When Ames Russell created his first batch of hot honey in 2015, he was drawing on the tradition of generations of Appalachian Russells and on his grandfather, also named Ames, who always had a dish of honeycomb on his farm table for guests. The younger Ames’s first batch—a mixture of sweet clover and floral wildflower honey with Mexican bird’s beak (de árbol) chili peppers—was such a hit with friends and family who received it for Christmas that he eventually quit his day job to devote his life to honey. The results have been, well, sweet—and hot.

After just two+ years, AR’s Hot Southern Honeys (original “Hot-Mild” and “Hot-Hot” with habaneros) and raw clover and wildflower honeys, all sourced from Appalachian hives and produced in Richmond, Virginia, are flying off the shelves in fifteen states. Chefs love them so much they buy them by the gallon. (See, e.g., Upper Shirley Vineyards’ to-die-for lobster hushpuppies with AR’s Southern Hot Honey Butter.)

While tradition-loving, Ames, an entrepreneur and former Rollerblade exec, is anything but hidebound, and it’s his latest innovation that has the culinary world all abuzz. Teaming up with Ironclad Distillery, a nearby maker of small-batch bourbon, AR’s launched a first-of-a-kind Bourbon-Barrel-Aged Hot Southern Honey. After three months of aging in Ironclad’s bourbon-soaked American oak barrels, this bold and complex honey pairs two of the South’s most beloved tastes—with vanilla, caramel, clove, and black pepper aromatics—in one delicious burst of scintillating Southern heat!