of

37:46most all of the countries that I've been to but I don't know probably 30 or so 35 40 maybe I don't know I'm not really sure to be honest are you married uh no I'm engaged uh congratulations yeah thank you thank you we've pushed back our um our wedding to next next October actually we're planning to get married in Mexico so nice what part yeah uh Tulum oh I did my honeymoon in Tulum oh nice yeah how was it like oh it's fantastic it's one of the most beautiful parts of the Yucatan in my opinion it just it's it's not crowded like Cancun the beaches are gorgeous in Cancun but Tulum is just it's a lot more chill it's a lot more chill it's a little farther south kind of just the water's gorgeous everybody everything's more laid back it's really nice cool you'll have a blast I'm sure so okay sorry I get off track here because there's so much stuff going on um let's fast forward a little bit because we're in that that 35 minute mark and I know that I don't want to cut me too long it's gorgeous outside and I want you to get out and enjoy some of this day so let's fast forward this has been an amazing story so far I'm like beyond just bewildered that you're going to pick up a cow and all of a sudden you've realized your dream I don't know how many people in their world get to stop somewhere randomly and go oh my gosh I have this amazing lineage and we're gonna do it and then actually went back had the wherewithal the energy the whatever it was to put it together make it happen do you what's the first thing that you do do you find a a space to create a story because if I'm tell me if I'm wrong the bourbon distilling process is you've got to identify your recipe you've got to get your grains together and if you're actually producing it yourself you have

39:46to distill the product and then you got to put it in a barrel and it's got to sit there for years and years so the the waiting game the the the expense of creating this bourbon your own greenbrier tennessee whiskey or whatever what you're doing takes a long time you get a bunch of capital then you got to put it in barrels and just sit there and wait and it's like what the hell like how do you make money during that time did you guys make a vodka like is popular the pennington said they're never making vodka and now they're they're doing pickers is that where belmeade was arrived like let's fast forward to that point yeah absolutely so uh and you're you're exactly right like how that and that's why it was so difficult to raise money because you know before this big whiskey boom i was going around saying hey you know invest all of this money and you know just trust me in a few years we'll start resurrect or we'll start generating revenue uh but we're not going to generate any revenue for at least a few years so investors work lots of money yeah we're gonna spend lots of it but uh anyway um it's like a savings bond yeah so uh and you know fresh out of college barely of drinking age with no business experience so anyway in doing a lot of research we found that belmeade was one of 30 labels that charles nelson produced and that uh he produced it in conjunction with another company that um he actually aged and bottled belmeade while another company distilled it so like okay that works perfectly in line with our history and so uh we found an expert dave pickerel who had um been the former master distiller at makers mark and and he had actually been consulting with willett uh who was his first consulting job yep uh after

41:49makers and then and then we met him and and we signed him up um and we then put up literally everything that we owned uh mostly my parents house to personally guarantee a loan uh to get started sourcing barrels working with contracted distillery to produce belmead bourbon which was meant to be did you say your parents put up their house for this thing yeah yeah wow okay good yeah um and we actually just uh last year um may first of last year was the uh first time we were able to get uh take our personal guarantees off of uh the loan um which was a huge um load off of all of our backs um and because that was causing an enormous amount of pressure and challenges uh from you know what 06 07 08 something like that until 2019 um personally guaranteeing literally all of the uh death yeah yeah so it's just a fascinating thing to me that you're you know you had mentioned earlier your relationship wasn't that strong with your family and now you identify this a few years later they're putting they're all in and you're all in kind of together with this thing and i wonder you know has that been an amazing thing for your family has it brought you guys all back together uh definitely i mean it's it's been uh it has definitely brought um our family a lot closer and um you know working with andy my brother as a as a business partner you know obviously we worked very closely with our dad for a long time and and on the whole thing and then sean another uh older brother uh he was in

43:53seattle for 26 years or so 20 i can't remember exactly how long and he moved back to nashville and he's working with us now as well nice um and and just some other you know some other family members ended up investing and it's just yeah i mean it's it's it's definitely brought you know not just our nuclear family closer but some of our extended family as well and it's been um just a pretty incredible experience so we were talking about belmead and you said that's the first thing it was kind of part of what they did and they did it with another company and so that's the first bourbon that you created when you put on the market was belmead bourbon wildly successful in my opinion i don't know financially what it was for you but i know when it hit the market here i was working in restaurants and everybody was everybody was drinking it did really well that was yeah yeah it was still going and yeah yeah and and so belmead was meant to be a bridge to you know it was like a a proof of concept sort of because nobody would invest in the building of the distillery idea and you know laying down barrels in that long slow process so you know we had to prove that we could make a good product that we could sell a product that we could run a business that we could be trusted um and so i think that we had some success with that then we were able to raise some money build out our own distillery start laying down barrels of our greenbrier tennessee whiskey and we we suddenly laid down our first barrel in 2014 um and then we sold our first bottle october 1st of 2019 which turns out was a terrible time to launch a new brand you don't want to launch a new brand going into the uh last three months of the year october november december but we wanted just because like in the industry it's known as ond october november december and it's like everybody works you know up until that point and plans

45:57all year and then ond it's all about execution and it's like you talk to a distributor or a retailer it's like don't talk to me it's ond and then here we are like you know here we are launching and then also for like bars and restaurants a lot of places have already put in place their fall cocktail menus and stuff so we we weren't really able to get much play there and so january february is when we really started building and like ond's got to be better than than 2020 right yeah so we work we work we work for 13 years to get to this point to launch our signature brand and then like we're like okay we're getting it out there in at the end of 2019 but we're really gonna start in earnest in 2020 we're gonna home run baby just yeah yeah and uh so we get all this stuff lined up we've got like all this work going on in january and february we've got some sponsorships lined up all these events lined up and we've got we're launching in noxville first of march and then the world shut down and um but imagine that i guess since you weren't like an established brand you've got to do all that marketing get your name out there gosh with everybody being at home when they designated liquor stores as an essential business you had to be like sweet but yeah but did it affect you i mean the everybody being closed i mean how much do you do on premise versus off premise um so yeah i mean we're a heavy on-premise leading brand um and and and the greenbrier tennessee whiskey eventually will become probably a little bit more off-premise than belmead has just because it's a little bit lower price point and

48:00um that sort of thing but um and i think that it will have just a broader appeal um but uh yeah i mean we were probably at least 60 on 40 off premise and and so with a brand new brand and very little awareness about it when when the pandemic hit and everything shut down with liquor stores and stuff a lot of them were doing like curbside pickup only or online sales only um and and people were buying they weren't shopping you know people have started shopping a little bit again but like they were only buying the brands that they know and trust and have been able to do so for a long time so sure i mean it hit us pretty pretty hard um and we're but things are picking back up again and um you know i uh have started um getting back out a little bit and and going to visit some stores and and i've seen that people that give it a try tend to you know buy it like it and buy it again so that's exactly what we want and again and i'll tell you for me i you know i've been kind of joking that i think that all my bottles of greenbrier tennessee whiskey have bottles holes in the bottom of the bottles because i can't keep see i can't seem to keep them full uh i don't know if you can see some of these bottles back here but you know they're just like uh empty bottle empty bottles um i've been enjoying quite a bit of them uh during the you know the times of covid i think that's a that's a question i would ask you i mean how do you manage that i mean gosh i i don't i'm i'm almost a year sober myself because i couldn't like if i was you

50:03i don't think i'd ever leave my house just having that kind of access to this much and like tastings and do you have like rules that you set for yourself like hey i'm not i've got to go to four different places day and taste bourbon i'm not going to do this like being in that business how do you manage that yeah it's a good question i mean i i wouldn't say i have like hard and fast rules but i you know i don't really you you won't see me i mean like you won't see me like chugging or you know i just you're doing shots yeah i mean like if somebody really wants to do a shot i i may every once in a while but like that's that's like you know i i want to sip and savor it and and you know enjoy the quality over the quantity but you know the it's something that i certainly need to be aware of so that it doesn't go too far because you know i i have been drinking quite a bit of the of whiskey during this time and but like you know i i'm not uh not exactly uh starting um it's it's a little bit a lot i guess uh rather than um i totally understand that let me ask you this question um because and this is just a random thing i believe um my own stuff like why i don't drink is a it's a whole different reason has nothing to do with you or anything that you're producing um it's a it's a me thing right so i've had an interview the other day where somebody was talking about big alcohol and how big alcohol has this responsibility they they're the ones that own the drink responsibly and they can do whatever do you guys do you ever feel any sort of like um responsibility or what are you do you guys do anything

52:08towards the promotion of responsible drinking do you feel like that's your responsibility to to do that and what because i i kind of feel like that's to the individual person but i think that being in the industry being an owner of a distillery how much of that gets put back on you do you get like people writing you letters being like hey you need to do this you need to do that and do you get any of that um i mean not not a ton uh we have a a little bit um but i mean i think it all comes down to like education and and just uh intentions and what you want to do like what what we want is to educate people and we want people to uh you know it's quality over quantity uh and and we like we're not trying to pressure anybody into into drinking but like if they are going to have a drink we'd like for them to think about what they're drinking and and um to just be cognizant of it and be intentional and and to learn about what they are consuming and you know and why are they consuming and just just to think a little bit more about it and i think that if you are uh more intentional and thoughtful then naturally you'll think okay maybe i shouldn't have one more uh you know or or multiple more maybe i should just like you know sit out and have have one glass and and think about it really enjoy it and have a good conversation and talk about where it's from or or or get to know you know your friends or family or strangers for that matter a little bit better and we want to you know like i i want to inspire people to get to know one another better and

54:10you're not going to get there if you're sloppy you know and and um so uh we we certainly uh want to encourage responsible drinking um and and for people to just just to be more thoughtful and intentional about what they're doing the decisions they make especially when it comes to what they're consuming yeah i just you know it's one of those weird things that this came up the other day and i just was thinking like as a guy with with kind of your story where this is something that every single day you know you're an entrepreneur you started a business you have this great idea with your family there's all of these things but like restaurants have the same level of responsibility like over serving people and just when you're serving a product that can make somebody make bad decisions or impair their judgment i just didn't know from europe like this that's another thing that comes up you're like hey i want to make it i want to make really good whiskey but there's that whole other side to it that could be a negative connotation i didn't know how you dealt with that or if that was something that you guys are very intentional with just kind of hey we want to and like you said education educating people on i think that the dangers of over indulging you know just hey when you drink too much these things can happen and you know continue to drink responsibly is important yeah absolutely so um speaking of the type of stuff you have and i don't want to get on that kind of a tangent we're just talking about and i'm sorry it just that went there um i'm sorry what it's an important it's an important topic it is you started with bell mead you you said in 13 14 years you finally in october of 2019 you released what are you pouring now if i went to liquor store let's do a little promotion let's do some plugs for the product that you have out there we're almost at the hour mark what can i go to the store today and buy and what's your favorite and just kind

56:15of give us the rundown of what you guys are doing right now yeah so um i mean what i am having like if i were to have a glass tonight i would probably uh pour some of the nelson's green briar tennessee whiskey um and it is it's the original tennessee whiskey it's what we started this company to produce or linkin county process we are using the linkin county process and uh which is you know filtering the whiskey through sugar maple charcoal prior to uh aging and uh interestingly enough some people back in the day apparently knew that as the robertson county process as well because robertson county is where uh nelson's green briar distillery was and and where you know it was kind of like the bardstown of its day okay but uh but yeah i mean it's just it's it's an approachable delicious has broad appeal is priced right you know it's at like high 20s you know 29.99 roughly on the shelf low 30s so like you know for some folks it could be their go-to for others it might be a you know special occasion zipper but um you know that's that's my consistent go-to right now and it's a weeded tennessee whiskey so i don't know of any other weeded tennessee whiskies on the market there may be that i just don't know about a touch of sweetness to it yep it's got a little bit of sweetness it's it's it's it's you know i hate i hesitate to use the word smooth but it is it's a smooth it's a little sweet tennessee whiskey it's got a little bit of like you know caramel vanilla cinnamon cocoa just like not bad it's it's great for this time of year for you know fall winter okay so i gotta get into that do you know like when because my brother's this guy right he used to make

58:15fun of me all the time because i i did my level one sommelier in 2003 and i loved wine and i would drink wine and i would say oh my god check this has bits of cruant and gooseberry and he go you even know what a fucking gooseberry is and i go you that's what it said in spectator you know and i was i was i was a total nerd about it and i will i will cop to it it was a passion of mine i wanted to taste like for you getting into this thing there's a culture around bourbon i've gone up to kentucky and we've done the bourbon trail multiple times you get up there and it feels like you're in like that nappa world where people start pulling out bottles like look at this bottle i got and there's some real snobbery that goes on in the bourbon whiskey world do you subscribe to any of that are you just kind of like a unit can you taste all of those different notes are you just kind of like i like it or not like it or where are you at yeah i mean i'm i'm more along the you know like it or don't like it but honestly and something that like charles nelson my triple great grandfather said is that some you know all whiskies are good some are just better and and you know that's i kind of subscribe to that you know um i appreciate just about all of them and you know there there are some certain notes that i can call and some like you know it's usually just like one predominant note that will come out when i take a sip or something um but like i you know i think that this is something it's a it's a product that like whether you're drinking our whiskey or someone else's it's just important to enjoy and life's life's too short to like you know be too you know snobby about things like like i want people to enjoy

01:00:17our whiskey however like if if that means drinking it neat just sipping on it one little sip at a time or or drinking it on the rocks great or if if it's making a cocktail awesome if you want to mix whatever you want you know whether it's a soda or coke or whatever and that's how you enjoy our whiskey great you know if that's how you enjoy it that's fine with me as long as you're enjoying i don't want you to like buy our product and not enjoy it you know if it gives you joy like you know dumping it down now that might be going a little too far but well see see that's like i talked to kerry bringle and he goes i don't care what you do with my whiskey i don't care if you pour it over ice i don't care if you dump it down the drain i don't care if you put coke in it whatever you got just buy another bottle yeah yeah i mean it's not up to me how you drink it just drink it yeah i don't i don't want to just like you know if there's a lot of different ways to consume different you know whether it's food or drink or whatever and everybody's got their own sort of ways of doing things and i you know i i can help like if you want my advice or you want me to guide you yeah i'm more than happy to help lead you down that path but then afterwards if if you prefer it another way then fine you know i i want you to to go with with your preference and you know i i think that i can help you better if if you don't enjoy it however you're drinking then i could probably lead you to a point where you you know would probably enjoy it or help you enjoy it i will do my best okay so we have belmead bourbon which um and then which is which is your first product it's your

01:02:19your your initial product you have nelson's greenbriar tennessee whiskey is it a set isn't that a sour mash whiskey yeah okay i don't know i don't i know that jack danis is sour mash i know jeff and jane do sorry i don't know what a sour mash means yeah it tastes sour to me no i i could tell you sour mash is one of the most uh widely misunderstood terms in the whiskey business in my opinion uh second only to what bourbon is people think that bourbon can only be made in kentucky when in fact it could be made anywhere in the united states just sours and oak right it has it doesn't even have to be three years it just has to be made in america made from at least 51 corn and aged in new oak barrels that are charred on the inside if it's aged for more than two years then you can qualify it as straight but sour mash is a process it's it's very similar to the process of making sourdough bread it's a process of adding a little bit of backset from a previous batch into the next batch to maintain consistency from batch to batch and help maintain ph levels and that sort of thing so it's it's not really like it's not going to give a sour taste to it um you know but like 99 percent of all american whiskies probably more than 99 percent use the sour mash process where whether they put that on their label or not um however a lot of uh folks you know there are a couple brands where sour mash is a little bit more prominently displayed on the labels than others and some people who have had maybe bad experiences with those brands and they see sour mash and they say oh i don't like sour mash so then other you know some brands have said you know i don't even want to have this conversation i'm just going to take sour mash off the label did you guys do that it's not on your

01:04:23label uh it's it's on it's on uh both belmead and nelson's greenbriar okay because historically it was on both of those labels now you have a distillery here in nashville correct yeah yep in the marathon village area it's in the marathon village area which went to a couple raves there when i was a young kid back in the day uh when i don't think we're supposed to be in there but it was a lot of fun so you're making this product you distilled it yourself here in nashville and you for the belmead you guys do you guys distill that here in nashville the belmead stuff that's purchased no so yeah we stuff for that right yeah we started off sourcing where we were buying barrels that were already aging for belmead and then we sort of transitioned to more contract distilling where we were saying hey you know distillery that is you know um bigger than us could you make this exactly to our specs and so that's sort of the way that belmead's being made now hey i got i got no problem with that whatsoever i think i you know like i said you're just the first thing you're doing i think that's great and you're and the bourbon's fantastic so you've got the nelson's green broaches your you distilled it you made it here in town you've aged it what else are you doing is that the only two you've got you got more uh i mean we've got a few other fun things like we've got louisa's liqueur which is named after my triple great grandmother louisa um it's a first woman to own a distillery and so it's it's a coffee caramel pecan liqueur um it's it's really good um and then uh but we we mostly just sell that at the distillery and um and we've got a couple other sort of experimental things going on you know we we've made it a but but the focus is on you know um you know nelson's green briar and belmeade but the like going forward the focus uh is going to be on green briar

01:06:26and that will become our signature brand it's only distributed in tennessee kentucky and south carolina um but it's we want to take over the world with it it was one of the largest most popular brands in the world prior to prohibition and we want to get back there well i talked about on the show supporting local and especially during these times making sure that we are supporting the people who live here in nashville who employ the people of nashville and the money that you're making is is going back into our community and um you're you're the definition of what i'm talking about if you're out there and you have a choice when you walk into that liquor store check them out green briar distillery tennessee whiskey as well as belmeade bourbon it's local the owners live here they're making it here if you have friends that come to town tell them to go check out the are you doing tours right now yeah well we're doing we're doing sort of modified tastings okay so um it's a great experience actually we've gotten some really good reviews on it uh but uh we're not quite open during we're not quite doing tours like you can't go on the production floor just you know for safety precautions but we are also working on expanding our facility and adding like a restaurant and bar sort of thing as well so um so if i'm a restaurant owner or a bar manager bartender and i don't have nelson's green briar tennessee whiskey who do i need to call uh ajax turner is ajax turner in in nashville yep wonderful so call ajax turner and get it in there today you guys know the belmeade flies off the shelf let's promote our local uh distillery uh charlie nelson from nelson's green burger so i feel like i could talk to you for hours and

01:08:26hours on and we've just scratched service who knew we were going to talk about paleolithic cave paintings but i could again like all of this stuff you're such a fascinating individual i've kept you way too long today but thank you for being generous with your time and figuring out the scheduling to get this thing done you are amazing i like to finish every show with i allow the guests i said just open floor open mic whatever you might want to say to the nashville restaurant community uh no time limit no whatever you want to say man just just floor is yours yeah well uh you know uh first of all i just want to say thank you for for having me on and and for your interest in hearing our story and and you know i've just enjoyed talking with you and and uh and uh you know love your brother as well and and he was one of the first guys that i i met uh you know that was really in the somewhat in the business that i think really truly believed in what we were doing and it was it was great to get that uh so uh thank you to to you and him and your family and and um and you know as yeah and so as far as um you know something i'd love to say to just the the broader nashville community and restaurant community and hospitality industry is is like y'all have have like propped us up you you helped our business get off the ground we started we had nothing but an idea and we needed people to support us and the nashville community came together and supported us and helped us grow and get to where we are today and we wouldn't be where we are without the nashville community and i think that it's the greatest hospitality community in the country and i go around to a lot of other different states and cities and

01:10:29and um of course there are a lot of other amazing people out there but you know i i would put nashville's up against anybody else's in the world the people here are incredible the community is stronger um and and you know just better more tight-knit and like more welcome it's it's a tight-knit community but like you gotta you gotta have respect for one another to to be here and to thrive and i think that everybody in this in this community does and you know you see it from like after the tornado um and and you know then of course during the covid times and and how folks have come together with you know like the tennessee action for hospitality which um i was really proud to be a a supporter of um and you know it it's just i i think that um it's important to know that like while a lot of people have not been able to to come together and and you know hug one another and and spend time together in person i think that it it that time is is coming um and and we've been able to adapt and um you know uh get around that somewhat and and i think that uh it's really amazing just seeing others you know um growing and thriving in the community as well and we just we have so many incredible individuals and businesses um and i think that we need to continue to to stick together um and you know just keep on making it do what to do because that's what it's all about so um i just i'm i feel so fortunate to be a part of the national community um it's it's amazing amen brother i love it i love everything you just now

01:12:35said and i i'm with you thank you so much for spending time with us today and uh charlie nelson you're a good man really appreciate you being on the show thanks bravin thanks man all right there it is charlie nelson founder and refounder of nelson's greenbrier distillery how crazy is that can you imagine being in the car with your dad and brother and driving out to pick up a quarter of a cow stopping at a gas station and seeing a sign for a distillery with your name on it like oh wow what a cool coincidence and then going the next mile seeing the actual distillery doing the research and figuring out that that's your triple great grandfather's distillery and you're going to bring it back wow just that whole process to me it's just like unbelievable so thank you all for listening today we uh appreciate you if you uh want to give some feedback let us know what you thought about this episode head over to our instagram page at nashville underscore restaurant underscore radio and uh let us know we'll have a post out and uh loved it to hear your feedback so thank you guys once again hope you all are being safe out there love you guys bye