This past summer, comedian Jim Gaffigan recorded a 40-minute special titled, “Live from Old Forester: The Bourbon Set,” which centers on American whiskey culture. A longtime beer drinker, Gaffigan, fell for bourbon during the Covid lockdown of 2020. Not only did he like the drink, his passion for it led him to study the culture surrounding it and the people within it, with a comedian's eye, of course. Amid that research, he co-created a bourbon brand, Fathertime Precious Batch Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.

The show is a YouTube exclusive and free to watch. Yep, Gaffigan, with the help of Old Forester Distillery, the show's sponsor, is offering up this round of comedy on the house. Click here to see it. Well, after you read the following Q&A, of course.

Steve Coomes: I watched The Bourbon Set yesterday to get some ideas for questions, and I really enjoyed it. The question that immediately came to mind was: At what point did you think, “I write a whole comedy routine out of just talking about drinking bourbon?”

Jim Gaffigan: I thought, “I'm passionate about this. It is a niche thing. I seem to know way too many people that have a shared like-minded obsession with it.” (But since) I wanted to make sure that it appealed to a lot of people, I knew that I couldn't do an entire show just about bourbon. I mean, maybe I could in Kentucky and Tennessee and maybe Atlanta, or North Carolina. (Then) I was like, “You know what? I'm just going to do it for myself and for those people that are interested in this topic.”

SC: So, this will be exclusively on your YouTube channel. Is it a paid thing that people can get tickets to?

JG: It's going to be wide open, and that’s nice. But for me, there's cost surrounding doing a decent production. The set on The Bourbon Set that was not free. Old Forester did help us access some of those barrels, but you need someone who can construct the backdrop, and there's this great director who’s got to get paid. It's neat that I love bourbon, but like he's got to pay his rent.

I came up with this idea and brought it up to my agent and manager, “I don't know what you're talking about.” (Looking for a large distillery to sponsor it) was not an easy sell. They're used to doing a partnership with Eli Manning around the Super Bowl. They're like, “You want to do a standup set all about bourbon and we can't tell you what to say.” And I'm like, “Yeah.”

I was pitching this idea of doing this (to Brown-Forman), and people were like, “Yeah, you know … we're experiencing a contraction (in sales), and so I don't know if I can turn to our marketing (team) and say, “We're gonna take all that money you have and we're gonna use it for this guy to do a standup about bourbon.” It's a pretty absurd ask, right?

But luckily, the Old Forester people kind of got it and they were comfortable with me discussing other brands. I think they understood the value.

SC: One of the things that really stood out to me in the screener was your mastery of the lingo. Did you immerse yourself in the culture to acquire that knowledge?

JG: I got into bourbon during the pandemic. And I wouldn't say that I was really deep into it. That's kind of where I found my spirit. And once I decided that I was going to do this Bourbon Set, I knew that I really had to educate myself. As everyone who loves bourbon knows, there's a learning curve, and it can be a humbling process because there's a lot of terminology and a lot of science and story. I was working in my garden listening to podcasts. And I still have so much to learn.

SC: Did your Fathertime Bourbon help with that education?

JG: Fathertime really started as this thing where I had been approached a couple times about doing a celebrity spirit. And from my experience, a lot of celebrity spirits are uneven or even bad. So, I didn't want to do that. Because I can do stand up, I don't need to take bad acting jobs or some kind of promotional thing that I don't believe in.

But when it came to doing Fathertime, I really cared about the quality because I was immersing myself in that bourbon world. I didn't want to do something that was mediocre.

SC: I understand that your wife, Jeannie, is integral to your joke writing, production and stuff like that. Did she also get immersed in bourbon culture?

JG: My bourbon awakening was in the pandemic because, well, we all were at home, right? Our kids were becoming teenagers—which, essentially, is living with mentally ill people—so my wife and I had a kind of whiskey hour when we would sit down and have a drink. Anyone in a relationship knows you have to find these times to connect. And when I decided to do Fathertime she was, “So you took this thing that was a time for us to bond, and you turned it into a business opportunity?”

My wife, she's a very important partner. When I was writing books or doing the television show, we were writing together constantly. But when you have teenagers and she has her own life and passions, it's not realistic for that collaboration to be as deep as it was when we didn't have kids.

SC: I read an article in which you said you’ll send her a thumb drive recording of your standups on the road so she can critique them.

JG: When we started dating, she would come to shows with me and take notes. And then, when our first two kids were born, we traveled as a family. And even when our five children were very young, we would get on a tour bus and we would bring a babysitter, so she would come to all these shows. But as things evolve, it's just not practical. It's okay for a kindergartner to miss a day or two of school, but you can't do that to a kid who's on the basketball team.

SC: As a writer, I know about immersing myself in a situation for research, and one of the funniest things in the Bourbon Set was your take on liquor stores and how you them to a bookstore that had a Self-Destruction section. You’ve clearly had to have seen a few liquor stores to make that joke.

JG: Everyone who goes on their bourbon journey … has a different perspective on a liquor store than you did when you were going in there to buy some Rumple Minze or a case of beer that you and your buddies could drink at the dorm. The purpose then was consumption, not acquisition and storage like a bourbon collector. As a writer, you understand that the things that almost don't make sense, there's an opportunity there. So, the fact that liquor stores are these weird places and they're part of this whiskey world makes them more fascinating.

SC: The whole back of the set is Old Forester barrels. Why weren’t they Fathertime barrels?

JG: Some of why it's Old Forester is I needed to get someone to pay for production, right? It could have been Fathertime, but also out of respect for the topic and my passion for bourbon, I didn't want this to be perceived as a marketing set. I also wanted to partner with a brand that would not censor what I said up there. I'm a clean comedian. I'm not going to sit there and say anything controversial. But I wanted it to be me articulating this passion that I have. So, if I made it about Fathertime, I think that would take away from the message.

SC: I’m sure Old Forester liked that you talked a good deal about its sister brand, King of Kentucky, which might be my favorite bourbon ever.

JG: That stuff is outstanding. (And that story told) about Jerry Seinfeld, who's a friend and somebody I respect a lot, it’s a true story. He got stuck with the bill.

SC: Was it really $500 a pour?

JG: It was $500 a pour. Should I have paid the tab? I absolutely should have paid, but in that moment of awkwardness, and because I am an awkward individual, that's what I did (stuck Seinfeld with the tab). And I think also, from a creativity standpoint, I think people do appreciate the warts and all in a story.

For what it’s worth, I brought up to Jerry that I was going to tell this story, but I was not going to identify him by name. And he said, “You know, it probably would be better if you said my name.” And that wasn't vanity, he’s just, from a comedy writing perspective, a guy who knows specifics are always better; that you don't want people wondering who it was.

And he also brought up that because in one version of the story, I said that he didn't like (King of Kentucky), and he said, “But I did like it, Jim,” and because he did like it, and he brought that up, that provided the hinge to me discussing how important storytelling is to American whiskey.

SC: I liked that you said in The Bourbon Set, “Celebrity spirits are the worst.” You had to get some self-deprecation in there, didn't you?

JG: I mean, well, authenticity … is a certain amount of self-awareness.

SC: Who came up with the idea to call your bourbon Fathertime specifically “Precious Batch” rather than small batch?

JG: Our slogan (on its bottle stoppers) is “A Father's Joy Is Earned,” and that's some of what I also love about the whiskey world, the storytelling. (Fathertime’s labels include his grandfather’s face, and they read, “Bourbon raised with love and discipline in heavy oak barrels undisturbed by children or the stress of parenting.”) I complain a lot about my family, but it is my identity, you know, and that led to ‘Precious Batch.’ It's all about what I had learned and how positioning Fathertime as this reward or reprieve for the parent, which is, you know, all selfish. I think dads should have time where they can hang out with a buddy or hang out with their spouse and drink some bourbon.

SC: You went pretty strong on price when you launched Fathertime. (MSRP ranges between $200 to $300.) What drove that decision?

JG: Some of the price point is something that I don't like, but I also I'm glad we made it that price point. (F)or me, it had to be of a certain quality, and it does reflect my kind of experience in the bourbon world. Every bottle is signed by me, which is a nightmare, by the way!

SC: You've got to work in an auto pen joke at some point!

JG: Yeah, no, but of course, that would be like destroying a piece of trust. This is really kind of a passion thing, which … fits into the bourbon geek (culture), right? And, there’re tons of bottles that are at that price point.

And there's the great irony: My standup is something where I have always made ticket prices approachable. I've always understood that if people are going to come with their partner or their mother-in-law, I want it to be accessible.

But when we (film director Stu Pollard, a friend from Georgetown University, where Gaffigan also played football) were discussing it, there was also a reality where Fathertime was going to be a one-off. So, while I didn't just want to make money, I didn't want to lose unnecessary amounts of money either. I knew that if it didn't sell, I was just going to drink it myself. (He laughs.) If there is a profit, it goes back into buying better barrels. And … there's better bourbon that’s accessible now that's less expensive, which is amazing.

SC: And it's only going to get better for NDPs like yours.

JG: Well, selling it, of course, would be the challenge now with the slow market. But good whiskey that’s out there is piling up.

I learned this in the entertainment industry: If you chase money, it never pans out. So, like, the way we're dealing with Fathertime is, it's not like we're trying to scale up. It's not like we're trying to position ourselves to get sold or anything like that. But, if some big multinational corporation came in and wanted to give me a nice check—I'm not saying that would be bad.

I don't want to lose money, but I'm not looking to create generational wealth with it. … The money is going into the product. I totally agree with you (on the price point).

(He then jokes) It’s like we're on Meet the Press, and you're like, “What's with the price point?”

SC: Well, let me give you a little bit more Meet the Press: How many cases a year do you guys do a year?

JG: Well, a girl will never tell. I know that transparency is important, but it's also like, I don't want to get caught up in success, because I'm also superstitious, and I know the devil's watching, because, you know, I grew up this Irish Catholic kid. So, our first release was pretty gangbusters. Then we did a second release around OND (the October, November, December gift season), and it was not as big of a bang, but it was a good bang.

I want to tell the stories, which is, in some ways, kind of a parallel to The Bourbon Set: No one asked for The Bourbon Set. There was no vacuum where (someone asked), “When is someone going to step up and do a standup show all about bourbon?” We all certainly don't need another bourbon.

But some of it is the stories I want to tell are for myself, and that kind of ties back even into my experience with collecting bourbon. I have a bourbon from all 50 states. I don't have that collection to impress someone. I did it for myself. The Fathertime things I want to do are not constructed for monetary success or even brand building. They’re stories that I selfishly want to tell.

I'm much more of a story guy. And even in The Bourbon Set, I talk about Jefferson’s Ocean. … I admire (that the story) worked. It got some people excited. It was something where a bartender could tell the story. Jefferson’s is this incredible brand that has a lot of different stories: some of them are going to have an arc, and some of them are going to be perceived as less serious as other ones.

SC: Last question: I’ve seen pictures of you at a whiskey festival talking about Fathertime, getting your picture taken and talking with whiskey folks. Do you like being part of that scene, up close and personal with bourbon fans?

JG: When you talk with someone who's a bourbon geek, or whatever term we want to use, you … very quickly end up talking about anything but your occupation. If someone's a doctor or a pipe fitter, it really has no relevance to the shared passion, which I think is really cool. The shared fascination is a unifying thing. Whether you're a hedge fund guy or an Air Force pilot, it can bring everyone together. It's like kids with toys: “Oh, you like Superman too?” You know what I mean?

SC: Absolutely.