The Spirits of Peg Leg Porker

Since he began catering in 2013, Carey Bringle has become a pioneer of Nashville’s rise in the world of barbecue. Between receiving accolades, cooking twice at the James Beard House, and routinely dominating barbecue competitions, Bringle made his first foray into the distilling world. As the only bourbon label owned by a pitmaster, Peg Leg Porker Spirits extends Bringle’s knowledge of smoke and flavor to the region’s other most prominent culinary tradition.

Fresh from taking home eight awards earlier this summer at renowned distilling events—including the San Francisco World Spirits Competition and the American Spirits Council of Tasters Awards—Bringle sat down with The Pamphleteer to talk about barbecue traditions, making bourbon, and navigating the restaurant business’s post-pandemic hurdles.

How long have you been interested in distilling liquor as opposed to barbecue? 

I've been making barbecue for over 35 years. When I was in college, I became a bourbon drinker. So, I always had an interest in bourbon. And bourbon and barbecue kind of go hand in hand. When I started my barbecue team, I wanted to get a bourbon sponsor, and I was able to pick up Jim Beam Black. So, I started working with them. And that was a big thing for us. It was fun, and we enjoyed the relationship. We still have a relationship with Jim Beam. 

But I always wanted to do my own brand. Then, the opportunity presented itself within about six or eight months of us opening the restaurant. I jumped at that opportunity and bought a batch bourbon and was able to develop my own process and start my own brand. We are still a nondistilling producer; we contract still and we work with a distiller that has a larger operation. We lay down a certain number of barrels per year per our specifications and then age those until they reach maturity. Now, we have a blending and bottling facility where we handle it, bottle it, blend it, and proof it. It also has a tasting room and bottle shop attached to it that we just opened up.

What strikes me about your work is that you've got two culinary forms from the South that take a lot of time, not just to learn the craft, but also to get the marinating and smoking and distilling right in the case of your liquor. How are those processes similar? And how are they different?

We like to say that wood smoke and a lot of time are the elements of both great barbecue and also great bourbon. They're very similar in that respect. I think the thing that makes both of them successful is neither one of them are rocket science. You know, anybody can cook great barbecue. And if you put your mind to it, most people can make great bourbon. It's just the patience part, and most people don't have that. That's where people screw up in barbecue. And that's where people screw up in bourbon. They don't have the patience to wait it out. The confidence on the front end to know that you probably didn't feel like you did it right. You have to have the time to let it play out. And so that's where they're both similar and where, I think, we do a good job of both.

You've been incredibly successful in both ventures. You've racked up all these awards. What is it about the way you approach this work that you think has made you so successful?

I like to have a good time. So, I mean, for one, I enjoy what I do. And then I try and surround myself with people who can do a great job and who believe in me and believe in the product that we're putting out. I think that's where most of our success has come from. The fact that we got a great team of people who believe in what we're doing. We're 100% family owned and operated and we're an independent. We're different than most restaurants in the fact that we're an independent, which is rare these days. And where we're different in the distilling industry is that we're an independent, that's also very rare these days. 

Most people have investment groups. They've put together a lot of money and gone out there and started with a big bang and built some show distillery or some big showroom. We've kind of taken the approach of turtle wins the race, slow and steady, build it ourselves, start with a smaller place or with lesser equipment. As we get out there with the brand and market and produce great products, people will come, and as they come, we can get bigger or invest in more barrels.

That's kind of how we've done it, and we've done it for ten years. We're now in 11 states and we're about to be in Florida and Texas, and in the UK. We've won a lot of awards. We won best bourbon in the world last year. And that was a huge deal. We've already racked up, I don't know, five or six gold and double gold medals this year in the competitions. We've just taken a pretty methodical approach of unrelenting marketing and driving to be our best.

What is it that keeps you in Tennessee? What is it about Tennessee that you feel has helped the business? What is it that really makes this state such a fertile ground for barbecue and bourbon culture?

I was born in Tennessee. I was born and raised here in Nashville. It's home for me. I lived in Memphis after college and my family is all from Memphis and West Tennessee. My mom and dad grew up there. But, you know, Tennessee, specifically, West Tennessee was always one of the barbecue capitals of the world. At one time, between the city of Memphis and St. Louis, there were more barbecue joints than there were in the rest of the world combined. 

If you're a pitmaster and you're from Tennessee, you're automatically starting off with some credibility. The problem is you got a lot of competition. You have a lot of other great pitmasters that you're gonna have to prove yourself against. Luckily, we've been able to do that, because we have a great team. It’s the same with bourbon or with whiskey. We think of Kentucky as bourbon. And we've got Tennessee whiskey. But if you go globally, if you look around the world, because of the incredible job that Jack Daniels has done with their marketing, the rest of the world views Tennessee, just as prominently as they do Kentucky in the brown water category.

One: you have to compete against the other credible competitors here and players in the market. Two: don't screw it up. If you come from Florida, where you’re known for seafood, all you have to do is don't screw it up. And same with Tennessee for barbecue and with bourbon. Don't mess it up.

Some people in Memphis see you as a central figure in that city losing the Tennessee barbecue capital designation 10 years ago when Nashville became the hub. Why do you think that shift to Nashville barbecue happened after Memphis was so dominant for years?

There's still great barbecue in Memphis. But there's not nearly as much great barbecue in Memphis as there used to be. That's a problem when a city is stagnant or doesn't grow. So Nashville was growing, and was a very attractive city for a lot of people. You have people here from West Tennessee that are seeking out great barbecue. And in the past, they really weren't able to get a lot out of it. Jack’s Bar-B-Que started 30 years ago with a restaurant here, and he was a caterer that turned to barbecue and made a name for himself. Then, in the last 15-17 years, you had Martin's and Edley’s, and then Peg Leg.

All three of us have West Tennessee roots. We're all friends, we get along. And we're all passionate about making really good barbecue. We all do it a little bit differently. We do it in our own way with our own recipes. But we're all focused on making great barbecue. And so that enthusiasm and that new train of thought was a fresh perspective that Nashville had that Memphis hadn't seen in a while. There hadn't been a ton of new barbecue places pop up in Memphis. The same ones have been around for a long time. When you've been around for a long time, it's easy to not want to change things up or to lay off a little bit on the quality control. 

Like I said, there's still great barbecue in Memphis. But Nashville proved to the Memphians that, hey, we got some players here, too. They care about this and they're doing a great job. You don't have to hate somebody else's barbecue in order to love mine. I mean, it's not about not giving respect to Memphis barbecue. Certainly, I give plenty of deference to Memphis barbecue. Most of those guys down there are friends of mine. And I love their barbecue. But Nashville should be given the same respect as Memphis because we've proven that we can produce outstanding barbecue here in this town.

A lot of restaurant owners that I talked to have said coming out of COVID is the hardest time that they've experienced in their careers. What are some of the hurdles right now? 

Costs have been driven up at least 35%. You got inflation. That's killing people. You got the COVID Hangover, where people got a lot of money during COVID and they were spending it on whatever they wanted. As soon as that ended, they're tapped out. They don't have as much money, they don't have as much disposable income. They go to the grocery store. Things cost a whole lot more. It costs more to fill up the tank with gas. All of those things affect us.

And then you get every restaurant in the world looking at Nashville and thinking, “That's a hotspot. That's where I need to be.” So now, we're not just competing against other barbecue places. Now, we're competing against dining dollars. Now, we're competing against fine dining. That makes it tough. 

We have a lot of construction here in downtown Nashville. It's tougher to park. People can’t find parking spots. And then they say, “Well, I'm just gonna go somewhere where it's easier.”  With all the construction, a lot of streets are diverted. That affects restaurants.

All these are factors that affect what we do. My competitors now build multiple units and chains around the city. They're going out into the suburbs and capturing some of those people who might otherwise come into town. So, for an independent that stays as a single place, you're not going to capture that audience. 

The restaurant business has never been easy. But COVID has been particularly hard. You just keep trucking and keep on moving forward and try and do some innovative stuff and stay on people's radar and keep putting out good, consistent product.

Do you remember the time in your life when you realized that this is what you wanted to do? That this was your passion?

I was working in corporate America and I had a background in healthcare and in technology. And I liked both those things. It was nothing that I hated. But I always had a company on the side, or was at a startup or started a startup. So, I was used to owning my own business. I had since I was probably 17. 

And I thought I wouldn't do a restaurant until I retired. But my feelings on that changed when I got a little bit older. At the age of 43 or 44, I decided I was going to pull the trigger on the restaurant. I saw what was happening in Nashville. And I knew there was opportunity. I just worked hard to make it happen, and we got out. Then we put our foot on the gas, and we didn't let off for several years. We just worked hard and pushed hard and did everything we could to put out the best product and the most consistent best customer service. Now it's paid off for us.

What would you like those who haven’t had a chance to come visit you to know about your work?

We try and do it our own way here at Peg Leg Porker. Our dry rub, our dry ribs are our specialty. That's something that we do that’s fairly unique to the barbecue world and very few people do correctly. We do. And that's our signature dish. But our pork sandwich is great. We're pork and chicken here at Peg Leg. It's just straight Tennessee barbecue. There's no brisket here. We have that over at our restaurant, Bringle’s Smoking Oasis. But again, we made that a separate identity because we wanted to stick with one Peg Leg Porker.

Peg Leg Porker is at 903 Gleaves St.