Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Tonight you're going to meet a guy that was an engineer who graduated from Michigan State, owned a recording studio, had a band, touring musician, and also loved Tequila, designed a Tequila bottle and worked to create a fantastic brand new Tequila that isn't just about bringing Tequila to life, but is also about serving the music community, going to help Save the Music foundation and also supporting artists in all of the states they're in. So stick around and meet Chris Andrews and learn about Musica Tequila. It's tasting Tequila with bread, man. Chris, I'm excited to have you on today to talk about your brand Musica and I'm really excited to hear about, you know, your history coming from Michigan and then where you ended up today. I'll let you talk about that and your history in the music industry. I'm pretty excited about that. So how are you doing tonight?
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Doing great. Thank you so much for having me and having us and the brand. We're really excited about it, so.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: Well, I love highlighting new brands. I love it when I get to taste some good tequila and when there's a purpose behind the brand that is helping people. I find that really exciting and I love to showcase that. Any, any way that I.
If you can talk a little bit about who you are and your, like, industry history before Tequila started.
[00:01:34] Speaker B: Sure.
Industry history in spirits, in.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Oh, before that. Let's, let's learn a little bit about this music stuff because that's pretty cool and near and dear to my heart too. Yeah.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: And that, and that was the passion part about we wanted to do something that we had a passion for.
So, you know, I started playing at an early age guitar. Parents bought me an original guitar and, and played guitar and sang. Did that all the way through school and then into college and had a professional career as an artist, as a, as a, you know, guitar player and singer, but then moved into the recording studio business and I didn't become the next Bon Jovi or whatever in the 80s, so went in the, in the studio business, so had a studio, was an engineer and producer for a number of years, but got to work with some really amazing people and really just kind of opened myself up to, you know, living in Michigan and I, I lived in this small cocoon world of, of Michigan, which I love. Right. Because you can, you can go to the lakes, you can go, you know, there's a lot of places to go in Michigan. But I never really ventured out too much when I was younger, but got to travel all over the world and work with a lot of different cultures and a lot of different people, and really opened my eyes to this, you know, the cultural barriers that get broken down by music. And that is kind of the spirit of what we wanted to do with musica. So we also wanted to have a super quality tequila product, but the passion came from what we were passionate about. So not only do we think it breaks down borders and crosses cultures from the music side, the tequila does the same thing too, because it's very authentic.
[00:03:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I think that's why there's a lot of musicians around the tequila industry, because there are some really extreme similar similarities. You're. You're coming from Michigan, and if people don't realize Michigan is a really hot spot for great music, From Motown to Bob Seger to kid rock to Eminem, like, there's. There's a lot of really great music that has came out of the state of Michigan. So that. That's a pretty awesome place to start. It's a good start. Solid start.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah. And I. I got to work with some amazing people, from Bob Seger to. To Bootsy Collins to Ricky Medlock and Blackfoot. And we did a lot of work with the original. They call it EDM now, but it was techno. We just did a movement festival was just in Detroit last month, so got to work with Kevin Saunderson again. I hadn't seen him in 30 years. So, like I said, some really interesting people that I got to meet. And. And then. And then the other aspect of what we wanted to do here was the passion part was I wouldn't be as successful as I am today. I wouldn't be who I am today if I didn't have music in my life. Right. So the education part of this. So we support music education in the schools through the save the music foundation. You know, music being an outlet for me. I could get my work done at school, but because I had an outlet of playing music and being in the band and being in the choir program and all those kinds of things. Things. So I want to make sure that's still available for kids moving forward.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: So is it still an outlet for you today? Like, do you take those days and go pick up a guitar still?
[00:04:50] Speaker B: I do now. I got burned out in the industry kind of end of the night and just got out of it for a while. And then a friend of mine kind of dragged me back in on his front porch, and we played acoustics for, like, six hours one day, and he's like, okay, we're done. I'm like, dude, we just started. He goes, we've been Here for six hours and I'm like, what, what are you doing tomorrow? Yeah, yeah, so. So now, yeah, quite a bit with friends and, and just, you know, we did a charity for, you know, so we're. We're from Michigan. We've still got a place in Michigan. We're also in Florida. So after hurricane Ian, we did a charity event for, you know, a bar and restaurant that got wiped out by Ian. They also lost their house. So, you know, doing some things like that just, again, just trying to do some good in the world. So.
[00:05:35] Speaker A: So are you the guy that shows up at parties with a guitar in your hand?
[00:05:38] Speaker B: No, no, I'm. I'm actually not.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: So, yeah, God gave me two hands, one to carry a guitar, one to carry a ball of tequila with me, and off I go.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Last five or six years, it's really been the bottle of tequila, it was the guitar for a while now. And it just seems to be a lot of tequila. But yeah, I'll play a guitar if there's one around, for sure.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: Are you familiar with Doug Price from the Agave Social Club?
[00:06:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: Okay. So Doug was a bass player. Touring bass player.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: I didn't know that.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And then there's a tequila out there called Takia Kosher Spirits. It's owned by a Michigan. Another Michigan guy.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Awesome.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: Greg Sobel. And he is professional drummer.
Wow. So I think two guitar players, a singer, a bass player and a drummer. We may have like a little tequila band.
[00:06:26] Speaker B: I'm. I'm digging it. Yeah.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: I don't see.
[00:06:29] Speaker B: So I'll work on that. Yeah.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Well, tell me a little bit about the tequila journey. Why tequila? How did that happen?
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Well, I guess my, my canned answer is a little too much drinking tequila, so. But I, you know, traveled to. To Mexico quite a bit actually. As I was starting to get out of the music industry, I went into the engineering industry, which was kind of my early education.
So did a lot of technology, engineering, those kinds of things. So traveled to Mexico a lot, so. So made a lot of new friends down there and started just getting just immersed in the culture, but also tequila.
Really intrigued by it. And just over a 20 plus year period, it really, it just really kind of grew on me. And when we were looking to my wife and I were looking to do something, we kind of just started into it and said, let's just see where this leads us. Right. And we took our time. We took five years working on this brand and we just met people. Lot of trips, a lot of distilleries, a Lot of tastings. Product development, actually. So.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: Product development. That's right, yes.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Yes. We call it product development now, but. And, you know, went through a lot of phases. We thought we had something that was great, and then we would meet some new folks and do a lot of tastings with others and get feedback, which was. My wife would say, one of the smartest things I ever does was just not to trust myself and my friends, which are great, but, you know, to have fresh eyes and industry eyes that can kind of, you know, make sure you have the Emperor's New Clothes thing happening. So. So that's why we took our time. Over that period of time, we met just an incredible family in Mexico. Hugo Yarnaz and his family. Yeah, just super authentic. You know, his father was a master tequila row, so he's been in this his whole life. He's second generation, and just.
It really is an amazing journey now and the things that we are doing in product development.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: So what was the thing that really hooked you into Nom 1598?
[00:08:27] Speaker B: It was a combination of things. It started off as a recommendation from a couple of folks that were very, very well known in the industry that gave me recommendations through friends that I had met. And then when we met them and did some tastings along with seeing, you know, it's not all about glitz and glamour. Right. It's about, you know, the heart of what's really going on and what's important. And the tastings we had were just.
Just amazing. And then spending a lot of time with that team down there, and Hugo's family just, they. They got us. They got what we were doing. The timing was right that they had taken over a new distillery about a year and a half, two years before and had perfected what they were doing. And we're looking to bring on a few new brands. And when we explained to them what we were really doing here and the mission of it and wanting to be authentic, we had designed our own bottle by then. So my wife and I actually designed that bottle with a friend of ours that's a designer. He saw that, and he saw how much work we had done up to that point, and they were. They were pretty amazed by us. So they. They are believer in what we're doing, too. And just seeing that belief in us and our belief in them, it's really important to have that trust. And it just. It just clicked. And it's been just exponential ever since then.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: That's awesome. I mean, that's a great legacy family in tequila, so.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: It is. Yeah.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: That makes it really cool. So let's, let's dive into this bottle. So tell me about this bottle, because I have a feeling this was not the easiest bottle. I mean, I, this wasn't just sourced off some shelf. I guarantee you this is pretty amazing and definitely wasn't. Yeah, it's, it's one thing to have a beautiful bottle, right? There's a lot of beautiful bottles that are taking place for having good tequila, but you have a beautiful bottle. And the blanco I had the other night, my wife and I both had it together and both were like, okay, that's a fantastic blanco. So I like it when I can show somebody that you can have a great tequila in a great bottle. So tell me about the design and how you came up with this and what engineering feats did you have to overcome to make this happen.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Now that's, that's interesting that you even garnered that because we haven't talked about any of this, but it was, it was a two year journey on the bottle itself.
We knew we wanted something different that would, would portray the passion of musica. Right. So we started out, I did a lot of trend reports, market research, looking at bottle trends, looking at what was out there. We wanted to be a little different. Little did I know I wouldn't be this different. But it ended up in my brain and trying to get it out of my brain and make it look like that three dimensional thing that it is because all, all the sides are different, which is very unique.
We, we had to, we went to three different glass companies. They all said, you can't make this bottle. So the middle is a lot thinner than the top and the bottom, there are some that, that true, but when you go more than about 6%, it becomes unstable right in that middle section. Well, you know, being kind of an engineer and a geek, I hired a couple of automotive engineers up in Michigan and we went at it and did some designs of our own. We started out in clay modeling. After clay, we went to, you know, CAD rapid prototypes. We did three rounds of rapid prototypes and then did some, you know, analysis and engineering to find out we could make it structurally sound. And we were working with the glass company the whole time and they were super happy and surprised to find out we could make the bottle. And then they had to do some very interesting things to be able to make it too. Because in manufacturing it's, it's a partially handmade bottle too. So it's not an automated bottle. If you look at the bottom of the bottle, each of the little curves on the bottom. If you look at.
Straight on the bottle. No, straight up the other way. Sorry.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: Straight up this way.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: Yep. So the curve that you're looking at on the bottom. Yes. If you look down at the bottle, there's a curve.
[00:12:29] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Each one is different. On each bottle, some of them are like this. So now look at the front of the bottom on the. The bottle. On the bottom here, that curve.
[00:12:40] Speaker A: Yep. I see that one of them has.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: A different curve characteristic. It's kind of geeky, but I see the curve.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: Okay, so I seen the curve in this. Yeah, there's a curve in that bottom. But you're. You're talking about the curve from there inside the bottle. Yeah, I see. I see what you're talking about, how it lays back into the bottle.
[00:12:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Because you can't. You can't mold the inside of that bottle. That's okay.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I can. Looking at two of them side by side. Yeah, I can totally see that. Okay.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: That's important to describe. And until you get into the actual engineering of how this glass is made and everything.
That's why it took us two years to do it. And we've won a bunch of awards, actually, just for the bottle now, too. So we, you know, we wanted it to be something. You know, when you look at art or you hear music, everybody's got their own interpretation. You can have three people listen to the same song, and one will be like, oh, that the bass line is great. Well, the. The groove of the drums is great. Or the vocal. Right. So we've had people look and go, well, what do you see? They're like, oh, it's a cello or it's a guitar, or those are the strings, or.
So we like that. It's. There's no right or wrong answer.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: I seen the strings and a treble clef.
[00:13:51] Speaker B: Yep, very good. That. That was the intention. It's also actually the. Those are the five lines of the Trouble staff.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: And then at the top, we made little agave leaves on the top.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't notice that till you say. That's a nice little added touch.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: And then at. At the back, it's kind of a bass clef, or, you know, some may say badonkadonk.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: So, yeah, it definitely has a nice badonkadonk. That's it. It's really cool when I seen it. Plus, you know, if you are carrying the guitar in one hand, and this is a very easy bottle to carry in the other hand.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: That's exactly right. That has happened many, many A time for sure.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: And it's also elegant. My wife seen it right away and she's like, man, what a great bottle on the shelf. And it really is. It's a. It's a beautiful bottle. So kudos to the hard work on that, and that's really awesome.
[00:14:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And we wanted it to be right, that when we look. We look at bottles, sometimes we buy just for the bottle, and then if the juice isn't quite what you wanted it to be, then you won't buy it again. But we wanted to go every level, the juice to be as good as what the bottle shows. So.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: So how did you manage breakage, you know, in travel? Is it pretty strong for being able to ship it?
[00:15:03] Speaker B: We've had some good consultants that were packaging engineers, so. And to make sure that it was structurally sound. It's a very thick bottle. It's a heavy bottle. It's a kilogram of glass all by itself.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: And. And I like the music on the. On the cap. And the love and inspire and respect is really cool as well. So that it's. It's a great touch. Great touch. And I like how they. They kind of fit together when you're putting them on the shelf. So. Yeah, great, Great bottles.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: Well, let's. Let's slip back to Hugo a little bit.
So did you work directly with Hugo to kind of develop the palette and the. The flavor that you have?
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Yeah, him and Jaime, his operations manager, and then Fabian and Emmanuel a little bit, but it really was Hugo. And I don't speak Spanish. My wife has been learning it, and it's pretty good. So we. We were interpreting a lot of things, but, yeah, working with him and Jaime, and it was a lot of work, but it's definitely worth it. And it was so enjoyable because at times they were even surprised how excited he would get after, you know, he. He's done so much right, and he's. He's seen so much in the industry, but he was getting excited about some of the ideas that we had and what we wanted to do. So that was inspiring to me. You know, they. They would even, you know, on the side go, you know, Hugo is.
He doesn't spend this much time with.
[00:16:26] Speaker A: Many people, so that's very cool.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:29] Speaker A: So agave all coming from the Valles, right? Valley Agaves?
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Yep, yep.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: And are they.
Are these guys also agave growers or are you sourcing your agaves?
[00:16:39] Speaker B: No, they source it. They have a. An agreement that they've been getting from the same fields for. For decades. To be honest.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I thought so, but I wasn't 100%.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: Yeah. This family of growers that, that is a. I don't know if they call it a cooperative there or not, but something like that.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: Sure. And there, your distillery that you're at is in amatitan, correct?
[00:17:00] Speaker B: It is, yes.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Okay. Some great water in amateur.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: It is great water, Deep water. Well there, yeah.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the production method of the blanco.
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Sure. It's, you know, the agaves are six, seven years old. So they're, you know, they're, they're in the right spot. They're.
It's autoclave cooked. So high temperature, low pressure.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: Yeah, low pressure. Okay.
[00:17:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Which when we did all those tastings, we literally did thousands of tastings over the first five years. I did a kind of a design of experiments. We call it an engineering. But, you know, we would take data on each one of the tastings and I'd put, how was it made? What kind of agaves did it? So we put all the relevant data that you can find on matchmaker, wherever you can find it. Right. And. But then we'd also put our notes right on the, on the aroma wheel, on the taste, you know, chart, and we put everything in there. And then we kind of figure out, well, what do we like and where is there a market position that we think we can do something a little different than everybody else? So. So with that, I originally thought I would want an oven cooked product, but the more and more I got to what I really liked.
I liked a well cooked autoclave at high temperature, low pressure. Because when you do it right, you get a real juicy product, right? You, you get, you get a real full flavor.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: Yeah. I've said it many times. I think, I think where people get hung up on that is when you're adding maybe the super high pressure, get it done as fast as you can diffuser products, or you're trying to get it done efficiently instead of to taste. I can tell you that in tequila tastings, in blinds, I've been able to tell the difference between a roller mill and a tohona and a diffuser. But I have not yet been able to say that's low pressure autoclave and that's stone oven. Those two, I can't differentiate. I usually can really high pressure autoclave. So this, this to me has a great flavor to it.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: Well, thank you. Yeah, I agree. And we are, we are not to hona.
That was one of the things I want to eventually have One that is that. But for our baseline products because sometimes when you do it right actually you get a little bit of that earthy and you get a little bit of the grittiness in there. So for an everyday product I didn't want that. But we will do some limited editions that maybe do that.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: So your roller mill.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: And then what are you doing for fermentation? What's your fermentation process?
[00:19:31] Speaker B: So it is open fermentation though, or wild as we call it. So no extra thrown yeast.
So stainless steel tanks, open vats. You know, we're right in the middle of the valley so it takes us longer to ferment. But we, we think it's worth it. I personally and you know, no data to do this. I think that's one of the keys to why we've got kind of a smoother front and a smoother back. I mean I know it has to do with how we're cutting the heads and tails and all the other different things. But I really wanted it a very approachable agave forward. So it wasn't too bitey on the alcohol side and things. And I think that open fermentation makes it makes a big difference there. We also play music to our tequilas and we're making fantastic during fermentation and during aging. So even the blancos got some. Got some music. Mozart effect mixed.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I was going to say seems like it's Mozart, not Metallica. That's what I'm picking up.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: Well, so it's the Mozart effect everybody calls it. But we actually use all kinds of music.
So the third, the third leg of kind of what we do is to support local musicians. So we actually have contracts with. With a bunch of musicians in this markets that we serve. So we'll go out and do musical live events with them. And we just did one for our blues release party up in Holland, Michigan this past Sunday.
And that's one of the blues bands that we. We have and we use some of their music.
We play all kinds of different music when we're making our.
So we have the right to be able to do that. The artists have been very gracious in letting us do that.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: That's very cool.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:09] Speaker A: To have like.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not, it's not big name star stuff again, it's doesn't matter.
But you know we use, we use quality stuff everywhere it is. You don't have to be a superstar to have quality music.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: So as a music person that the best song ever written. There's only a handful of people have heard it. Right. And some of the best singers that have ever sang have only been heard on a Sunday morning.
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:32] Speaker A: And some of those best guitar players ever never got anywhere outside of their town, so.
[00:21:37] Speaker B: That's right.
I like finding those people. It really is. You know, I say we support in markets that we serve. However, we were in Hawaii last year and I met a guitar player that was just fantastic. So we, we got him on our website, we started sponsoring him. Eventually we'll get to Hawaii. But he was such an amazing person and artist that you know, when we meet that and like minded of music education and things like that.
Yeah, we want to support it.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: Sure. That's very awesome. And for anybody who doesn't think the Mozart method in fermentation doesn't work, they need to go there and they need to walk up to those tanks and pull out a key or a quarter and start tapping on the side of the fermentation tank and watch that yeast move right towards where you're tapping on that tank and that.
Okay. I don't have proof it changes the flavor, but you can see it's doing something and that's pretty impressive to me.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, us too.
[00:22:40] Speaker A: Would tell me, tell me about the repo. So same blanco, tequila.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: That's your repo.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: Yep. So the repo is now just aged three months in American oak ex bourbon barrels.
[00:22:51] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:52] Speaker B: We kept it light in the barrel. We tried a couple of different things because right about that three month mark, something a bit magical happened where there was this kind of, you know, a little bit of floral, a little bit of fruit, but you still had a balance of a little bit of the barrel coming in. And it's probably, I would say, the spunkiest of all of ours. Right. So. And we think it's pretty unique in the market and actually it's the most award winning one we have. So somebody must think it's that, you know, we don't do it for the awards, obviously, but it is pretty unique in the market.
[00:23:26] Speaker A: I had some the other night and I had a lot more floral than what I was expecting. And then I got a little bit of that malolactic funkiness in part of it too, that I did not get in the blanco. So I liked that. And you got some nice barrel notes. The anejo, I actually got something completely different out, which I really liked. So tell me about your process on the anejo.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: Yeah. So the ano, we went the other direction that stayed in that barrel for same American oak for a year. And a half.
So you'll, you'll see what the major difference that it shifts between the, the repo and the ano. Because at that point it really takes on a lot of that barrel. Right. So you've got some cinnamon, you've got the barrel, you've got some of the bourbon.
We actually rechar the barrels in between each run. So that's why it's got just such a deep color to it. Right. And we only use the barrels three times right now. So that's. We really embrace the barrel on this one.
[00:24:27] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It's what I would call a whiskey winner.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: It is. And there are some people, you know, true spirit agave enthusiasts of an think it's too much whiskey. I'm like, we're going to come up with other versions, but this one was different and this is what we wanted to do.
[00:24:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I get that. I see why some people would say that. Because it's us agave blanco, high proof nerds. We want to be pounded in the face with that agave every time. And this one, the agave is there, but it's very more muted under that whiskey type profile. But I've got a really nice, like stone fruit, like apricot and pear and peach in that flavor. That was really nice. It reminded me of maybe something that a whiskey that had been, you know, aged in like a sherry barrel and, and some tequilas that are in those type of barrels. So it brought out those flavors. But this is a tequila that any single person that comes over that goes, oh, I can't drink tequila. I only drink bourbon. Okay, here, taste this bourbon. You know, and they'll be like, wow, what was that?
Yeah, so it, it's a real winner on the whiskey side. And it. I, I really enjoyed that.
[00:25:37] Speaker B: Well, good. I, I appreciate that you appreciated it. So I seen how dark, getting a lot of people that. That's what they recognize.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: I seen how dark it was and then how light the repo was. So I'm like, okay, they did. There's something completely going on.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: They put a color in there. Yeah, exactly.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: Now I didn't think that because I did some research first.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, good.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: Okay. And then you have, you have another one that I don't have here, but it was called the Music of Blues Reserve 2025.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: Did I not send that to you?
[00:26:07] Speaker A: No. You're in trouble now. That's okay.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: You know what, though? I think I sent you these a while back. It wasn't out yet, so it just came out.
These.
[00:26:14] Speaker A: Yeah. You sent these several weeks ago.
[00:26:17] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. Because it just came out. Yeah. So. And this is. This is the fun part. So it's the same juice that's in the anejo. There's.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:26:24] Speaker B: But what we did is part of it is aged in American oak and part of his aged in Hungarian oak.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: New Hungarian. Hungarian.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: So Hugo turned us on to the Hungarian stuff. We're going to be doing some more things with that and we're going to be playing with a lot of other barrels too, coming out here. But really, that Hungarian barrel is. Man, it's really interesting. The difference is same juice, just a percentage of it has got some Hungarian barrel. And we played blues music to it. So we call it Blues Reserva.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: It's our first limited edition. And this is part of the brand is about every four to six months, you know, depending on how. It's not going to be that scientific because we've done some that didn't quite work out, so they never made it to the market. I'm still working on them, but we're going to have these limited runs. So this one was just about a barrel's worth. There's 264 bottles that we made. Once they're gone, they're gone.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: So did you blend. Did you do some in the Hungarian semi oak and then blended those together?
[00:27:21] Speaker B: We did, yeah. So they stayed separate and then we blended them after. So that's. And we checked a couple of different blends to see which one worked the best. Right.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Yeah. I like being in those blending groups where.
Tell me if this hasn't happened to you. Every time you taste this blend and it's good. You taste this blend and it's maybe not as good as this one. You taste this blend, it's your favorite one, and you're all done. So you throw them all in one glass and then that ends up being the best one.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah.
[00:27:50] Speaker A: It's like, okay, can we.
[00:27:51] Speaker B: But then again, I. I do it over three days and on day one, I thought it was this one. Day two, I thought it was that one. And day three, I went back to this one and then in the end I picked this one.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Completely different.
[00:28:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:28:06] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:28:07] Speaker B: But then I got inputs from other people and stuff. But yeah.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Well, if you think time of day affects it, what you ate affects it, how much all of those things affect that flavor. That's why I try to taste and let it set and then maybe taste it in the morning before work. My wife doesn't watch these.
And then Maybe again in the afternoon. So. But my, my wife and I do some blinds together. I talk her into coming on the show because she's prettier than me.
So we do a blind every time. And then at the end we ended up pouring it in the glass. And the very first time we did that, she's like, this is the best one. So now we do it every time. It always wins. It's the best one when they're all blended together. So can you tell me.
[00:28:50] Speaker B: I wish my wife. Jerry was here talking because she's much prettier than I and, but she's like, I'm, I'm doing the behind the scenes finance and all the, all the business stuff. You go talk to people.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: You go talk to people. Well, we'll have to just bring her out. Maybe next time you're an indie, we all sit at the bar and do like a big blind and that'd be fantastic.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: Absolutely, we would love to do that.
[00:29:09] Speaker A: So do you have, can you, can you spill the beans of what the next one is coming out or is that one still a secret?
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Well, not yet. So.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: The extra nieho is we is probably not going to be till next Christmas. So that one's, that one's laying back. We kind of stole some from one of the other ones to do something else. So I was going to try to get it out, you know, by Christmas, first of the year. And then I thought, no, let's just, let's keep the original plan. We're going to be out for next Christmas. So I'm hoping to have, have one limited edition out by the holiday here, maybe one in the spring that I've been trying to work on. It will be, it will be a techno reserva.
[00:29:48] Speaker A: Very cool.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:29:51] Speaker A: Techno. So techno and edm. Right. So a bunch of people crammed in this room and they're all DJs and it's really loud and bass. So is, is that, is that techno or edm or is that kind of both of those put together?
[00:30:08] Speaker B: It's a complex, It's a complex answer. So, okay, A lot of the EDM is kind of the overarching genre that they call it now.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: Back in the day, mid to 80s or so, the techno house garage. A lot of those kind of stemmed out of Detroit and Chicago.
So I was great to get to work in my career with the original. They call them the Belleville 3.
So Kevin Saunderson, Juan Atkins and Derek May. So I got to work with all. Actually. I actually designed and built Kevin's studio down on Ripo in Detroit back in the day. Yeah. So.
But my platinum album is with Inner City, which is Kevin's band. So. Yeah. So it. Those are the ones that I know. And now EDM is, you know, and there was other movements in Europe because we did a lot of stuff in Europe. And then Chicago's got its own sound and Texas and Atlanta. And so there was all these different, you know, spin off genres that all have their own, like, subcategory. And then EDMs kind of the overarching name now for the whole genres.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: It was the music that made me realize that I'm in my 50s.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: Because I walked by and I thought, okay, the DJ's wearing a marshmallow on his head. And that is too noisy.
[00:31:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I. I dig it because I worked in it for a long time.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: As a music person. It's really kind of cool. Tell me a little bit about Save the Music foundation and I want to know a couple things. One, I know you support it, but I'd also like to know, is there other ways for other people support it that are musicians that have watched this today?
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Absolutely. And that's, that's one of the things we love doing. I mean, right. On our website, there's a tab that you can go kind of. See, we used a piece of their marketing, right. And you click on it, it'll take you right. To Save the Music. So we, early on, we knew we wanted to support music education. We thought maybe we would start our own charity and that kind of stuff.
It's a lot of work doing that kind of stuff. Right. So I thought, you know, I had, I was aware of Save the Music and a couple other organizations. So I said, what the heck? I approached him, I sent him an email, made a call, and they jumped right on the phone. And they were super excited to hear all about what we were doing. And they were all in. So we signed an agreement with them. We're allowed to use the logo and their name in select marketing.
We obviously do it very appropriately, you know, but they do amazing work. I mean, they give instruments to over 2,000 school systems in the U.S. they do workshops with teachers to help them teach modern music and recording techniques to, you know, younger generation. They've got this J. Dilla foundation workshops that they do. We were with them last year in Detroit. We're doing another one in July.
It's at Wayne State University City Detroit Public Schools. And they'll bring in these teachers and they'll do a workshop and they'll help them, give them assets, and then some of them walk away with a. With a digital workstation thing to take back to their classroom. So it really is an amazing organization, and we're just, we're very proud to work with them and support them.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, that's very impressive, and thanks for having a purpose behind what you do.
So once you jumped into the tequila business, what's the hardest thing you found out about it? What's the thing that just went, man.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: That'S a good question.
The good part of what we did was we took our time. If I had tried to do this quickly, we would have. And I think that's what a lot of people jump in and try to get to market quick and you miss something or you make a compromise somewhere. And we weren't in a hurry. We funded the whole thing ourselves and whatnot. So we were just, we thought, you know, if something goes awry, we just won't do it right. If we couldn't do it right, we weren't going to do it. So. And at every, at every turn, we.
We were comfortable not knowing some answers, but we worked on it. The bottle. I didn't have the right partner. I did not grow up in the tequila world. But we trusted that we would find the right ones. We were very blessed to. To get good partners in everything. We're doing one because we took our time. But yeah, it is a. It is a tough industry. I. I did know a little bit of it. So in the 90s, this is about my eight business. So in the 90s, I had a beer wine deli catering in Michigan, so it wasn't spirits. But, you know, I learned a bit of this business back then.
So now that I had seen that retail side of it, and I've got a lot of production background, this was interesting doing this. Probably the toughest part was people doing the. You're not this industry. So, you know, what do you know kind of things.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: What's the thing that. What's the thing that surprised you the most? In a good way.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: In a good way was how many people supported us and embraced us. And so while there was a handful of what I just said, which I take everything to heart, so the first couple hurt. Right. And, you know, I actually had some really good friends in the industry that said, just. Just let it roll off. Right. And. And I actually engaged with some of the ones that. That came. Criticisms. The more we talked it through, even with the people that had initial criticisms, once we talked it through, they. They end up getting on board and, oh, I didn't understand this or I didn't understand that. So that was good. But the people that have embraced us is just. It just boggles my mind. I mean, the industry, the people that have helped us along the way, it's. It's just. It's gone incredibly well. And the industry is just so.
I don't want to say it's nice, but you meet nice people along the way and it just has been an amazing r. And it just continues to be an amazing ride.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah. So what's the thing that you're most excited about now that you've got everything in the place that you're at?
[00:35:57] Speaker B: Product development. So, yeah, you know, just making sure we keep the quality that we're at, which is. Which is not an issue. But, you know, you always have to watch and make sure that you don't. That's where the big boys, once they start getting into volume, they start making compromises. We're not going to do that, but coming up with these, these unique limited editions and some fun things that we're going to do, but also the reason they're going to be fun is it's not just the tequila. It is. Is what we do with it that we go out and celebrate with an artist. So we just. We just signed a reggae band the other day, so just incredible musicians down in Florida. So I can't wait to work with them a little bit more. And then for me, what we're doing is we're interpreting tequila through music or we're interpreting music through tequila. One or the other. Both are correct, I guess. But.
So what does reggae music mean to me when I think of tequila? Or what does blues mean? Right. So that's the most exciting to me. And then to get to share with it with people and talk about it. And what did you taste? And.
And. And they're like, well, what's your favorite? And I'm like, well, you know, it's kind of like asking which kid is my favorite or grandkid. Right. It's like, depends on my mood. It depends on what I ate, what they did. Yeah.
So it's just the excitement of what. Where we can go from here. Because it really is fun to do. And the team we have is amazing.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: That's good. It's good to be excited about your business and where it's going to go. Right. That's kind of the coolest thing. And when your business is helping other people in other ways, that that makes it all Worth doing.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: It is. And the engagement with the artists, I mean, the one we had the other day, we did one down in Florida with one of our artists. And it really is neat that we not only get to engage with the artists, but we get to hear firsthand. So we have brand. We have our own in house brand ambassadors in all of our states. Right. So we don't farm any of that out. So it's people that we've spent time with and know the brand, but we do a lot of it ourselves, my wife and I. And being able to hear the stories about, you know, we could tell them what music means to us, what music of the brand means.
But then to go, oh, you know, they go, yeah. It's like I'm a music teacher or my. My father played in a military band. Right. Everybody's got some type of musical connection in their life.
And to just make that thread and start talking about it, that's really cool. It's probably the most fun part of the whole journey.
[00:38:31] Speaker A: It just made me think of something. Because music makes you remember.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: It does.
[00:38:36] Speaker A: Tequila makes me forget.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: Wait, I'm gonna have to use this somewhere.
[00:38:42] Speaker A: I have to put that in Chad GPT and write a song.
[00:38:45] Speaker B: There you go.
You need to call Riley back. Yeah.
[00:38:48] Speaker A: Because music is a thing. That music makes your mind transcend time.
[00:38:54] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:38:55] Speaker A: You can hear a song and remember, you know, man, my mom used to play that Doobie Brothers song all the time when I was a K kid or you hear I'm 56 and my mom was a very. A very musical person. And you know, maybe she'd pull out a Barry Manilow song that my mom would listen to and then I hear that song. And it takes me back to being eight years old standing in the kitchen when my mom was singing that song.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: There's.
[00:39:19] Speaker A: There's music to me is one of the only things that can do that.
Make your mind attached to a memory and give it a melody. And that's one of the only things that can do that. It's so awesome to me.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:39:31] Speaker A: I absolutely correct.
[00:39:32] Speaker B: And that. That's why we think it's so magical along along with other.
Other aspects. Right. Is even, let's say in the studio I would have people that multiple times there was musicians that we would hire in for a con. You know, if we have a guitar studio guy stuff. But from parts of the world, you didn't realize until they came in that maybe you're in conflict. Right. If they were in another part of the world, they would be going at each other. Right. But we're in the studio and they're speaking music. And that's where the kind of crossing borders and cultures comes from me. Because it really is a universal language.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: Okay, so here's a kind of wrapping it up for you. Here's another question I have for you. You've built this baby, you've worked, made this beautiful bottle, You've brought this juice out. You're helping so many people.
If you could sit down with anybody and share a glass and share the story. This is past, future, anyone alive, anyone not alive, just anybody in your life or famous or whatever, who. Who would you want to sit down, share the story of what you're doing, and share a glass of this with them?
[00:40:45] Speaker B: Wow. Good question. No one's ever asked me that before. And I would have to say my answer is my grandmother that I never met.
So she died when my mom was young. My mom was an amazing person. Both my kids were. Both my mom and dad were. So she was a jazz singer back in the 20s, early 30s. She passed away when my mom was 7 years old. So I have some of her music charts with her handwriting in there about, you know, back in the day. Right, you actually had charts, and they would put inflections in there and you change the lyrics or where I'm going to breathe.
So I have. That's all I have of her, along with some stage photos and things. So I'm. I've always been a bit intrigued by her. She never recorded anything that we've ever been able to find because it was, you know, late 20s, early 30s. You had to be pretty well off to cut straight to.
To lacquer. Right. So that was for only the. The very elite artists. But she sang with the Jimmy Dorsey band and. And quite a few others kind of in Detroit and Chicago, from what I heard. But yeah, I think. I think I would like her to see this and have a conversation with her.
[00:41:53] Speaker A: That's very cool. Yeah, I bet she'd be very.
[00:41:55] Speaker B: We may have. Have a version down the road.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: Down the road.
That's very awesome. There's a country song. I forget who it is, but they. They talk about. They wish. Wish heaven had a holiday where you could go visit.
Just that. That concept of if you could go visit that person for a day or maybe even every Sunday. Right. That. That would be so cool. And that's a great story because that's.
That there. There would be so much pride and so much joy, I think, in that type of meeting. That. That's. That's really awesome. So I appreciate you sharing that.
[00:42:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:31] Speaker A: All right. Tell everybody where they can find you.
[00:42:34] Speaker B: Well, so we're at a whole bunch of locations in Michigan and Florida right now. We're hoping to grow into some more states, but musicatequila.com you can buy it online there. We have a partner that, you know, you click on the direct to consumer link will take you there in the certain states at Total Wines and things like that.
[00:42:51] Speaker A: Beautiful. We'll put the website up here. And you've got some great social media as well, so I'll kind of stick those handles on there as well. And is there anything else that you could think of that we didn't touch on?
[00:43:02] Speaker B: No, just we. We hope to bring more people into learning about who we are. And please follow us if you get on the socials. And please, if you ever see that we're doing an event with our artists or out, please stop by and tell us your story. That's the part we really enjoy the most. Yeah. And thank you so much for this time. This is. This has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate it.
[00:43:22] Speaker A: I appreciate you. I appreciate the tequila. You sent a hat and a T shirt and some pins and some buttons like you gotta.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: And I'm sending the blues now. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do that tonight.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: So I'm gonna get out and play E, A and B until it gets here.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: There we go.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: Well, I have a little glass, so I want to say cheers and thank you so much. I know that you're busy and you just aren't waiting to sit some crazy guy on the Internet, but I really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks for the tequila and thanks for your story. And look for this tequila. It's amazing. Thank you.
[00:43:54] Speaker B: Thank you.
