Exploring Life & Business with Joel Dollar of Find Your Pour Tastings

Today we’d like to introduce you to Joel Dollar.

Hi Joel, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My love for bourbon started after attending the first tasting that a friend of mine had hosted for someone in our group who was expecting their first child. They called it a “Dadchelor” party which I thought was pretty great. This experience marked me because it was the perfect blend of sharing the rich history of each bottle, uncovering their unique flavors, and best of all the community it built within our group. The next day I started to grow my bourbon collection and did as much research as I could to learn as much as possible, I was hooked. For me it wasn’t about finding the rarest and most sought-after brands just to say that I have them, it was learning about each of the unique distilleries and the stories behind what they produce. It’s so fascinating how much weather, elevation in the Brickhouse, and how long the barrels are charred can affect the flavors, to name a few.

A month or so later, I met my friend/business partner Jason and we instantly hit it off with a shared passion and love for bourbon. One night we got the idea to put together a tasting for some friends of ours and see what would happen. One tasting led to another and we received a lot of great feedback and encouragement to try and do this on a larger scale. Later that year we started to Find Your Pour Tastings and went on to become certified bourbon stewards.

We’ve been hosting tastings now for over three years and have loved every moment.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s been a learning experience for sure, but it’s been really fun navigating new waters. With this being our first business I think some challenges we have faced in trying to get things off the ground really were around our marketing and building up the inventory for the tastings because some of these bottles are really tough to come by.

I personally handle social media and email marketing and so for me, it was a completely new set of tools to equip myself with regarding how to effectively communicate our events and engage with our audiences in a way that they feel connected to the community we are trying to build.

Getting inventory can be really hit or miss depending on the season and popularity of the bottle you are trying to get.

Our goal is to bring awareness to all types of bourbon brands and not just the harder-to-get ones because in reality there are a lot of amazing bourbons out there that can stand their ground against some of the harder-to-get bottles and even some of the harder-to-get ones aren’t always what their chalked up to be, but we also want everyone to experience these rarer bottles so there is a level of being in the right place at the right time to score that prized bottle.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
We specialize in hosting bourbon and whiskey tastings across the Nashville/Franklin area designed around education and building community. What is unique to our approach is that we aren’t sponsored by certain distilleries when we host our events. Instead, we focus on honing in on certain aspects of bourbon and creating fun and engaging tastings around those topics.

For example, one of the most popular tastings we offer is called “Bad or Boujee?” The premise here is to show that not all cheaper bourbon is bad and not all expensive bourbon is worth its price point. So we break everyone up into two separate teams and lead a blind taste test to see if you can determine if the bourbon is priced on the cheap or more expensive end, and if your team guesses right, everyone wins a raffle ticket for that round. At the end of the evening, we give away a rare bottle of bourbon which could range from a rare store pick to one of the bottles from Weller for example.

We have multiple offerings to suit every need and budget from in-home tastings starting from $400 to larger corporate/group gatherings starting at $2,000. All of our in-home tastings include a flight of four bourbons and charcuterie and our best offering is The Works which includes all rare bottles in the flight. Please email us a month in advance if you would like us to host your next tasting so we can prepare accordingly!

Also once a month we host public tastings in the Franklin area. We communicate those events via our social media page on Instagram or if you are a part of our mailing list.

Speaking of our mailing list, we encourage everyone to sign up to join our community for the best experience. Once a month we provide communication for our events at a discounted rate. First-time subscribers will receive a free VIP upgrade to the next public event they attend which includes a special pour of a rare bottle at the end of the night and a one-time discount to redeem when booking an in-home tasting. We also provide exclusive events for those on our mailing list such as our speakeasy tasting where we break out some of the most sought bottles on the market which could include bottles like Pappy Van Winkle and Weller Single Barrel to name a few. This event is priced in a way to make sure we can have as many people attend as possible.

If you would like to join our bourbon community visit our Instagram page and click the link in our bio, or visit our website which will direct you to our newsletter sign-up page while we are still building the rest of our website.

Our passion is and always has been accessible bourbon knowledge and a great community. With these tastings, we hope to remove some of the barriers to entry and deliver a memorable experience. We hope to see you at our next tasting!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.findyourpourtastings.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/findyourpourtastings

Image Credits
Killian Rose – @killianrosephotography