Brass Tacks With Schustack: Joe Heron

The former co-owner of Copper & Kings gets into the Ready-To-Serve game with BAR DIVER

courtesy Joe Heron

I first met Joe Heron in 2016, a couple of years after he opened Copper & Kings distillery with his wife Lesley in the hip Butchertown neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky. They founded it after a successful venture with Crispin Cider, and before that they were in the soda business. 

Friends in the area had told me what a cool guy he was, and said that if I ever came to town, I should prioritize a visit with him. What, meet the crazy South African dude who opened a freakin’ brandy distillery in the middle of bourbon country? Oh yeah, that’s happening! 

I had just wrapped up a bourbon press trip, and being the mensch that he is, Joe offered to pick me (and my heavy luggage) up at my hotel to drive me to the distillery. Within minutes I could tell we were going to be friends—informative conversations about the booze business, music, art, architecture, flowed easily as he treated me to a mini driving tour of parts of the city I hadn’t been to yet. 

When we finally got to Copper & Kings, I understood what the fuss was about. I instantly gravitated toward the sleek, modern architecture with its orange and black music-themed graphic design elements. Only a couple of years in, they were already collaborating with local breweries to make fun barrel aged releases. Music was piped into the cellar to let the barrels groove. In addition to the brandy, they were doing cool experimental stuff with gin and absinthe. We were tasting the spirits in an unfinished bar area that overlooked the city—the space that would later become its buzzy rooftop cocktail den and restaurant serving some of the best food and drinks in town. 

In December of 2019, Joe somehow got the Louisville Tourism Board to help Copper & Kings host a bunch of booze writers, myself included, for a three-day festival at the distillery called Bookstock. It was a free event that was open to the public, giving them a chance to mingle with spirits and cocktail authors, buy books and have them signed, hear us talk on panels about spirits and cocktails (a.k.a. The Author’s Salon), and then naturally we all hung out and drank more spirits and cocktails. 

Bookstock group shot!

It was an impressive lineup that I was honored to be a part of, and several whiskey brands participated and helped co-sponsor while taking us out on the town. The Lou Board put us up in what was then a brand new hotel downtown, Hotel Distil. The actor C. Thomas Howell is one of the partners and he gave a speech for the opening party. (I can now vouch that Ponyboy stayed gold.) I still don’t quite know how everyone managed to pull it off, but they did. And had planned to do it again the following year (I think the invite showed up less than a week before we all got home?). 

Unfortunately, Bookstock 2020 didn’t happen, for obvious reasons. September of that year came the announcement that Joe and Lesley sold Copper & Kings to Constellation Brands, where it is still thriving and continuing to innovate, still part of everyone’s Louisville “must” list. 

courtesy BAR DIVER

But that was just another chapter in Joe and Lesley’s beverage biz story. They recently started up BAR DIVER, which is a portfolio of ready-to-serve bottled cocktails (RTS vs. RTD, but we’ll get into that below). Some of them are traditional alcoholic cocktails. Others are non-alcoholic. The portfolio also includes “Coquetels”, which contain cannabis (THC). 

I haven’t tried those, but I tasted some of the others. I was most impressed with the bottled (alcoholic) 50/50 Martini, but also the Mock Groni and Mock Mai Tai, which taste surprisingly full proof, even though they aren’t, and only have 80 calories. Sugary cocktail-themed sodas, these are not. Finally! 

Well, even though I am not a big cannabis person, I figured it was high time I got Joe in the Brass Tacks hot seat!