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Stefani H 0:06
Welcome to another episode of Creative Distillation. Your hosts Jeff and Brad from the University of Colorado Boulder is Leeds School of Business discuss entrepreneurship research while enjoying fine craft beverages. Welcome to Season Five of Creative Distillation. We've got an exciting new season in store for you and we kick it off at in downtown Longmont, Colorado, Dry Land founder and president Nels Wroe first appeared on Creative Distillation episode 17 via zoom during those dark pandemic days, ever since we've been eager to check out their new space on Main Street in Longmont. It does not disappoint. Brad and Jeff had a great time speaking with Nels about how Dry Lands survived COVID And why their product selection and distilling process is so unique to Colorado. Enjoy and cheers!

Jeff York  1:03  
Welcome to career distillation where we distill entrepreneurship research into actionable insights. My name is Jeff York, research director at the Leeds School of Business Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. joined as always, by my co host,

Brad  1:16  
Brad Warner. Jeff, it is great to see you we work together at Deming. We're at a really great place today. dry land distillery,

Jeff York  1:24  
and it's a new season on creative distillation. Yeah, no. No, you didn't know. It just kind of keeps rolling and we keep doing it. This is season five of the podcast.

Brad  1:38  
Think about it for the first day that we did this. Would you ever thought that you'd have made it to season five?

Jeff York  1:42  
No, absolutely not. I really hope we wouldn't. But here we are. And we're kinda it's it's awesome. Now let's think about this a little actually, Brad. So we're kicking off the season. I remember our first episode. It was you and me. Sitting at a bar. Nobody else. I'm not even sure Joel. I guess Joel was there. Yeah. producer Joel. And now we are surrounded by. It's really kind of disconcerting.

Brad  2:03  
Oh my first of all, I wish I remembered that first episode.

Jeff York  2:05  
You don't remember? Do you remember that? Yeah. Okay. Brad. Brad with Chicago knows he's got his memory erased. So anyway, yeah, we're we're here and we're doing kind of a callback episode a little bit kind of circling back around to something we wish we could have done during the pandemic. We wish we could have done but we were all locked down in our houses and couldn't go anywhere. Which is visiting here. Yeah, man. This place is cool. Oh, it's so awesome. I walked in. I was like Brad is gonna dig this place. Oh, yeah. Big time.

Brad  2:34  
No, and I'm looking at the drinks that are lined up in front of us.

Jeff York  2:37  
Yeah, there's there doesn't seem to be any beer involving vegetables nor fruit here. Or he's disappointed, right. That's

Brad  2:44  
fine. Okay, but I'm looking at something else in front of you a white drink? What the? I don't

Jeff York  2:50  
know. I don't know. So perhaps we should do Snells RO, the founder and president here at DryLin distillers and we have met him before but only virtually now we're here in person is beautiful establishment. What am I drinking milk? I don't know.

Nels Wroe  3:04  
That is our classic whiskey sour. It's a throwback. It's made with our single grain. 100% airland wheat whiskey. Just a touch of our handmade bitters, a bit of lemon for the bitterness and hopefully a lot of enjoyment.

Jeff York  3:16  
Smells fantastic. What would you suggest with the garnish or just like, I'm not a sophisticated person,

Nels Wroe  3:21  
I would pull it right off that bamboo stick, put it right in the drink. Those are Glen's boozy cherries, those are western slope cherries that we soak in our high proof clear whiskey. If you want to try something that's better than marshmallow cherry. Trying cherries.

Jeff York  3:35  
Okay, I'll see if martinis tasted like this, Brad. It'd be a different story. This is really good.

Brad  3:40  
I'd love to go out and drink more more.

Jeff York  3:43  
Time that is never going to happen ever, ever.

Brad  3:46  
The doors. Also chap today with us have a new member of our team.

Jeff York  3:49  
I know this is like you're saying we're surrounded by people. It's really exciting. Yeah.

Brad  3:53  
So

Eloise  3:55  
do you remember how Hi, my name is Eloise? I'm an undergrad student at the Leeds School of Business and I just joined the creative distillation team as an intern.

Jeff York  4:04  
Yeah, our first intern. Yeah, that's

Brad  4:06  
great. And Eloise is a prior students. She's also working with me on a few classes this semester. And we're lucky to have you.

Jeff York  4:14  
I think I recognize her though.

Brad  4:16  
Really? Yeah, I

Jeff York  4:17  
think I recognize her from last season. She looks awful lot like that woman that was in the audience she planted to like, ask questions so you could win our competition. Welcome, always we're so excited. We've never had an intern. Know what what exactly are you going to do?

Eloise  4:34  
My goal is to double our listens and get us some sponsorships. And Brad? No. We're gonna be a name out there. Awesome. Yeah, not just at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ Boulder.

Jeff York  4:48  
That sounds really exciting.

Brad  4:48  
Are you a podcast listener?

Eloise  4:50  
I am I'm an avid podcast listener.

Brad  4:52  
Right. And I know you have one that you actually want to live recently and they actually Jeff, you bought tickets, correct? Yes, we could start buying or selling

Jeff York  5:03  
Who knows maybe Eloise, you must be a very gifted marketer. If that's the case. I think that'd be a huge accolade. If you were able to get people to pay to come see us technically students do pay to see us. They just don't know it before they are pleasantly surprised.

Brad  5:21  
So actually, I think our students are lucky to have you, Jeff.

Jeff York  5:24  
I think they're lucky to have you Brad. And I think the students over the tech six Tech University roles college of business are lucky to have our last person we got introduced for we start conversation day. Ted Waldron, who is the kid are hence regents chair and entrepreneurship. Ted, you have a very fancy title

Brad  5:41  
that way maybe before Ted introduces himself and says hello, okay, he has a better title. No, does he? Yes. Was whiskey academic. Professor whiskey which one was British

Jeff York  5:52  
whiskey? Yeah. Congratulations said you are the whiskey academic

you get a new title but yeah, just showing up. That's all you gotta do really? You get like another title if you show up on the podcast, we have lots of titles we could talk about All right, well is awesome to be here knows this place is beautiful.

Nels Wroe  6:17  
Great to have you guys. Glad you like the place. Well, it was amazing. We were running a process today we're running our cactus spirit which is a very smoky Mezcal style spirits. Would you the the aroma in the air is Miskito 100% muskies.

Jeff York  6:32  
Sounds like it's somebody this was like somebody's getting ready to like smoke a brisket or so.

Nels Wroe  6:38  
Well, pair the cactus spirit the outcome of this process with barbecue for example. My son's a great fly fisherman Wildcat rainbow trout brush with little bit of a smoky cactus spirit over open wood fire. It's it's fantastic.

Jeff York  6:53  
To talk to you is back. I think it's I don't know what season I know. It's episode 17. season two, season two right in the middle of COVID. Right in the middle. Yeah. So I think we all look much happier. Assume that day, but just didn't have this established. We

Nels Wroe  7:07  
did not have this establishment. We were in a tiny 600 square foot location at that time, right in the back of another building. Ali X is only kind of rustic, shall we say? It's probably fits us, I guess. Yeah. We remodeled this building weirdly during COVID. I wouldn't recommend that, by the way. That we we took this building right on Main Street in downtown Longmont hadn't been touched probably since 1970. This was originally a machine shop. And then it was for about 60 years. 50 years was the Valley Farm dairy. So we ended up having to come in here evict pack rats, tear out ancient concrete milk coolers with sledge hammers and two teenagers that said, Dad, I'm never gonna do another project with you ever again.

Jeff York  7:53  
Well, you could have gotten Joel over here. He's a bit of an expert at dealing with rats, as he's a ninja like moves he uses on them is pretty impressive. Because you'll usually see that in Southern California, not here in Colorado. But this is an awesome location to like, right downtown. When Ted and I were driving over here, I was just like, well, I don't really know where this place is. Longmont has like a really cool downtown area. But we probably won't get to that and we pulled right here. It's amazing. Yeah,

Nels Wroe  8:17  
it's the city of Longmont has been a fabulous partner, they actually changed their zoning laws to allow craft distillery to be right on Main Street in the commercial downtown area. And so that started a whole trend in Longmont, where they're investing in food technology, liquid technology. Walmart, I'm proud to say is one of the top places in Colorado found the nation for beer and for four spirits

Brad  8:39  
in Chicago that would have cost you about 50 grand in cash

Nels Wroe  8:45  
behind the table within three bills.

Brad  8:49  
But the place is beautiful. Seriously, congratulations. So how's business going? Right, we've I'm sure a lot has changed since we talked to you

Nels Wroe  8:54  
want to change tonic growth, you know, COVID was we managed to grow, we're proud of this, we managed to grow every month even during COVID, which is which is pretty rare. We had to work or you know what's off to make that happen and really changed our business. It'd be very adaptable. But now that we're in their new location, and we're back to being reopen, one of the big challenges we have right now, we have enough traffic on a volume that we can't keep up. So we're trying to figure out how do we how do we make enough product to meet demand?

Brad  9:20  
So what about learning something that you learned through COVID that maybe was unexpected, that helped you grow the business?

Nels Wroe  9:27  
Drinking never goes out of style? You hear a lot of jokes about you know, well, what is the recession proof business? Alcohol is the President recession proof guys, I gotta tell you that. I mean, we we found that during COVID As long as we changed how we got our products to people, which is one of the biggest changes we had to make. We found that people either it didn't have anything to do anything else to do, but we did see strong demand. We did learn that as a small business as A business whose was dealing with changing conditions every week. Yeah, had to adapt. When I say have to adapt, we're talking literally weekly. I mean, we had even law changing on a monthly basis regulations changing on a monthly basis. You know, we had to be fleet on our feet. We ended up moving from a primarily on site on premise cocktail lounge, even on our small location to a fully delivery business where we were we went straight to consumer. So we had to adapt and we had to adapt quickly. We pulled it off, great team, this was a team effort. We never furloughed, anybody, we never laid anybody off. In fact, we grew our staff even during COVID. So the learnings there are you've got to change quickly. And you've got to be able to pivot quickly, which I know is overused. But it's true. No, absolutely. That's

Jeff York  10:48  
a great story. That's why we make such a big deal that when we're teaching entrepreneurship, because, and even in some cases, even with students in tears, force them to make a pivot. Yeah, they're and because they tend to say, well, I wrote all this work, and I did all this work, you're like, Oh, my God, you haven't even started to even do a tiny, tiny bit of work. But okay, we get it from your perspective you have, but now you have to change but it's not working. Right? You're you've got to change. I think that's, that's something that's really hard to teach people. Because as human beings, we tend to, once we start down a path want to stay on that path, and not really shift. But it sounds like you guys were really able to adapt a

Nels Wroe  11:23  
lot. I believe we did. And it was not without stress. It was not without stress. And it is very difficult to do that. And we did a great job of forecasting business plans. And honestly, we learned very quickly, the reason to have those documents is not to follow the plan. It's to make it easier to change your mind, right and quickly adapt to circumstances. So having that dashboard idea, and being able to say this is our plan. And it's telling us that this is not the right road to go down. But we haven't we have a fork in the road. Let's turn here and let's go do this instead. But it kept us focused on the prize, which is we we had to continue growing, how we did that the plan helped us do that. So we we adapted it every day. And I'm not kidding. Every day, my my spouse jokes that my title on my business card should be problem solver. Which is true, though. Every day, I kid you not I wake up, I'm like you've got to be open kid. I mean, really, we're dealing with this good example. Even just two days ago, I woke up opened my inbox to be swamped with messages from meta, saying you've been hacked. You shut all your social media down. And it's taken two days to deal with that. Right. So those are the things you're like, you gotta be kidding. Yeah, you just gotta roll with it. You got to deal with that. Right? So it's, it's part of the deal?

Jeff York  12:41  
Well, here's that. Well, you guys don't have drinks. I'm the only one with a drink. Yeah, but we've after hearing

Brad  12:45  
that story, Jeff, and I hear delivery. I'm gonna leave my address here.

Jeff York  12:51  
Well, I mean, I think that's actually a really interesting thing. I mean, I don't I don't know how much this generalizes or not. I think in Colorado, at least from my perspective, our state government and local governments really did do a good job, at least trying to remove barriers for entrepreneurs during COVID. So they could explore different business models, for example, letting spirits distillers deliver their product directly. I mean, that, is that still in play? You can still do that.

Nels Wroe  13:16  
So during COVID Yeah, we had some great. We had a great team, particularly state level credit them for adapting quickly. And that's credit because, you know, state governments aren't always known for moving.

Jeff York  13:28  
States government, I think fast moving regulations. Yes. What do you think? All the pencil tucky? It's like lightning, lightning all the time. And then Texas, I mean, now that that, well, they don't have a state government. So it doesn't matter. Remove the state go. Sorry. I didn't mean, but yeah, so they did some really good things to like, try to get us on the right path they did or

Nels Wroe  13:52  
help entrepreneurs. They did. And once we got back to normalcy, and once we started to look at it from a state level, are we going to extend those rules? Yeah, we found that suddenly the lobbying teams came back in again. Yeah. And so ironically, and frustratingly, we are the only alcohol licensed facilities in the state, meaning a distillery who technically cannot deliver their own products. So restaurants can deliver our products, which is strange.

Jeff York  14:21  
Now that doesn't okay. Right on that. Yep. Retailers can.

Nels Wroe  14:25  
So there are some frustrations there. It was not necessarily a fault of the state government was basically the lobbying powers to be came in and said, Hey, hang on. So the money is always a factor, meaning wherever the money is, you're likely to see regulation that

Brad  14:42  
that that pisses me off at so many different levels. I can imagine. Yeah, maybe seriously. You know, especially after you persevere through this disaster that we had knocked out so many businesses where they relied on the government to build your business, and then they actually reintroduce friction.

Nels Wroe  14:59  
Yes. It's, we're working with it right? We again, we have to adapt. Our industry is doing a great job at it. Colorado has a key advantage. We are, at this point, the largest spirits trail in the country, by the way. So if anybody out there wonders where you're gonna find the concentration of craft distilleries in the country, Colorado has the largest spirits to be allowed. No kidding. No kidding. So you know, we have a great good for us. We have a great industry here. We have a great community, and we will we'll make change the state. There are people who are really interested in making some changes to allow us to, as a craft industry, like you would see craft beer, which is, which is Colorado is known for that. Yeah. You know, craft distilling is is following their footsteps, and it'll happen. Yeah, it'll happen. We just need to be

Jeff York  15:44  
I mean, it still does feature like, and every time they were promoting the state and talking about, it seems like you would want to do everything you can to encourage that industry to take off. I mean, okay, sure. We could see something I don't agree with, obviously, I mean, I host this podcast with 50 episodes of drinking and talking about research. But you could see the argument say, hey, we don't really think you know, spirit should be delivered and Baba, bah, get in the hands of kids, all that stuff. But the fact that you can't deliver directly but a restaurant can That's right. That's just goofy,

Nels Wroe  16:15  
correct? I mean, we are 100% in favor of safety and security products.

Jeff York  16:21  
I mean, you have to be otherwise your industry? Absolutely.

Nels Wroe  16:24  
I mean, it's no good business. For us. What we're working around is we're regulated perhaps more than any other liquor license holder in the state because we're federally state and locally regulated, right? And if there's anybody who's going to follow the rules, it's craft distillers, right, because we have, we have so much at stake if we do something stupid. Sure. So you know, we are probably the best at being able to manage that safety perspective. And how we look at that. So it'll happen.

Jeff York  16:53  
I mean, having worked in a restaurant, my college years, I can't say that I've always noticed restaurant staff necessarily be the most responsible individuals. But perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps there are times the restaurant industry is staffed only by outstanding.

Brad  17:10  
Whiskey and a Glock.

Jeff York  17:17  
I grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. Yeah, a lot of things delivered from a restaurant in Charleston. Anyway, we won't go there. Well, hey, this is this is awesome. And how long have you guys been here in this location?

Nels Wroe  17:28  
¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ 18 months? Oh, wow. Yep, yep. Somebody two months.

Jeff York  17:31  
And this whiskey sour is I have drink a whiskey sour once in my life. I think this is delicious.

Nels Wroe  17:37  
I'm glad you like it. It's one of our favorite cocktails. We do a fantastic job of classic cocktails on the menu using spirits that are genuinely true Colorado spirits. Yeah, and use a great I'm remembering from Episode 17. You guys really are focused on like local sourcing of ingredients in a way that I can. I mean, perhaps there's other distilleries into it that I'm just not aware of. But I think it's pretty unique. There are distilleries that do a great job. And even in Colorado, there are other distilleries that do a great job of sourcing local, we took a little bit of a different spin. And we do source local mean local is key. But we also look for ingredients that are appropriate to place. And what I mean by that is not everything we grow in Colorado should be grown in Colorado, right. And a lot of the grains a lot of the agricultural products that are grown here, they have a heavy impact on the environment, soil health, water is so key. So we looked for ingredients that would genuinely celebrate and be authentic to the place we're from and we love. So that's why we selected wheat, and that's why we selected the ancient grain wheats that were built for growing in dryland conditions. Even our gin, I think, is the only true 100% native botanical Colorado gin, we're every botanical, including the base grain that we make our grain or gin from is a native to the state, very difficult to pull off. Not at all, like most gyms you've had, because Colorado doesn't give us a lot to work with. You know, it took me a year to get a recipe that finally balanced out using only Colorado native botanicals. So our goal was to celebrate the place we love. And if I believe very honestly, that our spirits are perhaps the most authentic true to play spirits in the state. I'm proud of that.

Brad  19:19  
Yeah, I love how your values actually have trickled all the way down all the way through the business all the way through the products

Nels Wroe  19:25  
out the door. It does and we're getting recognition for this. Just, I'm really, really proud of this. We were nominated as a finalist for the 2023 good food awards. We are the only Colorado distiller in the finalist competition.

Brad  19:39  
Is that a specific spirits or is that the business

Nels Wroe  19:41  
it is for the specific spirit. It's for our cactus spirit, which is an original spirit made from native prickly pear cactus. Nobody's ever done this before to Mezcal style spirit. We don't make it out of agave. We make it out of prickly pear cactus. If you've ever been on a hike, if you've ever been on a bike ride, and they were trails that oh, yeah, well, in fact, that's That's how we decided to use prickly pear cactus. We had a new puppy at the time. Yeah. And we were frustrated. We couldn't find a GAVI right? It was actually the actual Gabi hearts. And I'm sitting there on a hike just outside of Boulder. And my papa who's not familiar with cactus, I'm pulling cactus towards man. Yeah, there's got to be a way we can use this thing. My

Jeff York  20:20  
daughter's sat on one of those when she was about four, it was not a good seat. is not a good seat. It was ugly. And that's what we're looking at here. This is in the spirit is called Cactus it is. So

Nels Wroe  20:31  
it is originally meant we had to get federal formula approval never been done before.

Brad  20:37  
Let's talk about that. So you come up with a formula and it needs to be approved by the federal government.

Nels Wroe  20:43  
That is correct.

Brad  20:44  
That's insane.

Nels Wroe  20:46  
Well, welcome to alcohol laws that were set in 1923. That actually blows me away.

Jeff York  20:52  
The whiskey academic Ted. Explain. Why is that

Ted Waldron  20:57  
it's a carryover from us prohibition in the early 1920s, that has never quite gone away.

Jeff York  21:03  
Well, there you go. You really is those laws are sticky? Awesome.

Brad  21:07  
There's actually a law in my hometown, still on the books today that says if you own a red car, you need to have someone with a lantern walking. Think about that. Right. So how do we how do we actually fix this? I mean, once again, friction, right? I'm thinking about this is insane. To have somebody actually have to approve your recipes.

Nels Wroe  21:31  
There slowly changing. But yes, the laws we're working under at a federal level can be challenging. I mean, I are our primary guide that we have to use to monitor and compare our proof levels and our spirits. I am not kidding you. When you download it from the TTB website, the date on that form is 1920. Nailed it. Yeah. And technically, you have to use that even though there's far more accurate ways of, you know, today, we actually have something called a spreadsheet.

Jeff York  22:06  
Or you heard of the saying, Yeah.

Nels Wroe  22:09  
So you've either fight it or you embrace it, and try to have a little bit fun with it and try to change the system in the right way. And that's what we're, that's our approach.

Ted Waldron  22:15  
Awesome. So much. How much cost? Do you encourage Sorry, sorry, to just jump in here? How much cost do you incur to navigate a regulation like that? So you've innovated a formula? Is there a substantial cost associated with getting that through?

Nels Wroe  22:28  
Yes, and no, the cost is primarily around the amount of time it takes to meet and manage these requirements for record keeping. That's a cost. It's a cost. I would say my job today is 20 hours a week, just managing process managing paperwork,

Brad  22:46  
once you get it, do you own that recipe? Correct. So when it sets, its

Nels Wroe  22:50  
IP, it is very much IP, you technically cannot copyright a recipe so we do protect it, right? And there have been relaxations of these rules. At the federal level, for example, probably 10 plus years now, they said, Well, if you're making a standard product, and as long as everybody follows the rules, like for standard certain types of whiskies, you don't need federal formula approval. But anytime you're dealing with something that is unique, like our cactus spirit, not only did we have to get federal formula approval, we actually had to get FDA to allow prickly pear to be considered a food ingredient on a, what we call it grass certification, which is generally regarded as safe. So we went through the process with the FDA first, we got prickly pear cactus, they agreed it was a generally regarded as safe ingredient, even though it's been a food product probably in for

Jeff York  23:42  
my daughter and your dog might disagree. But yes, yes, but for how long? 1000s of years? People putting food on me as well. So the approval

Brad  23:51  
process is bringing a couple of Feds in, give me a few shots and saying, Here you go.

Jeff York  23:55  
Yeah, sure. It's exactly.

Brad  23:56  
Yes, I'd sign here, just

Jeff York  24:00  
random an envelope you say? It's not gonna be a problem is.

Nels Wroe  24:05  
There are times though, actually, the partners we have worked with, both in the federal level and the state level, honestly have been their goal is to some degree, yes, making sure everybody's safe. Yep. And they do have to follow the law. But at the same time, there's some great people who are trying to balance the fact that no, there are businesses that need to survive and thrive. And so oftentimes, when you first off, treat them as human beings, because they are and right, and that was our approach, and at that point, they become a partner. At one of the best experience that we had, we were also having a challenge with our gin formula, because we use a native medicinal plant and B Bomb, which we were honestly disclosing in our process and our formula, and they're like, It's medicinal plant, you can't use it. Wow. And so finally, we got a call back from one of our consultants, shall we say, at federal level, and she said,

just call him while the ring No, just put that in there. And you'll just be fine. So it's really Yep.

So he's been called Wild oregano, which is basically what it is sailed through.

Brad  25:08  
And he had to pull all the mushrooms out

Jeff York  25:13  
actionable insight.

Nels Wroe  25:16  
So we learned that, you know, first off, people can help, as long as you treat them as partners. And as long as you treat them well, that we have, we had a good case to make. She understood that we were actually doing something good here. And therefore they helped us navigate that process. That's awesome.

Jeff York  25:35  
All right, actionable insight. This one's for you, Eric. If you're working in a heavily regulated industry, and now let's feel free to tell me if I'm paraphrasing this incorrectly, rather than viewing your regulators as your opponents or people that are trying to hold you back treating them like human beings, actually making them collaborators to figure out creative solutions. Couldn't be a much better path to getting things done.

Nels Wroe  26:00  
Absolutely. We that's why we have approach this from the city level from the county level state level. And how you treat people. It makes a huge difference. You're here. Yep. Well,

Jeff York  26:11  
let's taste the product of all this work. Let's, what should we have first here,

Nels Wroe  26:15  
I would like to start us with our single grain heirloom wheat whiskey. This is an original as well, this wheat whiskey is made from a white Sonora, wheat, whites and our wheat is considered to be one of the oldest wheats in North America. When we first found this wheat, it was from a grower who had discovered this growing wild in the Sonoran Desert, and is now considered to be one of the it's on the Slow Food ark of taste. The Ark of taste is a list of one other foods that everybody must try because of their cultural environmental and flavor significance. So it is a very resilient we dryland wheat, so old that we had, we couldn't actually get it to work well with modern yeasts that you would typically find in distilling and brewing. So we had to work with our very large international yeast company, and they had their scientists help us modify one of their unique strains using raw grain from the field which naturally has yeast is attracted to that grain, because we actually have our own yeast strain, which is now East banked. That's incredible. Yeah, so this, so it's 100% malted wheat, we get it malted from troubadour mountains up in Fort Collins. It's grown in both in the San Luis Valley as well as right over here in keansburg about 28 miles away. We were the first in modern history that we know of to have this grain malted. And today, that project we used we converted my daughter's old toy chests to a molten kill of the house. Because nobody would touch it, right? We don't touch it. It's very rare to have a single grain wheat whiskey, let alone one made with one. I'm ready to drink.

Ted Waldron  27:55  
Could you Could you describe the cherry nose on this.

Nels Wroe  27:58  
So the nose is going to be very calmly very soft. There's a marsh and a little bit of sweetness to it. It is built to be a sipping whiskey is is often compared to single malt Japanese whiskey. And it is the opposite end of the spectrum from from an American bourbon. If you think about it that way. So

Ted Waldron  28:17  
cheers. Cheers. Yes, thank you.

Jeff York  28:20  
Cheers. This is no he's earning his name.

Brad  28:25  
I'm taking big steps that is smooth. Right?

Ted Waldron  28:30  
Wonderful.

Nels Wroe  28:31  
It's a gorgeous, gorgeous grain.

Jeff York  28:33  
Really, really heavy caramel. Like I'm getting it at a very sweet. It's amazing

Ted Waldron  28:39  
as you describe it, how you can pick up on the scents and the tastes. That's pretty impressive.

Nels Wroe  28:44  
This one we really built, we distill and barrel it for sipping. My favorite way to drink this is neat as it is now possibly on a rock depending on the time of year. It is all green for I mean, we really focus on bringing the grain characteristics through. And our goal is to celebrate the ingredients of using all of our spirits. So it is bringing forward one of the most precious compliments I received was having a gentleman in here for his 80th birthday. And we brought him in and he tasted this and his eyes just lit up. Like I'm back on the farm with my grandfather. He's like, this just brings me back. I smell and taste the wheat fields that I used to work and I'm like, Okay, wow, that was incredible. So seeing that look on his face, and realizing that we had made that connection and brought that memory back. That experience is what we're looking for. That's its artistry. Thank you. Thank you.

Brad  29:41  
Yep. Was this your first product?

Nels Wroe  29:43  
This is our first flagship product. Yes. Okay. Yep. Our cactus spirit was our second

Ted Waldron  29:48  
started strong.

Jeff York  29:51  
Well, yeah, that's really good.

Brad  29:54  
Professor whiskey thoughts.

Ted Waldron  29:55  
It reminds me of Oban but frankly I think it's better night Get aways Oh yeah, that's very smooth, very smooth.

Speaker 4  30:03  
We built it. Before that we use a phenomenal cooperage we use charred oak barrels very lightly charred oak barrels, their fourth generation Cooper. They're now in Louisville, Kentucky. They use no petrochemicals in their charring process at all. Wow.

Brad  30:20  
I'm a whiskey drinker. This is going behind my bar. This is great. It's amazing.

Jeff York  30:25  
Bread. So happy where it is still.

Ted Waldron  30:28  
Do you ship to Texas?

Nels Wroe  30:30  
We will starting in October. We have a lot of Texas connections, including working with a ranch jam ranches. They're very far south, we actually get our wild harvest cactus from their ranch. They're helping to kind of restore a lot of the ranch lands. So we get the prickly pear cactus, which has been untouched essentially. And it is super painful to work with. We're talking taxes, thorns, three inches, two layers of welding gloves. If you're lucky. Yeah.

Jeff York  31:06  
It's not a normal, normal ingredient preparation process is not stealing. No. In

Nels Wroe  31:11  
fact, colleagues look at me like you're doing well. But if you don't mind this segue into the cactus spirit. Oh, no, the cactus spirit. And this is what I'm pouring here. This is our Reparata which is a bit called barrel rested cactus. This is our silver cactus. It is like mezcal, there's no Agave in it. It is a prickly pear, shredded, smoked over mesquite for 48 hours, low smoke. And then it is mashed and fermented and distilled. Prickly Pear grows all over the state of Colorado, we get more regular crops from Texas. We also get some from New Mexico and California depending on the season. This is the one we talked about earlier. This is what has been awarded as finalists for the good food awards. Because we do support small growers throughout Texas and throughout the American west that normally would never have a market for this product.

Jeff York  32:13  
It's amazing that the nose on this one is powerful like the other one was very. So this one I got a much stronger nose and aroma coming off as the Mezcal although we're sitting here where you're actually smoking.

Nels Wroe  32:25  
It's all over the environment. Yeah. So this one will be smoke forward. It's going to be very complex has to have a lot of tannins layered in from the barrel that's by design because the smoke needs something to balance that out. So we do look for him barrels that are going to bring up more of the spice notes more of the tannins because they do help pair it and toned down that smoke level. So think about a Scotch as you

Jeff York  32:53  
walked in today, I smelled the aroma.

Brad  32:55  
I'd like to toast the FDA. This is awesome.

Jeff York  33:00  
FDA. First time the whiskey academic has ever toasted the FDA.

Brad  33:05  
Wow,

Ted Waldron  33:06  
I was toasting you not the

Jeff York  33:09  
toasting breads toasted.

Nels Wroe  33:12  
I mean, prickly pear cactus if you want the perfect crop for Colorado

Jeff York  33:16  
that's got smoke and dust doesn't it? Big time. Yeah, you're right. It's much more of a I would say Well, there are some tequilas that have that smokiness but not this is if you're saying this to me. I probably guessed I was drinking scotch actually almost. Right. I don't mean that hope that doesn't offend you. It's no Scotch drinkers coming here. And they're like, oh my gosh, this this is

Brad  33:37  
a drink this could totally hold its weight next to a scotch. Yeah,

Jeff York  33:41  
but just you know, I never would have thought that looking at it.

Nels Wroe  33:43  
No. Yeah. So it's, it's great because it is the epitome of Colorado. I mean, prickly pear cactus grows everywhere grows in tough, tough, terrible soil condition. Yeah, it has virtually no water requirements. I mean, you can grow in the worst possible environmental conditions you could possibly imagine. creates great habitat attracts beneficial insects beneficial wildlife, it's a food source, highly nutritious as a as a food as well as loaded with micronutrients. So you know we'd love it because for us this is what we should all be drinking if you think about it should be drinking products that are dope and made from foods that are appropriate place so if you're putting healthy

Brad  34:25  
booze in front of me I'm in

Nels Wroe  34:29  
I can't claim was approved

Jeff York  34:36  
all the booze you drink is not approved by the right now that's more to see story.

Brad  34:42  
Or pencils hockey.

Jeff York  34:45  
Shining a pencil tucky there's some moonshine so it's like it's a Yankee moon shining. It's not really very strong. It does the job. I guess that's a very particular purpose. Well nails this is wonderful. It's just awesome being here. The place is beautiful. Thank you, you guys. I mean I can't look around. It's just a really nice space. Beautiful Music turntable, charter barrels behind nose here. It smells fantastic. I actually would mentioned I had their, their farm to table box. That's a local product as well.

Nels Wroe  35:20  
It is so GB culinary. They're a caterer but they they also run peach tree farmstead just north of town. They do all their own pickles, cured meats, cheeses, and we're the only place they provide what they call portables. Normally, they're out doing big weddings that are high end catering, and we've just loved their stuff. It's delicious. It's a very unique type of snack, which is totally underplaying what it really is. Right. But again, it's the idea of helping local community. We partnership, we collaborate a lot. And that's you're also telling me beforehand about a local restaurant. Oh, yeah. So suelos is a local Tiki Bar Restaurant, owned by Sean and Rebecca gaffer. They also owned two other restaurants in town, we it's a ridiculous reason to make rum and I will promise I'll be short on the story. Rom is like the farthest thing from a car and a spirit. Yeah, people like you have all these color spirits and then you have rum. Okay, so we slightly competitive team internally to dry land. And the first year we opened as we went into the holidays, we all started bragging about our eggnog recipes. Ah,

Jeff York  36:31  
exotic special next year. Yes.

Nels Wroe  36:33  
This before, before you take a sip. This we just bought from the barrel. We made a custom agricole style rum for the rose tiki bar for the Tiki Bar. Again, we sourced raw sugar cane since it's not a local Colorado product or colored ingredients. We said well, let's honor what we do is always start with the raw ingredient which is raw sugar cane. Yeah, it's a raw sugar cane raw cane syrup only. So no, no molasses or processed sugar. And this is barrel strings. We just pulled this from a barrel yesterday. Wow. So this is going to have about 136 proof. So just be aware. This may not be the final. So this is just wrapped in over a year aged age in the US talking about collaboration. So the original Barrow was a law's spirit house bourbon barrel, which was is in South Denver. That bourbon came up to the roost restaurant, which is right across the street. That was their custom bourbon. We got the barrel. We then made a custom rum for suelos. Tiki restaurant here in town, and then we're repurposing that barrel as a partnership with St. Breen cidery here in town making a specialty apple cider distilled spirit called pommeau, which is now sitting in that same barrel. So God bless Colorado.

Brad  37:49  
This is insane.

Nels Wroe  37:51  
It is all community neck commodity.

Jeff York  37:55  
This is awesome. So our last encounter with Rome on this podcast. Would you care to describe it, Brad?

Brad  38:06  
Well, first of all, let's just talk about the vibe and the restaurants here the in the distillery could actually fit into Los Angeles. Oh, easily. I mean, this could easily so now we can lead it.

Jeff York  38:15  
No, it's way better than

Brad  38:16  
Los Angeles. No, but no, no, no, I'm

Jeff York  38:18  
saying you just mean it's very high. Read this lovely. This is very sophisticated feeling. Oh, yeah. The opposite of us is pumpkin beer vibe.

Brad  38:28  
But when we talk about rum in Los Angeles, I don't know what the hell that stuff.

Jeff York  38:33  
I don't actually remember what it was either. We ordered it online.

Brad  38:37  
Like they got liver and delivered it.

Jeff York  38:39  
And this is the only reason I mentioned it. We will forgive nameless. It was a craft room like we thought we were buying a good product. It was not it. Basically it was. Yeah, it was like rubbing alcohol. This is delicious. Thank you. Yeah, it's I mean, as far as Rob goes, I mean, it's got character.

Nels Wroe  38:57  
It does and we will this will be mellowed out. Yeah, sure down to final because this is pretty high proof right now. But if you have a ton of vanilla in it right now. It's yeah, we're happy with it. It's got a lot of that sugarcane. Yeah, a lot of the vegetable can notes to it that are what we want from an agricole style.

Jeff York  39:17  
Since the place I'm hearing is

Brad  39:18  
competitive team only 130

Jeff York  39:21  
Yeah.

Brad  39:23  
How can people find you?

Nels Wroe  39:25  
Online is the best place go to online dryland distillers.com We're right downtown Longmont, we encourage visits here we are at probably 20 accounts throughout the front range from Fort Collins to Colorado we'll be expanding to more in 2024. Again, a good problem to have but we have limited stock right? So if you if you do want to bottle, certainly buy it online and you can pick it up or hold it for people as long as you need to. And then come in and visit we have a phenomenal team here. The bar team is considered one of the top 10 Bar teams in Colorado.

Jeff York  39:55  
In the moment I walked in here people were like welcoming me and just I felt like I was like a regular something I've never been here in my life. I actually want to commend you on how your staff that's great. I mean, really it was. It was not obnoxious, but it was like very welcoming. Yeah. Right. It's like a stickler for this service industry

Nels Wroe  40:15  
service. Yeah. I mean, we, everybody's welcome here. We want people to walk out here not necessarily talking about our spirits, but talking about the experience.

Jeff York  40:23  
Yeah. Well, we absolutely will. So that's a nose row founder and president of DryLin distillers. We've also we're joined by the whiskey academic, Ted Waldron at Texas Tech University. And what we're going to do now is we're going to take a little break, and then we're going to come back and we have a themed, themed thing going on here. We're going to talk to Ted about his paper entrepreneur investor rivalry over new venture control, the battle for buck Kunis distilling. So he actually you know, there's a reason we're calling the whiskey academic, not because we dragged him here, he actually has written and published academic papers about whiskey. So we're really looking forward to that. And he was able to rent a car so he has nowhere else to go. Yeah. It was tough to get in his truck. I just had to get a TED you know, you gotta go to a distillery. He shows his face. And he's like, he seems really bummed out, right.

Ted Waldron  41:12  
I'm here for Nels that you guys are just Yeah,

Jeff York  41:15  
everyone feels that way. So again, my name is Jeff York. I'm the Research Director at the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship and elite School of Business at the University of Colorado.

Brad  41:23  
And I am Brad Warner. I'm an entrepreneur and I'm loving this whiskey.

Jeff York  41:27  
It is fantastic. Don't check out Dreiling distillers it's awesome ZX chairs, the chairs.

Stefani H 41:34
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Creative Distillation recorded on location at in Longmont, Colorado. Learn more and order merch at . We'd love to hear your feedback and ideas email us at CDpodcast@colorado.edu. And please be sure to subscribe to Creative distillation wherever you get your podcasts. The Creative Distillation podcast is made possible by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado Boulder's Leeds School of Business. For more information, please visit deming.colorado.edu. That's D-E-M-ING and click the Creative Distillation link. Creative Distillation is produced by Joel Davis at Analog Digital Arts. Our theme music is "Whiskey Before Breakfast" performed by your humble host, Brad and Jeff. Thanks for listening. We'll see you back here for another episode of Creative Distillation.