The Distillery Nation Podcast

On this episode of the Distillery Nation Podcast, I talk with Sam Filmus of ImpEx Beverages, the US importer behind Kilchoman and a range of premium spirits. Most episodes feature distillers, but Sam brings the view from the other side of the deal: the importer deciding which brands make it to American shelves.
Sam started a wine distribution company in California in 1997, bringing in traditional Moldovan dessert wines. When younger drinkers moved away from those styles, he moved into spirits. The distribution lessons he learned along the way still shape how ImpEx works today.
We talk about his first whiskey, Chivas Regal, and why blends deserve more respect than they get. Sam explains the shift he sees in the market: people buying one great bottle instead of several ordinary ones. That shift rewards higher proofs, single-cask releases, transparency, and a real story.
Sam also shares a hard lesson. A single-cask release priced too high for the market didn't sell, however good the whisky was. Technical quality alone doesn't sell a bottle.
We discuss the late Dr. Jim Swan and his influence on distilleries in hot climates and on cask selection. Sam also explains what he looks for in a new partner. Shared philosophy comes first, then the quality of the whisky and the packaging.

On this episode of the Distillery Nation Podcast, I sit down with Ryan Myhre, Director of Brewing and Distilling at Talking Cedar Distillery. Talking Cedar is the first tribally owned distillery in the United States, owned by the Chehalis Tribe in Washington.
Ryan didn't take a straight path into distilling. He has a PhD in chemical engineering, spent time as a stay-at-home dad, and started homebrewing. He then worked at several breweries before joining Talking Cedar as quality manager and eventually becoming head distiller.

Steven Beam, master distiller at Limestone Branch Distillery and Yellowstone Bourbon, joins the show to talk about starting the distillery in 2008 with a self-funded, family-run 150-gallon pot still.

When does the romance of the pot still stop making financial sense? For Kris Bohm, who has spent his career designing, installing, and running both batch and continuous systems, the answer comes down to a number and the honesty to act on it.
On this episode of Distillery Nation, I sat down with Kris of Distillery Now Consulting to dig into a debate most of us argue with feeling instead of math. Kris brings both. He walked me through the technical differences making cuts by taste and temperature on a pot still versus flash-extracting ethanol through sieve trays in about two minutes on a column — and then got to the part that matters for anyone signing equipment checks: around 200 to 250 barrels a year, the economics flip. Above that line, an 18-inch column produces the same volume in a quarter of the time at less than half the utility cost.
What struck me most was a story from a tequila operation in Mexico. The batch product cost $20 a liter to make and tasted better. The column product cost $5 and outsold it anyway. The market doesn't always reward the harder road a lesson I've lived myself, having built my identity around a direct-fire pot still before the math pushed me toward contract distilling for volume while keeping special batch releases alive.
Kris was equally direct about sourcing: it isn't a shortcut or a sin. He sourced for three years before releasing his own distillate and told his customers exactly that. Transparency, not method, is what earns trust.
Whether you're sizing your first still or rethinking the one you have, this conversation is full of math worth doing and assumptions worth questioning.

What happens when a whiskey critic stops writing about great whiskey and starts making it? For Jay West, the answer is Provenance Bourbon and the journey in between is one worth hearing.
On this episode of Distillery Nation, I sat down with Jay West, the principal whiskey maker behind 1787 Provenance Bourbon and Reverie's, both produced through Middleburg Barrel Company in Virginia. Jay's path to production is anything but conventional. He started writing about whiskey in 2015, not as a career move, but as a way to learn. Those notes, shared openly with the online community, slowly built something rare in any industry: trust.