"All of our collaborations come about naturally, out of friendships or mutual respect for one anothers' product" Carrie goes on. "Our husbands are all hot sauce obsessed, and Chenault's husband Ed in particular would bring up his 'Midland Ghost' hot sauce from the Lemieux family in Georgia whenever we got together in Louisville. He had the whole family hooked. Naturally, when we wanted to create a hot sauce we went to [them].
"They started making their pepper sauce as a hobby, growing pepper plants on their property in Midland, Georgia from ghost pepper seeds given to them by a friend from Hawaii. It is not uncommon for hot sauce to be aged in used charred oak barrels, so we didn't reinvent anything, but we created something with a story between two families, that is handmade from the source, which wouldn't be possible were it not for the partnership of two small family businesses.
"Same goes for our barrel aged maple syrup and bourbon balls. Our syrup comes from the Bissell's maple farm in Ohio, and is aged in our oldest bourbon barrels. Our bourbon balls are made locally by our good friend Maggie who owns Sugar Mama's Bakeshop [here in Louisville]. Our maple syrup is as good as it gets. We have been able to share it with all kinds of chef friends. Sean Brock said its the best maple syrup he's ever had, which is a huge compliment ... but we kind of already new that! We are maple syrup snobs, growing up on the real stuff, so we were beyond thrilled when our first sample batch came back better than we could have ever expected. It picked up the buttery, oaky, vanilla flavors of the 23 year Pappy.