DRINK HONORABLY

'Sip To Remember'
Exclusive Interview with Founders of Four Branches Bourbon
Featured in 'Innerviews'
Hosted by Allié McGuire

​The first spirits company founded by veterans from the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force, Four Branches Bourbon is dedicated to delivering exceptional expressions of Bourbon to honor the extraordinary sacrifices of those who serve in the shadows and to share their stories with all generations. Today, the four founders, Mike Trott, Rick Franco, RJ Casey and Harold Underwood share the story behind Four Branches Bourbon.

ALLIÉ: Let's start this way. Before you became founders, how did you four find each other?

RICK: I guess I'll take that because this was, I guess, my idea originally. So, Allié, we've told a lot of people, the seeds for Four Branches Bourbon were planted 25 years ago. When I went to VMI and became good friends with another cadet, we became marine officers. I got out and I recruited Greg into a branch of the CIA, which I was contracting for at the time. And Greg's first mission, he goes out and he is a true hero, saves everyone's life. Unfortunately, he lost his, and I had to bring him home. And then I was held accountable to answer to the friends and family of how things happened. So those were the seeds, and it took 25 years for those seeds to germinate into Four Branches, or into what has now become Four Branches.

​About three years ago, I was driving home from work and literally a voice in my head said, "Hey, you should do a barrel of bourbon for the guys in the old unit." And at that point, I was like, yeah, that sounds great. I'll sell on Facebook and we can do that. A, you can't do it, you can't sell bourbon on Facebook or any sort of alcohol on Facebook, so we've learned. Anyway, I called Mike and told Mike about this idea, and then it kind of grew from there. Mike and I was like, "Well, we need to call Harold." And then the three of us started talking. Mike being in the Air Force, the smart guy, pointy pencil and eraser. Myself in the Marine and Crayons didn't really come together that well. He's like, "You know what? We got Marine, we've got a Navy guy. I'm the Air Force guy. We should call RJ, he's in the army.” So, that’s how Four Branches came together. And it came together to a point where it's bigger than wanting to do one barrel. Obviously, we're well past that. It's the idea of honoring the unsung shadows. And as we get through it, you'll hear more about drinking honorably, serving honorably and, and how we're changing the narrative. That's how we became from four guys and four separate branches of the military coming together,

ALLIÉ: Coming together… And here we are having this conversation today. Before we go further, let's talk about four, one of my favorite numbers. Each part of the four on your logo, on your label represents one of the branches. So, can we take turns with each of you sharing how your branch is represented in the four on your label?

RJ: Definitely, I'll kick it off. As you see the four, there's a foundational piece that the four sits on. Rick's got it there on the screen, but that foundation represents the Army because that was the first branch. So all the other branches get built after that and that's my piece.

HAROLD: Awesome, RJ. And from my side, I'm the Navy component. So looking at the four, if you take the foundational piece of the army and move straight up through the center with a little bit of a slant on the top, that represents a Navy War fighting vessel mast, or a submarine coming out of the water with the cell. On the horizon, you can see that very distinctively. That's the Navy piece.

RICK: All right. I'll speak for the Marines. Marines are Department of the Navy. We are the leanest of the branches. We're also the smallest, but arguably we're the deadliest, often represented by a spear bayonet. And that spear bayonet is represented by the lean thin crossbar that comes across through the Navy because we're part of it. And I'll turn it over to Mike.

MIKE: Following that up, you have the Air Force, which controls the skies over all branches. So that big sweeping motion towards the sky represents the Air Force. And while we are the Four Branches, there's actually a fifth element, and we'll let Harold talk about that.

HAROLD: And the fifth element is, you can see coming down from the far right moving downward, you see a spearhead. Special Operation uses that as a tip of the spear because we're usually the first ones in, last one's out. But as you can see, you can see half of the spear. The spear piece that you can see at the tip is the one we're paying honor to our men and women who are deployed across the globe protecting us today. The piece that is missing is for our fallen, for those who are no longer with us.

ALLIÉ: I don't know that I'm ever going to look at the number four the same way. It's really awesome. So we looked at the number. Now, let's talk about some words here. "Serve honorably, drink honorably." RJ, when we spoke the other day, you literally gave me goosebumps when you shared this. Very simply stated, "Don't drink to forget, sip to remember.”

RJ: Yeah. About a year into this, we looked at each other and we were like, "Man with all the veteran suicide and all the self-medication," not just in the military community, but first responder and other communities out there, we just said, "Look, we don't want to ignore it. We still want to keep going forward, but we're going to have to address this." Rick had already come up with Serve Honorably, and we gave it about 24 hours. We were like, "How are we going to address this?" And the next phone call was the next day and we were like, "Hey, we serve honorably, let's drink honorably." The old phrase of drink responsibly, everyone knows what that means, but I haven't heard that in like over a decade.

We wanted to bring something back that represented us, that talked to our communities. And after we said drink honorably, people were like, "That's good. It's kind of like the other one, but what does that mean to you guys as a company?" We were like, "Well, it just simply means that we're not going to drink to forget anymore. We're going to sip to remember." And they were like, "Oh, yeah, now I got you. Now I know exactly what you're saying.”

So between all those phrases, we just want to make sure we're looking out for each other. A lot of my friends and even some of us back in the day, used to self-medicate. So we want to get past all that and sip to remember the good times and toast to everyone we worked with, whether it was a female that kept the internet up and running during a sandstorm for a couple of weeks so we could talk to our families, or the guys that kept the helicopters in the air and the trucks moving. We just wanted to thank everybody because for every guy on the X, there's a lot of people behind them. We really appreciate everything they all do.

ALLIÉ: Again, such simple words, but so incredibly powerful. What an amazing reminder of what we are to do and not to do. So let's shift gears a bit, because while rum is fun and gin is good, tequila is, well... trouble. Bourbon was your spirit of choice, gentlemen. So when you decided to make a spirit of your own, what was it that was so special about bourbon that made it your selection of choice?

RICK: I think bourbon, as you said, rum is fun, and gin is good, and we know what tequila is. Bourbon, by nature, is a reflective spirit, we feel. When you sit down with bourbon, you're sitting down to tell stories and to remember the good times and to sip to remember. And that's why we chose bourbon. It's a very reflective spirit. It's also a very iconic American spirit that runs through the fabric of our nation. And we chose a four grain, which was very important to us because we wanted to represent one grain for each branch of the military that was represented by us. This is why we chose bourbon.

ALLIÉ: Well, as one who enjoys bourbon very much, I'm very glad that you did. So thank you for that. I appreciate it. Let’s now talk more about Four Branches and your four grains. Let's talk about the Founder's Blend. Who wants to take this one? Who wants to talk about the kiss that comes with it? Specifically, I want to hear about the Kentucky kiss, because I'm familiar with a butterfly kiss. I'm familiar with an Eskimo kiss. I got that. But a Kentucky kiss? Please explain.

HAROLD: Well, I'm going to say go Navy, and I'm going to take this one because it was a very humbling experience we all had when we were out at the Bardstown Bourbon Company, and we went in to sit down with Dan, who is the blender at Bardstown, to actually come up with our mash bill. And this was very important. We were getting ready to pick the taste and the proof of our juice.

​We were all standing around in a room. It looked like a chemist lab. I'm a medic along with RJ. I've seen a lot of test tubes and stuff. They were little tiny glasses in there, little thermal sized glasses, a lot of eye drop deals, and they were mixing all of this stuff up. And we had a pretty good 70-20-10 blend. 70 corn, 20 rye, 10... But a lot of people have that.

So with us, it was all about the Four Branches. Our bottle's got four sides to it, the diamond bottle. Now we have four grains. And as we were walking through the early stages of this process, in walks Steve Nally, who's a master distiller, used to be a master distiller for Maker's Mark for eons, over 35 years. And he walks in. He was supposed to just come in, shake some hands, bump some fists, and out he goes. But he stayed. He stayed and we were having some conversations with him, and we were getting to the point where we were mixing up these little thimbles and dropping a little bit of this in there. And all of a sudden, the decision was made, "Hey, we want to add another grain. We want to be four because we really like our four mojo."

So we bring in Steve. He said, "Okay, let's go go 5% wheat with this." And he made the little thimbles, they were dropping these drops, and he tasted it. And Steve is kind of works it. So he puts it in his tongue and he is looking up at the ceiling, and we're all standing around looking at him going, okay, are you going to talk to us, or what's going on? And he keeps looking up and he goes, "Let's go five more." So we went five more. And after he did that, Dan blended it and got everything mixed up. So he hands it over to me and he goes, "Okay, this is for the four of you." I didn't receive that. So what I did was I got a good smell of it and I knocked it back. But I didn't shoot it. I kept it in my mouth and I worked it a little bit and swallowed, and I was like, "Wow, that's really good." And everybody's staring at me going, Hey, hold on a minute... Dan was saying, "Hey, Harold, that was supposed to be for all four of you guys to taste." And I'm like, "Oh, I'm sorry." But anyway…

MIKE: Typical Navy.

RJ: Actually, what Harold said was, "Man, this is really good. You guys have got to try this.”

HAROLD: But after getting that, and we all pretty much looked at each other and said, "Hey, this is really, really good." And then that's when Steve who is the bourbon hall of famer along with his wife. His wife was had a lot to do with the establishment of the Bourbon Trail. So, what a great honor it was for us to be there. We were very blessed to have Steve in the room with us. He stayed for over an hour and he really helped us to push our mash bill across the finish line.

MIKE: Allié, to your point, we refer to the Kentucky Kiss, as Harold was talking about sipping it and letting it go down the back of the tongue, you get this little burn. The little burn lets you know that you're drinking bourbon. It's not a hard burn. It's not a harsh burn. As Rick says, it's a very drinkable, very smooth bourbon, but it's enough that we call it the Kentucky Kiss, and that's just inside the tongue going down the back and just lets you know that you're drinking bourbon.

​ALLIÉ: That is awesome. And makes me eager for it. There's something else I want to talk about here before I let you guys go today. Bourbon, it's about more than what you sip in your glass. It's about what you share in good company. This bourbon has a story as you shared. Thank you. And each of you has a story. And every veteran who has served this country has a story. Four Branches, as I have read, is committed to supporting veterans, their families, and their stories. So my last question for today is, for this mission supporting veterans and their stories, what's your strategy?

MIKE: I think you described it really well, Allie, because it was part of our motivation. We talked about doing Four Branches as RJ mentioned. We almost took a step back and didn't. And then we decided, how do we make the best use out of what we're getting ready to be involved with? And part of that is we decided we have to have a big give-back portion to the community where we came from.

So immediately, we partnered with Folds of Honor and Third Option Foundation. Those are two foundations that we respect and they're doing great job for the community. Not only veterans, but the first responder community. So we are partnered with both of them, that we give back a portion of our profits to both of those organizations. But it goes beyond that, like you said. It's recognizing veterans.

Rick, in a couple of weeks is going to be at a nursing home where we're paying honor to a 102-year-old lady who was in World War II and she is still with it. So Rick is going to be going, doing a tasting with a bunch of veterans of that age group, and it's about telling their story.

My dad was in the Korean War, my grandfather was in World War I, my son was in the second Iraq war. So it's stories, it's telling these kinds of stories and these generational stories. So giving back to the community is not just financially, it's also getting these stories out that RJ talked about. It's a lot of people that stay in the shadows that we want to tell their story. So there's a big give-back component and it continues to grow. We weren't even aware that in the last four months, we've been asked to go to different charities and donate some of our bourbon. And some of our bourbon are signed bottles by us and our brand champion, Randy Couture, which has a good name in the industry, a good veteran. And those bottles and our attendance at these functions have raised over $68,000 in just four months for three different charity organizations.

So, we're always looking for other ways to give back to the community. We can't be everywhere. We're a new company. But that is one of our main motivations is to give back to the communities and tell their stories. ∎

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