Episode 253: Little & Foster Whiskey Company with John Little and Johnny Foster Show Notes
If you’ve been around American whiskey for a while, John Little and Johnny Foster probably need very little introduction. They helped build Smooth Ambler in the early years of modern craft whiskey, became closely associated with Old Scout, sold the company to Pernod Ricard, stayed on for several years, and eventually moved on.
Now they’re back with Little & Foster Whiskey Company, which immediately raises the obvious question: after doing all of that once, why do it again?
The answer is less about unfinished business than wanting to get back to the version of whiskey they enjoyed most. John and Johnny were friends before Smooth Ambler, and that personal relationship has always been wrapped up in the professional one. Little & Foster gives them a chance to make whiskey together again without trying to recreate the size, structure, or pressure that came later. No investors demanding growth, no giant sales targets, no layers of approval between an idea and actually doing it.
As Johnny jokes, matching canary-yellow Corvettes would have been easier. John figures they probably would have cost about the same.
A Second Time Around
There’s a comfort level in this conversation that comes from having already lived through almost every version of the whiskey business.
John and Johnny know how to find barrels, how to evaluate them, how to blend and proof whiskey, how to work with distributors, and how quickly a fun little company can turn into a much more complicated machine. They also know what they don’t want this time.
Little & Foster is intentionally small. They aren’t trying to take over the country or fight for national chain endcaps. They’re moving into markets where they already have relationships, working with people they trust, and giving themselves enough room to enjoy the business instead of building every decision around the next sales metric.
That approach makes launching into a difficult whiskey market a little less daunting. John is blunt that shelves are crowded and consumers have choice fatigue, but the company does not need explosive growth to work. A few good markets, some single barrels, bourbon dinners, old friends, and enough sales to keep the whole thing moving sounds just fine.
They’re not allergic to money. It’s simply not first on the list.
Tuesday Whiskey
The phrase that probably best explains Little & Foster is “Tuesday whiskey.”
They want to make something good enough that you would open it for a wedding, graduation, promotion, birthday, or some other moment that actually calls for a good bottle, but not so precious that it spends the next six years staring at you from the shelf.
Sometimes you should open it on Tuesday.
John talks about drinking Little & Foster with his mother on the back porch with Canada Dry ginger ale from a can, or having it with pizza. That is much closer to the brand they want than seeing bottles become trophies or trade bait.
Both John and Johnny have watched whiskey move in the other direction. Old Scout single barrels became collectible, bottles were flipped almost immediately after purchase, and scarcity sometimes became more important than actually drinking what was inside. They aren’t pretending an $80 bottle is inexpensive, but if Little & Foster fits someone’s budget, they want it to feel usable.
Johnny even jokes about a future Little & Foster OCG, for “Obvious Cash Grab,” before making the more serious promise that if they ever ask $200 for a bottle, they’d better believe there is $200 worth of whiskey in it.
Marriage of Mashbills
The first release, Marriage of Mashbills, is a nine-year-old straight bourbon built from two MGP bourbon mash bills that John and Johnny know extremely well.
Roughly two-thirds of the blend is the 21% rye bourbon, with the remaining third coming from MGP’s 36% rye recipe. It is bottled at 107 proof and non-chill filtered, with the two components blended to give them something familiar without making a deliberate attempt to recreate Old Scout.
I asked whether they had consciously tried to make sure Little & Foster did not taste too much like their earlier work. John’s response was basically that the idea had never crossed his mind, which immediately sent him into a minor existential spiral about why it had never crossed his mind.
Johnny had a slightly different perspective. He wasn’t trying to reproduce Old Scout, but he did want the whiskey to bring back something from those early days when he and John first tasted LDI barrels in John’s office. For longtime fans, he thinks opening Marriage of Mashbills may produce a pretty simple reaction: of course this is what these guys made.
That feels right. There’s no reason Little & Foster needs to pretend the previous 15 years never happened. John and Johnny know this whiskey because they’ve spent a huge portion of their careers tasting it, selecting it, and learning what they like from it.
Sourcing Without the Smoke Machine
Smooth Ambler built a lot of goodwill by being unusually clear about what it distilled and what it sourced at a time when plenty of brands were considerably less forthcoming. Today, that kind of disclosure is much more common, and Johnny admits to enjoying a little private vindication when he hears newer producers using almost the same language they were using years ago.
John cared more about getting credit for that at one point than he does now. These days, both of them seem much more interested in simply doing what they think is right and letting everyone else make their own choices.
They still have very good bullshit detectors.
Neither has much patience for elaborate language designed to make sourced or contract-distilled whiskey sound more handmade than it really is. Johnny’s barber analogy gets the point across quickly: telling your barber how you want your hair cut does not mean you cut your own hair.
At the same time, they aren’t dismissing the work that happens after distillation. Barrel selection, maturation, blending, proofing, filtration, and finishing can all meaningfully shape whiskey. Little & Foster is sourced whiskey, they say so, and they’re proud of the blend without pretending they conjured the underlying whiskey out of thin air.
Knowing More, and Knowing What You Don’t Know
For two guys whose names are literally on the bottle, John and Johnny are also comfortable bringing other people into the room.
One of the key people behind Marriage of Mashbills was Travis Hammond, who worked with them at Smooth Ambler and has a palate they both trust enormously. John talks about how different people are unusually sensitive to different aromas or flaws, which is why relying on one supposedly infallible master palate never made much sense to him.
Their sensory panel is informal but broad, pulling in friends, spouses, former colleagues, and people whose strengths they understand. If someone catches something John doesn’t, his reaction isn’t wounded pride. It’s relief that they had another nose in the room.
For Marriage of Mashbills, Travis created several options from the components John and Johnny wanted to use. They tasted them blind at cask strength and at 100 proof, neat and in cocktails, and landed on the same blend almost immediately.
Experience helps. So does knowing when someone else can help you see something you missed.
Things They Don’t Need to Do Again
The second time around comes with a useful list of things to avoid.
John never wants to make vodka from scratch again. Their old artisan vodka may have been excellent, but as Johnny jokes, if you make fantastic craft vodka in West Virginia, you too can sell 26 packs a year
There were more consequential lessons around pricing, labeling, and communication. Smooth Ambler made decisions that seemed perfectly logical internally and discovered that distributors, retailers, and customers did not always read them the same way. Being honest does not automatically mean you’ve explained yourself clearly.
Johnny is equally happy leaving some of the corporate machinery behind. He has no particular desire to go back to long-range sales forecasting, endless meetings, or fitting a small creative brand into the processes of a huge company.
They’ve done that version already.
Little & Foster gets to be something else.
What Little & Foster Is Supposed to Become
I ended by asking about legacy, and their answers fit the rest of the conversation.
John wants to make great whiskey, be honest about what they are doing, treat people well, and have the respect of the people around them. He has no particular need to become some untouchable “master” figure.
Johnny is comfortable letting the company grow slowly. If Little & Foster catches fire, great. If it takes a decade to build and someday John and Johnny are simply two older guys who can walk into a liquor store and buy a bottle with their names on it, that sounds pretty good too.
There’s something refreshing about hearing two people with this much industry experience talk about a new company without immediately sketching out a path to domination.
They’ve already done the building, the scaling, the sale, and the corporate years. Little & Foster gives them a chance to keep the parts they actually missed: good whiskey, good people, bad jokes, a little control, and enough reason to get together for another pour.
The label says it was “selected in double measure by John and also by John.”
That about covers it.
Little & Foster Whiskey Company
Website: https://www.littleandfoster.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/littleandfoster/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littleandfosterwhiskey/
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