We had the good fortune of connecting with Daniel Warren and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Daniel, what do you attribute your success to?
When I first started the Albuquerque Whiskey Society in 2018 I never intended on this being a business. It started as a small group of friends getting together and learning about whiskey. We had 12 people at our first meeting. When Covid hit our followers on Social Media started growing. And that’s when I knew I had a business. I setup this group as a whiskey education group that would meet monthly to taste and review different whiskies. During Covid we were doing virtual tastings. Members would come by my house and pick up samples then the following Sat we would get on a Zoom and I would lead them thru the samples. Now that we are post COVID we have been meeting in person we normally have between 50-75 people at our tastings. I believe the education portion of the meetings is a huge factor behind our success.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I grew up in Tennessee and have always had a love for Whiskey. I just wanted to share my love of whiskey with others. Our rapid growth has been one of our biggest obstacles. We went from 20-30 at each meetup to 50-75. This caused a logistics issue. It’s hard to meet in a backyard with 75 people. So we had to start renting a venue and getting our events catered. We were able to quickly scale which caused an increase to the ticket price but the members had no issue at all with the increase.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I would first try to get them up in a hot air balloon. It’s such a big part of Albuquerque’s culture. Take the Tram up to the top of the Sandia’s and then go for a great hike.

We would do a local distillery tour and a wine tour.

One day we would go to Santa Fe and visit Santa Fe Spirits and Meow Wolf
Everyone loves the Breaking Bad Tour in ABQ.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My shoutout goes to my wife Liz Sanchez. The Abq Whiskey Society would not be where it is today without her. She has been instrumental in the success of AWS.

Website: abqwhiskeysociety.com

Instagram: @albuquerque_whiskey_society

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/abqwhiskeysociety

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