102. Fall Sipping Whiskey - Making a Seasonal Choice

I know we moved up to Maine the first winter and I saw my neighbor getting ready for winter and I was thinking, he's got this rake out there that's, that thing's got to be 20 foot long. And I said, went up to him and said, what's that rake for? He's like, I can't, I can't reproduce their, or try to mimic their accent, but he was, he was like, you got to get the snow off your roof. And I was thinking, what the heck? I learned right away, I needed one of those rakes for my roof.

Welcome to another trip down the Bourbon Road with your hosts, Jim and Mike. So grab a glass of your favorite bourbon and kick back.

We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Log Heads Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Find out more about their fine rustic furniture at logheadshomecenter.com. We would like to thank our friends at Premium Bar Products for sponsoring this episode. If you're ready to step up your game at your home bar, check out premiumbarproducts.com to choose from their wide selection of glassware, all of which can be custom engraved with your personal message or logo. And there's no minimum order. So after the episode, head over to premiumbarproducts.com and check out everything they have to offer. Now let's get on with the show.

Hello, everybody.

I'm Jim Shannon. I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is the Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, we are once again. Actually, this is the new studio, right? Yeah, hopefully it will be. Jeff The Bin Studio 2A or something. I don't know.

Yeah, we're down in my basement. I cleaned it up a little bit. Got some chairs down here. I actually got a fireplace down here. A wood-burning fireplace. It is definitely fall. Fall has hit us.

That's right. Yeah, you're looking out your windows here and we've got a great view of your back 40 there. all the way down to the muddy river road there. Yeah, it's dry. Yeah. But the colors are changing. It's definitely a little bit of chill in the air. Today was a little warm, but it has had a little bit of chill. Definitely in the mornings and in the evenings, it starts to cool off a little bit. It starts to make me think, what am I switching to for this season?

Yeah, I always think that same thing, you know, do you want something to warm you up a little bit and stuff. We actually had one of our roadies, Chris Taylor, he owns Taylor Bay Knives and he'd asked me what's some good bourbons and what's some good rice to drink in that fall season. So me and you rummaged through my liquor cabinets and said, what can we drink?

Well, we tried to find a couple of things that are widely available that you can get just about anywhere. Maybe not in every corner. where our listeners are, but in most places you can probably find these too.

I'd say one of them you can, you could pretty much find anywhere worldwide. Absolutely.

Well, anyway, so these aren't necessarily, let's, let's qualify this. These aren't necessarily our top picks. These are our convenient picks. They were in your bar. And they popped up and, yeah, that's one. Let's grab that one. Let's grab this one. And so the idea here is we're going to talk a little bit about the seasons, a little bit about, well, we're going to focus on fall because that's where we're at now.

But then when you write your blog, we'll come out with a top 10 for the Bourbon Road of what we say is the top 10 for the fall season. We both have probably a mixture in there of stuff that we both like to drink and, uh, you know, probably some high proofers in there.

Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, that's what happens as the, as the seasons get cooler, the proof grows higher.

And for me, the spice gets spicier. I don't know if a spice would be spicier for me, but I definitely like the higher proofs in the wintertime. I like that light 90 proof, 100 proof in the fall time or in the summer, springtime, something you can mix a good cocktail with. Fall time is straight up, let's just drink it neat. Let's drink a lot of it.

Well, I'm sitting here looking at my Bourbon Road Glencairn and thinking about that one inch of brown wonder that you put in there for me today. I'd like to thank Distillery Products and Premium Bar Products for supplying the glassware for this show. We love our Glencairns. They are available on our website. We're going to turn this into a commercial, but we do want to make sure we acknowledge our sponsor here. What a wonderful way to get glasses, even in small quantities from premium bar products, right?

Yeah. If you want to outfit your bar, you know, you wanted to get some. decanters made that has your bar name on it or Jimbo's bar, Jimbo's whiskey glass or Jimbo's infinity bottle. They will do that for you. Got all kinds of good gadgets for your bar on there that you can customize. Or if you're a bourbon group, you got a big number of people that you want to buy glasses for. You can go to their distillery products and you can go ahead and get your glass order and they'll save you lots and lots of money.

But the nice thing about this is, is just an individual, got a small bar, has a few guys over every now and then, or gals, to drink a little bourbon. He just wants a set of four with his... Maybe his bar name or his favorite team on or his last name or whatever. You know, it's not that expensive. You get right in there and you save a little bit of money and you get something personalized. It makes great gifts.

From a good team over there too. They, they really take care of you. If you get on the phone with Janie, she, uh, she'll keep you on the phone for a while.

Yeah. Janie and Carson, they've, uh, they've done us right. No doubt about it. And the rest of the team over there. Well today, Mike, what do we have in our class? This beautiful brown one inch of golden liquid here. What's what is it?

So what we picked was some, uh, bullet tenure. It's been around since 2013, uh, undisclosed distillery, right? Um, but still some spicy bourbon.

Yeah. So the distillery is undisclosed, but we kind of know how the whole Seagram's disassembly that took place.

Yeah. They kind of sold off all their brands.

Sold off all their brands. And, you know, as things sort of shuffled around and Diageo picked up bullet. And then Kirin, Japanese company, picked up four roses. that relationship there. We're pretty sure, but not a hundred percent sure, but pretty sure that Four Roses was producing some bullet there, right?

Yeah. Yeah. The more, more likely were, um, there's only so many distilleries in Lawrenceburg. That's right. Pretty sure this is so, You know, a lot of people would say it might come from somewhere else. I just, that's us, but Diageo actually owns a whole bunch of whiskey companies and some big names out there that people drink their whiskey before.

Yeah, they do. So they, they own Johnny Walker. They own George Dickel. I think they own like Captain Morgan's rum and Smirnoff vodka and. Blade and bow. Blade and bow. And oh, there's a couple others in there. You know, I think they own Bailey's Irish cream. Well, that's a, that's a good one to own, I think.

Yeah. A lot of people drink, a lot of people who drink that before. Plus they drink, drink Johnny Walker. I think people, when they think, most people probably think high end whiskey, they think Johnny Walker. Yeah.

Well, I can tell you what our listeners are saying right now. They're saying, come on guys, get to the whiskey. Well, let's drink this thing. All right. That's my first drink of the day, Mike.

It's not mine. It's what you expect. It's 68% corn, 28% rye, and 4% malted barley.

We did a recent show where we talked about Wild Turkey 101 and how Wild Turkey 101 is considered a rye bourbon. a bourbon with a good amount of rye in it and it's 12%, right?

Or 13. 12%, I think. And this is double that. Double, more than double that.

So this is definitely a high rye. And that's probably why you picked it because of the spiciness and the boldness of it. Now what's the proof on it? 91.2. 91.2 proof.

It's got that nuttiness to it. Caramel's coming through.

Yeah, I'm definitely getting a buttery kind of, you know, it doesn't seem to me like it's very thin. It seems actually very viscous. And I'm getting that buttery caramel vanilla. A little bit of, I want to say, floral petals. I don't want to say rose petals because we're just sitting here talking about four roses and that's what's got it in my brain, but it's kind of like a floral, flowery petal.

We've both been getting a lot of different stuff lately on whiskeys. I'm getting, you ever had a little candy called Bitto Honey? I have had a Bitto Honey. That's kind of what I'm getting off of this because that Bitto Honey has that, I don't know, it's not just honey. It's like, I don't know if there's peanuts in that or not, but it, It's just a chewable candy. It's pretty good. And I get a little bit of this on there.

Well, the more I sip on it, the more the rice starts to take over a little bit, I think. Getting a little bit more of that rice spice on the back, a little more pepper, a little touch of cinnamon. a little bit more oak, like I'm picking up like a toasted oak, but more of a, a more chocolatey toasted oak kind of on the back end. And I'm just wondering if, you know, 10 years, isn't that, that age at which it starts to pick up that a little more of that darker oak flavor.

Yeah, I can see that. And there's actually the literature on this. There's some 11 and 12 year old bottles in this, but you know, you always got to go with that youngest barrel. Right. So you would have definitely expect some oakiness out of this. Now this is about $50 MSRP depending on where you buy it. That's not a bad price for a 10 year old whiskey. There's other whiskies out there that earn that $30 range to $50. What'd you say four rows of single barrel? is around that 10 year mark and what's that go for?

45? Yeah, in that range. So very similar. Bullet has a number of expressions out. They have their rye. It's a 95 rye, pretty popular rye. They've got their standard issue. They had their barrel proof. And then what was that one we just recently had? Bullet Select. The Bullet Select. So all of these are very respectable. Very solid, well crafted. I think they all have something to offer to somebody who's a little bit more on the more bold side of bourbon. You like that more bold and spicy and a little bit more, I don't know, the wild side of bourbon.

Yeah. I mean, they call it frontier whiskey on the front of the bottle. If you drive out to their plant, it's only like I wouldn't say I could throw a rock at it and hit it, but it's just right down the road from my house, right?

It's probably not more than five miles.

Yeah, I'd say that. I mean, it's right down the road there from us and a beautiful facility they built. Rick houses kind of surround the visitor center. They got an awesome bar out there, a beautiful gift shop. If you're, it's not that far off I-64. If you're on the bourbon trail and you're driving down 64, it's worth a stop in there to check it out.

Yeah. You know, Mike, I haven't been there yet and it's a shame. It's kind of a, I might even change the word from shame to crime that I live so close to bullet and I haven't been to the distillery yet, but it just hasn't, it just hasn't happened for me yet. I'm ready to go anytime. I don't know what their current situation is there. I would imagine tours are back up and going probably on a, on a limited basis. But I think definitely it's time for me to get out the Bullet and visit that distillery.

Well, I think it's time for me to fill my glass up again.

So tell me in your own words, why did you pick Bullet as a fall whiskey?

I think it is that rye in there. To me, that spiciness that I could set by a campfire, I could feel it warm my chest up. It kind of warms you up. When I start drinking whiskey, my face turns a little bit of red. I'm already red as it is, so it gets even redder. But that rye spice is just great in this. I think it hits perfect. Sweetness to it is there, and it's right down the road from us.

Yeah. I think there's a little bit of butterscotch on the finish, but this does have a pretty significant hug. Oh yeah.

It's not that, I think at the 91.2 proof though, it's not going to choke you out. Right. Not a bear hug, not a Kentucky bear hug. But yeah, it's not going to punch you in the back of the throat or anything. Now the next one we're going to drink, it might punch you in the throat.

Yeah.

But this right here is not going to, you know, when you think about the seasons and what whiskeys you're going to drink throughout the seasons, you know, we kind of start with summertime, right? What are you drinking in the summertime?

Well, for me, when it's a really hot day, if I'm outside working, I'll be honest with you, I'm not drinking bourbon outside working unless it's in a mule or got a few pieces of ice in it. Simply because a hot day, bourbon and hot days just doesn't mix. But you get a little bit closer to the evening time and you want to sit down with a sipper Tell you one thing I really liked was that pin hook rye, that new pin hook rye out of Castle & Key.

Yeah, I think that was a great one.

Yeah, very light, very refreshing, kind of had that cool mint refreshing flavor to it. Kind of like that. Yeah, that for me was probably one of very few summer sipper ryes I've had. What else do I like to drink in the summer? Yeah, the proof comes down a little bit, I think. I like to stick with anything in the 90 to 100 range. Not too many barrel proofs on my list for the hotter months. But again, like I said, I'm not opposed to a couple of ice cubes in a glass to cool it down a little bit. I know it's going to shut down the nose. It's going to shut down the flavor on it a little bit. But let's face it, if it's 95 degrees outside and you want to sip a bourbon, it's hard to drink that Elijah Craig barrel proof. I'd agree with you.

That's tough. I'm there with you on the drinking a meal after a hot day. If you're outside working and stuff or drinking another drink, I'd really like a. bourbon and steak in Louisville has a bourbon punch. I love it. It's a really good drink. Refreshing. It's cold. I think it's got a piece of mint in it. So it's that just kind of finishes off your day. Now, if I'm just drinking some bourbon neat, you know, I'm probably going to pick up that old Green Label bottle of Weller Special Reserve. It's 90 proof. You can't really beat it for the price if you can find it anymore. Right. Right. It's good. I mean, it's a good, just good bourbon. So that'd be my summer sipper.

Yeah, but coming into fall, as the weather starts to turn cooler and things start to, the leaves change and everything, your mood just switches. You switch to heartier bourbons, higher proof bourbons. You choose, that's a lot of the, you know, when you hit September, you got a lot of the releases coming out. You know, it's Bourbon Heritage Month. You got a lot of fall releases coming out. There's a lot of great, You know, really good, strong and impressive bourbons that are being released around that time gets you in the mood for even colder weather, winter, when it comes. And you're looking for those things that are excellent when it's just absolutely frigid outside.

That's what I'm looking for is a higher proof of weeder at that point. And Wilderness Trail hits it right at the ballpark for me. with their weeder. I love it. It's good. It's got just that kick of spice to it, but it's also tickles your palate a little bit. Yeah.

Well, for me, I start to move a little bit in the high west territory when it turns into fall and winter. I love high west. They're great distillery. They're craft distillery. They're always doing things that are a bit unusual, a bit out of the box. Really cold weather. I'm reaching for my mid winter night's tram. So that's winter time though, right? It's winter. Yeah. So we're just touching on the other seasons just to sort of let people know how the varieties and how our minds change throughout the year. But fall is that time when you start thinking a little bit about maybe putting a jacket on when you go outside. And that, that fire, that bonfire you have down by the creek, you know, you got to sometimes take a small blanket down with you and something, something that's going to warm you up a little bit.

We took a, the new maker's mark, a 46 cast rank down into the creek. And that was a hard bottle to find for, for a minute and a bunch of neighbors over some friends over. And that bottle was only about a quarter of it left. They really enjoyed it and I enjoyed it. You know, it's a weeder. So when you think of wheat, you're either thinking of well or you're thinking of maker's mark. So yeah, that'd be my, uh, I don't know if I have a winter winter bourbon yet, really. I probably still reach for some high proof wheaters like that.

Yeah. Going back to this bullet 10 year, I have to say that, um, you know, it's, it's a good, it's a good choice. I like it. I like the spiciness of it. I like the fact that it gives me that hug. It warms me up a little bit. It does stick around in the back of pal a little bit. The more I sip on it, Mike, the more I ended up with that butterscotch finish. I like that. You've heard me in the past, whenever butterscotch comes up in the conversation, I kind of get, yeah, that's kind of my thing. So I like that. I'm a big Anis fan. I'm a big butterscotch fan. I like peppery bourbons. This has got a little bit of pepper, a little bit of cinnamon, more butterscotch. It's a little bit of a hot drinker, don't you think?

Not that hot. I think that proof is what keeps it from being just a winter bourbon. You know, this fits that fall category perfectly. So great selection by both of us, I guess, because you're the one that said, hey, what's that bullet back there on your shelf?

All right, Mike. Well, you know, I love talking about the seasons. I love talking about, you know, different bourbons and how, because ideally we all want to drink bourbon year round if we can. A lot of times people will turn it off in the summertime.

Yeah. I mean, you can't, we can't turn that off though, right?

We can't. We have to drink it year round. We have to. But yeah, we had, we actually mentioned the other day how, you know, we don't really have our daily drinkers anymore because we're, we're, we're sampling so many bourbons and trying so many different craft distilleries that, um, we don't really get a break from that to sit down with our old favorite Like we did just the other day where we had on our craft distillery Monday, we had the Wild Turkey 101 on. Well, that's my daily drinker standby that I've had to kind of look the other way from for a while because of how busy we are.

Well, maybe come winter time, deep winter, we'll have to visit my favorite brand of all time, Weller.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, neither one of us are complaining. He's just talking about the situation. Well, Mike Bullitt, definitely a good one on the list. I don't know where it will appear in your top 10. I think probably not number one, but.

Well, heck, I polished off two glasses though. Yeah, you did.

Well, it's certainly convenient for us being so close and being, you know, sort of our hometown distillery, but yeah, I approve.

All right.

All right. Well, let's, uh, let's take a break here. When we come back, we will have our second half pour, which should be a little bit of a shock to the system, I think.

Oh yeah.

All right. We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Log Heads Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Log Heads Home Center, nestled in the hills of Kentucky, is an industry leader in building handcrafted rustic furniture. Family owned and operated, they take pride in offering only the very best for their customers. The Log Heads, and that's what they like to call themselves, are skilled wood crafters who are passionate about creating rustic furniture for people who appreciate the beauty of natural wood. Owners Tommy and Gwen don't just sell the rustic lifestyle, they live it. And you can be sure that Loghead's furniture will always be handcrafted in Kentucky by artisans who embrace the simple way of life. Loghead's rustic furniture is made from northern white cedar, a sustainable wood that's naturally rot and termite resistant. Its beauty and quality will add warmth to your earthy lifestyle for generations to come. Be sure to check out everything they have to offer at LogHeadsHomeCenter.com and while you're at it, give Tommy and Gwen a shout on Facebook or Instagram at LogHeadsHomeCenter. All right, we're back and enjoyed a nice poor bullet in the first half. And in the second half, Mike, what do we have? We got some suey. We got some whistle pig. All right. You know what? Whistle pig. So that's another one of those distilleries. who got a helping hand from Dave Pickerel. The godfather of craft distilleries. It seems like, I mean, it seems like stuff like this happens in like groups or bunches. We've had a lot of Dave Pickerel stuff on lately.

I think we've had, he's had his hands before he passed away. He had his hands in a lot of distilleries. Yeah.

But this was one of his more notable projects, I would say, Whistlepig. And although Whistlepig has a number of expressions that are available, some of them very notorious, this particular one is pretty readily available just about anywhere you go, wouldn't you say? Yeah, this is their 10 year, 100 proof,

I'd say you can find it anywhere.

Yeah. So that's, you know, it's good about the bourbons or in this case, rye that we chose today for our fall sippers. Um, we wanted to make sure they were things that were accessible to most people. So I think you could probably find this. It's kind of interesting how, you know, we chose two 10 year old whiskeys, one being a bourbon, the other one being a rye, but both 10 years old.

Yeah.

So anyway, so I would expect from this one that we're going to find ourselves, uh, in a little bit more in Rye land.

Well, you would think that this is actually a Canadian Rye. Yeah. Um, meaning it is made up in Canada. I brought it down to Vermont, uh, but age and.

then blend it together themselves. Yeah. Whistle pig likes to say they have rescued the barrels from the hands of the blenders in Canada.

I used to be a big Canadian whiskey drinker. Yeah. Back in the day, I'd, I'd always like a tall boy. Yeah. Get some ginger ale and Canadian club or some Seagram seven and Go to town. Absolutely.

You know, that's one of the things that is interesting about the rise. I mean, back in, let's say in the last 20 years, going back to 2000 or so, the rise that were being made weren't necessarily being made to bottle as rise and sip. They were being made as blending whiskies. to be used in other projects. And that was true for MGP. That's true of a lot of the Canadian ryes that are available and coming on the market. A lot of these older ryes were made for blending purposes, but they're ending up in bottles now because the pallets of consumers are changing. You know, we're getting to be a little bit more Well, I should say we're getting to like our bolder whiskies a little bit more, our higher proof whiskies a little bit more, our more viscous and more flavorful whiskies a little bit more than we used to. And for that, you know, there's these nice ryes out there that can fill that high end of the spicy spectrum.

And I think Whistlepig does that. Well, hopefully Chris Taylor will appreciate this. He asked for a rye. That's why we picked this one out right here. The 10 years and my mindset behind the 10 year is, I think in my mind, that's where we talked about that last half, where that oakiness starts coming in, right? And, you know, when you think of 10 year old whiskies, I think a Henry McKenna 10 year, I think an Eagle Rare, whiskeys at that age tend to be that fall type. You get that oakiness that comes out.

Yeah, I think that contributes a lot to that flavor. A little bit more of the barrel tannins come out, a little bit more of the spiciness. So spice can originate both in the rye grain and it can come from the barrel as well, right? And you're getting both of it here.

You know, I think of football games and the fog, um, you know, you might have a hot toddy, you know, Vivian's lately, she's been trying to get me to make, um, apple cider, let's pour some bourbon in there. Let's pour some whiskey in there, put a cinnamon and some cloves in there and, and let her rip. But I think eating that drinking that whiskey with, you know, chili or you have a chili dog or you have a pulled pork sandwich that it's a hot food. Then you want to eat it and stuff.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, speaking of apple apple cider, I mean, this kind of is a season, right? You enter the fall and the apples are being harvested. They're being, uh, processed and turned into cider. And, uh, you, you start to think about, yeah, mold cider, a little bit of something in there to give it a kick, right? Most definitely. Absolutely. Let's drink this.

Let's check it out, Mike.

That's a true rye on the nose.

But you know what, I'm not getting as much of the ethanol burn on my nose that I got off the bullet.

And now this one's a little bit higher in proof. There's a hundred and the bullet was 91 and something. But yeah, not as much alcohol burn, but a little bit more of that waft of, uh, Um, some baking spice and some, um, some minty herb, a little bit of tea, maybe.

Yeah. I can see that like spice tea, like orange peel. Yeah. You know, you get that, that orange tea. I drink a lot of that in the winter time. Um, fall time kind of, I always think that keeps me from getting the cold. It probably doesn't, but a little bourbon in there, put a little honey in there.

Honey.

There you go.

All right. Let's taste it. Let's do it. Yeah. A lot more to this on the, on the, on the palette. The nose is, uh, is a true right nose. It's got a nice, nice aroma to it, but the palette is a little more impressive. The Kentucky hug hits you right away. I think.

It's got some of that caramel to it. Definitely sweet. That sweetness. Yeah. Hit your tongue right away. Little drying, almost red wine-ish maybe, you know, that, that just said not bitterness, but drying on the palate, I think.

Yeah, I'm getting a little bit of that orange peel too, but I am getting that dryness you're talking about, not only on the back of my tongue, but on the sides of my tongue as well. But it's sitting right here. I'm not going to call it a Kentucky hug. I'm going to call it a Vermont hug. A Vermont hug. Canadian Vermont hug. They get a little bit of snow out there. They do. They do. Absolutely. But yeah, this would be a good Vermont winter. Um, if you're skiing the hills of Vermont and you come down to the lodge, it's time to have a little bit of whistle pig 10.

You know, it snows a little bit when you got a giant rake for your roof. I know when we moved up to Maine, uh, the first winter and I. I saw my neighbor getting ready for winter and I was thinking he's got this rake out there that's, I think he's got to be 20 foot long. And I said, went up to him and said, what's that rake for? He's like, I can't, I can't reproduce their, try to mimic their accent, but he was, He was like, you gotta get the snow off your roof. And I was like, what the heck? I learned right away, I needed one of those rakes for my roof, but our landlords had one for us. So you'd rake the snow off and it's cold. Yeah.

So I wonder, is that only when there's too much snow on the roof or when there's any snow on the roof? Is that just to keep the weight? I think it's to keep the weight off.

We'd, we'd actually moved from Northern Michigan. So we were used to that much snow, but I guess Michigan, they, people tend to put the pitch of the roof a lot more and a lot of metal roofs out there than the snow will slide right off. So, but older houses will have a less of a pitch up in Michigan or Maine and get that rake and rake your roof off.

Yeah.

I don't know if it's a rake, but it looks like a rake to me. It's a roof rake. Roof rake. Maybe we do have a roadie up there and he'd probably tell us, I think Dave French will tell us what it is. Yeah, this is definitely a, Whistle Pig to me, it's a home run right there. Dave Pickerel knew what the hell he's doing.

Yeah, it's a good solid rye out of the great North. That's a little bit different than what we have down here. There are some great ryes that come out of Canada. Um, and you know, I think that they, they certainly know what they're doing and making ryes up there. He was a smart man to go source, source the rise from Canada and to save them from the blenders and then to, And then to probably expertly age them further and then blend those barrels and make, uh, this tenure, which is, it's really phenomenal. It's a, it's a great, it's a great right whiskey.

Now, when I think of Vermont, you know, what do you think of Vermont? What do you think up there? What do I think of Vermont? What comes to mind?

Ice cream, snow skiing. What about maple syrup? Maple syrup, maple syrup. I usually think of New York state when I think of maple syrup. I know Vermont has it too, but I usually think of New York state. But that's just me because I kind of grew up going to visit my great grandmother and they had, everybody was tapping the trees up there.

Well, one of their drinks that they have on their website is called a maple old fashioned. Okay. And it, to me, that would make sense to drink that in fall time. It's a one and a half ounces of whistle pig tenure. a quarter ounce of maple syrup, three dashes of maple bitters, fresh orange peel and garnish.

Okay. So the maple syrup has taken the place of the bar syrup of the old fashioned.

Sometimes it's just an A sugar cube, right? I don't know if I've ever seen any maple bitters before. Now, I would add to Whistlepig's maple old fashioned, and I would tell him, if you're listening Whistlepig to this episode, you need to make a smoked maple old fashioned.

Yeah. So how do you make a smoked old fashioned?

Well, you get a little smoke machine and pump that smoke in there and puts that smoke into your drink. So which wood would you burn? I would think of some kind of fruit would like an apple or a peach. something that's not so bitterness and stuff. Pecan maybe? Pecan will give you a little bit of bitterness. Um, mesquite and hickory will give you that, that bitter taste. But I think of any kind of fruit wood that you can get, a cherry or a apple is not going to give you that. It's going to give you that more soft smoke. But not maple wood, right? Well, I guess you could use maple and they're making the syrup out of it, but that doesn't want to cut down. Maple tree is pumping out syrup. That's true. And actually our neighbors across the creek, they have a blueberry farm over there and they make homemade maple syrup. There's maple trees down here. Um, I don't have any on my property. All I have is a bunch of sycamores and a whole bunch of black walnuts. Oh, fun. Fun with those black walnuts. I know our neighbor is going to come over. He's going to take and harvest our walnuts this year off our farm. I'd say we probably have 40 different black walnut trees and some of them are quite large. He'll harvest them. I said, well, good luck beating with the squirrels.

So walnuts are every two years, right? I don't know. I think walnuts are every two years. And how all the walnut trees in the world coordinate which year they're going to drop on, but they all drop at the same year.

All I know is if you're sitting inside a deer stand up in a tree, like 20 foot, and one of those black walnuts hit you in the head, it doesn't feel good. Not quite a coconut, but close, right? It's like I might war with a tree and the squirrels, because I've had a squirrel jump on a tree and then run down the tree beside me. And if you're sitting there, you're really concentrating on trying to hear stuff. Those squirrels, there's an army of them down there. There's a whole army of them. And they like to jump on that tree and bark at you.

So Mike, what other fall sipping rye whiskey, since we're drinking a rye now, let's talk about other fall sipping ryes.

Man, you got me. I don't know. Wilderness Trail would be a rye that I would think is a good fall sipper, wild turkeys, their rear breed barrel proof is phenomenal. The barrel proof rise is really good. Now both of those are Kentucky rise. Kentucky rise. Frey ranch out in Nevada now. Their rye was spectacular.

That was a spectacular rye. Absolutely. You know, we do go through a lot of choices, a lot of things that we have to try, that we get to try, I should say. And sometimes it's easy to forget. And now that you bring up Frey Ranch, that was a phenomenal rye. Really good. Another good rye from our friends at New Riff. Yeah, most definitely. 100% rye. But it sure doesn't like hit you like a hundred percent, right? It is bold and it's wonderful, but it's, it's also very, uh, I think a fall, definitely a fall sipper more than it is a winter sipper.

Yeah, I think so. It's still a little young, I think. Um, but they're getting there kind of like wilderness trails, getting there and a free ranch is getting there. They're in that four to five year mark right now. I think it's those. distilleries age their whiskey and they get a little older. You know, when they hit that 10 year mark, will they compete with this? And what's pig had to go out and buy their stuff or these other guys are You know, they're holding true and they had to wait for their whiskey. And you know, I knew it killed them. They wanted to bottle it. They wanted to bottle, they want to bottle it, but they held on. And actually in the case of wilderness trail, they were going to hold on to even longer before they even bottle theirs. But some experts that were helping them out said, Hey, you should go ahead and bottle it. It's ready. It's ready. Yeah. So I still can't wait, you know, five years down the road to see what all these guys craft distilleries and wilderness trail is not a craft distillery anymore.

by no means they're making way too many barrels to be considered a craft distillery or a, or an artisan distillery. Yeah, I think it's beautiful.

But Hey, this whistle pig right here, it's a, it's definitely hit home already. It's a, I got that warm feeling right now. I'm ready for fall. I think we picked two fine bottles to represent the fall season. Now the season we didn't talk about was spring. What's a spring whiskey to you?

Yeah, so we're definitely thinking lighter here. So for me, probably a wheat whiskey, probably something in the four to eight year range, maybe a larceny, maybe a maker's mark, certainly a Weller green label. Any one of those would be a great way to break that winter cold and start tasting a whiskey that's a little bit a little bit lower in proof, a little bit softer up front, something that doesn't really attack the back of the palate too much, doesn't have a big hug to it. I think that's kind of what you're looking for in the spring, is to get out of that. Because in the wintertime, you're drinking that heavy, high-proof- Elijah Craig Barrel-proof. Elijah Craig Barrel-proof, and Midwinter's Night's Dram, and Old Carter Rye, and all of these things that just really, really want to warm you up. And I'm telling you, right now, I'm warm even with this.

It's warmed me up.

But spring, you're not looking for that anymore. You're wanting to cool off a little bit maybe.

And I'm probably going to reach for a Woodford Reserve or maybe they're one of their wheat whiskies, or I'm going to go for an old Forester. You know, I'm a big fan of, you know, of double-oaked. So I might pick up that double-oaked, which is still low proof. Or the 1910 from Old Forrester. I think both of those are low proof. I still get that oakiness. I'm not quite out of winter. I'm just kind of easing into spring, especially here in Kentucky. You can still get some really cold nights in spring here. Those two right there would be home run hitters for me.

Absolutely. You know, you mentioned old Foresters, so now I got another fall sipper that I'm going to bring up. I think the 1920 is a good fall sipper. Most definitely. I think it fits the bill, no doubt about it.

Well, this ain't bad. I think Chris, Chris gave us a good topic to talk about. You know, I think, uh, talking about a bunch of false sippers, we'll give them a, if they read the blog and you're going to have to read the blog and see our top 10 false sippers for us. And remember that's just me and Jim's top 10. That's nobody else's. It's the Barbara real guys. We're not professionals. We're not experts. We're just two dudes. So, sitting down, being honest, there's no punches pulled here. Whistle Pig and Bullet didn't send me these bottles. I bought both these bottles myself. So, I'd like for them to send us whiskey though, Jim.

Well, they should. I mean, they should. Everybody else does. Why not you guys too?

But we still buy whiskey. I bought these two bottles in town from local liquor stores here. One from Paradise Liquor and Wine, our buddy James over there, which we'll have a pick coming up with him, which will be a fall or probably a winter sipper. Could be. Yeah. And a bullet, I actually bought that from My friend over there, Julie, from the Bourbon cellar in Shelbyville. You know, you're on a whiskey trail, on a Bourbon trail. You stop through Shelbyville, stop by and see those local stores and give them your support. They need it.

Absolutely. So let's just give everybody an idea where Shelbyville is on the whole Bourbon trail thing. So Lexington to Louisville. I-64, straight shot on I-64. We all know the urban bourbon trail in Louisville is just loaded with distilleries. A little rough down there right now, but things will get better. Lexington has a number of distilleries as well, but that I-64 runs straight between the two and somewhere in the middle is Frankfurt.

Yeah.

And Frankfurt has a lot of distilleries. That's where Lawrenceburg is, that's where Buffalo Trace, Four Roses, that's where Woodford Reserve is and Castle & Key and I did say Buffalo Trace and Wild Turkey. Yeah.

All right there.

We're just 15 minutes from there between there and Louisville on I-64, Shelby County. This is where Bullitt is. This is where Jephthah Creed is. If you pass the Jephthah Creed distillery on I-64, you're not more than two miles from my house and five miles from Mike's.

We're right there together.

Yeah. So that's where we are, and there's some great liquor stores that are not necessarily in the Metropolitan Center. So you get out in the country a little bit, you get out to these smaller counties on the trail, and you're going to find some great liquor stores, great liquor stores that You know, the prices aren't jacked up through the roof. They've got some good offerings. They got great selections too, because you cannot be on the bourbon trail, be a liquor store and not have a wide selection of bourbons. You wouldn't survive here.

Most definitely not. Heck, I don't, I don't know if there's a liquor store closer to an exit than Paradise. He's, you know, off exit 35, right there by Shell gas station. You pull in there, probably get yourself some hometown pizza. which makes pretty good pizza, right? And pull into the store and hook the man up. He's got a great liquor selection in there, but he also has wine and beer. If your spouse doesn't like bourbon, whiskey, and that's what you're looking for, hey, why not pick up a bottle of wine or some beer for him?

I tell you what, Mike, when I go to pick up a bottle of wine, I need a little bit of help because I'm not, I'm not a big wine guy, but I do buy wine. You know, we like to drink wine with our meals from time to time, but I always struggle. with which wine to choose. I don't want to buy something with a screw top that's not good, or I want to buy something that somebody else has tried and give it a big thumbs up. And James over at Paradise, you go back on his wine wall and he has got his choices marked clearly back there. And I've had pretty good luck with that. People think I'm a guru when I bring a wine bottle. Well, you actually brought a bottle over last night.

Mel's out of town right now, visiting her grandbabies down in Bowling Green and me and Viv said, hey, come on over and eat with us. I was cooking one of my favorite meals last night and you brought a bottle of wine from the liquor store there and man, we polished that sucker off.

It was good. Yeah, it was a good bottle. And you know, he gave it a thumbs up. It was, you know, he puts these little tags on the shelf and says, try this one for sure. Stuff like that. So really good. Yeah, Mike, I appreciate the dinner the other night. Osso buco made with that fresh killed deer you had. Absolutely amazing. I wish I could cook like that. You really have a knack for it, buddy.

Well, some people are going to ask what that is. That's an Italian dish made out of shanks. You don't have to use venison shanks. I just prefer to use that. It was fresh venison that I just harvested. Um, I don't think there's anything better than that. Um, some people give me grief over it, but that's who I am. I'm as real as it can get. You know, I, I go down a hunt, I process it all myself. Um, nothing wasted. No, there is nothing wasted. I appreciate the animal for what it is. Um, try to honor it for what it is. And you know, I did it with my own hands. I know how to make fresh sausage. That's what I did today. Before you came over, I made hot Italian sausage, sweet Italian sausage, and I made hot maple breakfast sausage is what I made today. And, you know, I love making a meal out of that usubuko. It only takes me 20 minutes to make and it's probably one of the finest dishes you can make out of a deer.

And that's a part of an animal that people normally throw out.

They'll either throw it away or they'll grind it because it has so much in there. Usubuko is you take and put it in a, we have a enamel coated cast iron pots. Vivian has a whole collection, as you know, up there of them. And I take and braise the venison, and then I pour in my beef stock, whole bottle of wine in there, some veggies, some carrots, onions, and celery. And then I throw it in the oven at 350 degrees, let it slow cook for, I don't know, probably about four or five hours last night, and that venison just kind of fell apart inside the pot. And then I started over egg noodles. You could serve it over mashed potatoes or last night you brought up some different noodles to serve it over.

Yeah.

I didn't want to do that because it's not Italian, but I don't guess a noodles aren't Italian either. I just like them because they, I like egg noodles. So you can serve it however you want.

Pasta over pasta.

Um, it was a great meal and I got to share it with a good friend. And, um, we drank a bottle of wine with it. No, but it's not bourbon everybody. I know we're bourbon podcast and we're talking about wine here, but a great meal to share with a friend. And Jim actually asked, you asked me, you're like, you cook any bourbon in here? And I was like, nah, I cook it with wine and stuff that Italian. I try to keep to that Italian way of cooking, even though it's venison. But I got plenty other stuff. Wait till you taste my chili.

Yeah, I'm ready. It's that time of year, Mike. Yeah. Last thoughts on the whistle pig.

I think it's a great whiskey. If you're going to pick up that's coming from a weeded weeded bourbon guy or weeded whiskey guy. It hits my sweet tooth perfectly. That caramel, the sweetness, that butterscotch little bit of a orange peel or orange marmalades there for me. It's perfect. Yeah.

Yeah, it sticks with you. I think, you know, I haven't taken a sip in probably three or four minutes here and I'm still tasting it and that hug is still there too. So yeah, definitely something for cooler weather. A great choice. Mike, two great bottles, both 10 years old. So where can people find us?

You can find us on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at The Bourbon Road. We actually have a Facebook private group called the bourbon roadies. Got to answer three questions, right Jim?

You do. You have to, first of all, we want to make sure you're old enough to drink. So it'll be 21. We want to make sure you know what you're getting yourself into. We are a bourbon group and that's what it's all about. And when you get in there, we want you to play nice because we don't want to have to boot people. We want people that get along Uh, explore whiskey, share whiskey, share their whiskey experiences and don't, uh, don't put each other down.

Yeah. We don't say we don't tolerate rudeness, but we also don't do politics or social justice in there. We don't do any of that. We talk about whiskey. We share whiskey for a family. Wish everybody happy birthday or. Hey, happy retirement. A big, you know, you got a baby is born. You got a grand baby is born. You tell us in there, come in and join that group. We got master distillers in there. We've got just regular old dudes like us talking about whiskey. No selling of whiskey in there though, right? No, but we do share it. Share it.

We do share our whiskey with each other. And you know what? There's nothing better than finding a great whiskey and sharing it with a few friends.

Well, there is going to be some whiskey sold in that group. But, but legally. Legally. That's right. Our pick will be coming up in the next couple of weeks. So if you want to get our, road pick number one, our very first bottle with some great art on the back of it, right? And it will be sold at retail. It'll be sold at retail. You got to be a roadie.

You got to be a roadie because there's only a couple of hundred bottles. We're pretty sure they're going to go pretty darn quick and we want our roadies to get first grabs. No doubt about it.

So, you can also go to our website, TheBurbonRoad.com. You can read our blogs on there. You can buy Glen Caron's from Distillery Products. You can also go to Premium Bar Products and that link will take you to their website, help you get there a little quicker. Both of us kind of write the blogs together. Hopefully we'll add a review soon if I can get Jim on a ball. He's been a busy man.

We need help. We need help. Anybody out there is a good blog guy. But anyway, Mike, it was a great show. I had a lot, I had a blast. It's always great to talk about the change of seasons and, and, and bourbon choices and, you know, why we do what we do. And, you know, our particular thoughts on a bottle or, or a class of whiskey, it's, it's always a blast to do. That's what it's all about sharing our. our experiences with everybody sharing our whiskey when we can. And, uh, just a, just a great time today.

I'll tell you what, if somebody will tell me what JEPTA means, send me a private message on Facebook of what the meaning of JEPTA is. I'll send you a sample of each of these.

So let's just be sure they understand because you live on Jephthah Creek, which is your name or your farm is Jephthah Farm. Jephthah Bend Farm. Jephthah Bend Farm. I'm sorry. And we are just down the road from Jephthah Creed Distillery, but what you're talking about is nothing to do with that distillery. It's just the word Jephthah. J-E-P-T-H-A.

That's it. Jephthah. Tell us what that, the meaning of JEPTA is. And I'll send you a sample of the whistlepig tenure and the bullet tenure.

So how do they get that information to you, Mike?

Just send me a private message on Facebook or you can post it in the roadies, I guess. Go ahead and post it.

Okay. So if you join the roadies or if you're already a roadie, just put a post up. I heard the episode. This is what Jephthah means.

Now there's one guy that can't win this time. I got to take him out. Cause I gave that guy several samples. He came over to the house and I hooked him up. Jordan Riley, you can't win this time.

And that's because we release our episodes at one AM and at 102 he's listening, right? I don't know what he listens.

Well, it's, it's, it's James Irwin from over in Australia is probably our first listener. Okay. But Jordan, he seems to beat everybody else. Jordan, you can win the next sample, but this sample has got to go to somebody else.

All right. Well, I'm jshannon63.

I'm one big chief. And we'll see you down the bourbon road.

We do appreciate all of our listeners and we'd like to thank you for taking time out of your day to hang out with us here on the Bourbon Road. We hope you enjoyed today's show and if so, we would appreciate if you'd subscribe and rate us a five star with a review on iTunes. Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at The Bourbon Road. That way you'll be kept in the loop in all the Bourbon Road happenings. You can also visit our website at thebourbonroad.com to read our blog, listen to the show, or reach out to us directly. We always welcome comments or suggestions. And if you have an idea for a particular guest or topic, be sure to let us know. And again, thanks for hanging out with us.