108. Pinhook - Bohemian Bourbon and Rye'd On

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.

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Hey, everybody. It's Mike Hyatt from the Bourbon Road. Jim can't be with us today. He had to work. So got a special guest on today. We have Sean Joseph. He is the co-founder. He is the master taster. He is the wizard of Oz for Pin Hook Bourbon. Sean, how you doing, man?

I'm doing great. I have never been called the Wizard of Oz. And you know what? I'm going to take that. That sounds pretty great.

Well, you know, when I think of your guys' bourbon, you got those beautiful bottles with all those bright colors, orange and pink. And it just, to me, it reminds me of the Wizard of Oz and the lollipop men. Oh, that's awesome.

But that's the first time I've heard that one. So we get people's, I get like the bourbon crayons thing. It's like the Crayola crayons of bourbon and then Skittles.

Skittles.

I can see that too. Yeah. But this is the first time for Wizard of Oz, which I'm going to say is my favorite.

Well, I appreciate that. I really do appreciate it. So we're going to start out. Me and Jim always like to get straight to the whiskey and stuff. Yeah. Earlier in the summertime, me and Jim actually did a review on your ride on. Yep. We called it a summer sipper, but today we're actually going to drink that on the second half of the show. But to start out, we got some Bohemian bourbon that you were kind enough to send us. It's the 95 proof. We'd like to get straight to that whiskey, tell our listeners what it's all about. So I'm going to go ahead and nose it. Hopefully you're going to drink along with me.

Yep. So, um, Bohemian bourbon, it's our first, what we call our flagship bourbon, which is hardly low proof, but usually something in the low to mid to high nineties, it kind of varies. It's our orange wax bourbon. I'm sure we'll get into it more, but we do annual vintages, so we're not trying to replicate a flavor profile. Simply trying to make the best whiskey we can with the barrels we have. That said, this is our first ever orange wax bourbon from our Castle & Key distillate. It's 75% corn, 15% rye, 10% barley. I think I mean, we can talk about the rye separately. The rye is not a conventional or traditional mashbill. This is a much more traditional type of bourbon mashbill. And really, when I first started getting into bourbon back in 2004, 2005, I think like a lot of people, I was drawn to that really classic bourbon profile of just butterscotch and, you know, I don't know, I think it's silly to say it now, but something that was like readily available back in the day, like Rockhill Farm. or Elmer T. Lee. And when I opened a bourbon bar in New York in 2008, and when someone would come into the bar and say they were kind of new to bourbon, which that was very common back then that there are a lot of people that were just starting to explore bourbon. what, give me something that's like the quintessential bourbon. Like what is bourbon? And I think bourbon is all about this sweetness, right? When you think about what bourbon represents and why people who really like scotch might not like bourbon because they think it's too sweet. Um, but that's kind of what I loved about it is that quintessential sweetness. And so when I was tasting the different options, uh, different Ashbills with different yeast from Castle & Key, I was just, drawn to this one. And I think even though it's only three years old, it to me already has that butterscotch note. I'm excited to see where it goes. Obviously, with some more time in the barrel. But I was just, again, going for that big corn forward sweet profile. And then, of course, hopefully, enough rye at 15%. Not enough rye to be considered high rye, but hopefully enough to give it some of that spice and that earth note as well.

There is some corn on the nose, but I get more floral notes from it. A little bit of that almost burnt caramel you would get from, you know, like some kettle corn or something. That sweetness is coming out, but those floral notes, a little bit of the rye is coming out on it, but definitely, I think it'd be a sweeter bourbon on the nose now. You know, we'll see what the taste, if the taste matches, the nose is always the trick. And I find that very few bourbons can do that. Some do, some don't. So I say cheers. Let's taste this thing. It's definitely got some spice to it right there on the front of the tongue. That sweetness is there. A little bit of that burnt caramel. And then the glass, I should have mentioned this. It's got a lighter Amber for a three-year-old. I would expect that to be a little bit lighter. It's not as dark. It sits in the bottle. Beautiful. Some legs on it, not a whole lot, but still a three-year-old bourbon, right?

Yep. And I also like to point out too, because it's just the way that I think about the bourbons is, you know, this is meant to be our everyday sipper, right? So when someone's tasting this, and again, it's always been important to me because I was kind of in the bourbon game before it got it exploded the way it did and also before it got expensive. That within reason, this is affordable. So you'll see this on the shelf for $34 to $37. It kind of depends on the store. So it's great in an old-fashioned. I'm not saying it should be good enough to sit and eat. But I also just see it as like that bottle that you can grab every day. you know, make a cocktail. If you like mixing, by all means, mix it. If you'd like to throw it in a big handful of ice or put it on a big cube or drink it neat, I hope that it's versatile enough for all those things. But you know, you had mentioned that we have a high proof bourbon as well, which again, I think of this more that kind of after dinner, more contemplative bourbon sipper. versus something like this, which is meant to be more, again, like that kind of everyday pour.

I think this is perfect for the fall season. That spice that I get from the rye, I think, is perfect for the Kentucky weather we have right now. It's in the low 50s. It'll be 34 tonight if you wanted to set in front of a fire. This is spot on for that kind of weather. I call it a fall bourbon. Um, I, I love it. It's, and this would probably be right up Jim's alley, even though it's at 95 proof. Yeah. Get that almost 101 spice to it. We were talking about wild Turkey earlier we were before we started. And this would be right up there with that. I'll tell you, I picked the, all the bottles I have up, um, from a local liquor store here in Shelbyville for 35.99. Great price point. I think it's, uh, not too high, not too low. Beautiful bottle. great bourbon. Tell us how pin hook started.

Yeah. So the, I had mentioned my restaurant. I mean, really the, the, The shorter, condensed version of the story is I was in the restaurant business. I started as a food runner, worked my way up. Working in restaurants in New York, I quickly realized that you better know something about wine because that makes you an asset. And at the time, I had really... Excuse me. I'd really decided that I wanted to be in the restaurant business. That I just had fallen in love with it and that was going to be my career. again, I realized that wine is the most pivotal part of the restaurant business, if you're going to be valuable to the restaurant, essentially. So I really dug into wine. And so I'm a certified sommelier from the quartermaster sommeliers. I have my sommelier certificate from the American Sommelier Association. So I really just went down the wine rabbit hole in blind tasting groups, studying, doing all the things I had to do to get these wine accreditation. And You know, again, really a condensed version, but as part of my wine studies, I had to learn about bourbon as well. So some of these sommelier exams, like you're supposed to know about cigar and cognac or brandy pairings. You're supposed to know about, you know, you're supposed to know about distilled spirits. beer production, sake production, all of it. And bourbon was just the thing that really caught my fancy in my palate. And, you know, again, if you think back to this time when I was getting into this, you know, all of us now It kind of feels like this urban thing has been blown up and again i know talking to people from kentucky they're kind of like well it's always been a big deal so i don't even know what you're talking about you say like now bourbon is a big thing but you know i think for the rest of the country. the bourbon world as we know it today did not exist back then. And so there were no bottles that were hard to find. Everything was reasonably priced. There was plenty of Pappy around. There was all the stuff that we now know people chase was readily available. And I was just blown away. When you learn how to taste wine and do deductive tasting, you're looking for the things you were talking about how is the nose how complex is the nose how is the pallet relative to the nose how did they beat up and you're really trying to assess not just do i like it but what is going on here and. I think what i felt american whiskey had to offer was incredible complexity. Add an incredible value. And again, this is in the context of Elijah Craig 18 is a $48 readily available whiskey on the shelf whenever you want. And then even think about, I don't know, I swear at the time, like Elijah Craig 12 year was still a single barrel and was probably like a $26 or $24 retail item. So I'm tasting these things where meanwhile in wine, you have to start to go spend a lot of money. right? To get wine that is considered and frankly, sometimes there's a law of diminishing returns, but there is a reality in wine that you need to spend money to get something of quality or of like real complexity because you're paying at that point maybe for something from the best vineyards and with a lot of age on it, etc. Anyway, I would just really blown away by the bourbon. And so that inspired me when I ultimately opened my own restaurant to open a bourbon bar in Brooklyn, New York called Char No. 4 in 2008. which again was well ahead of the time, you know, ahead of the curve, ahead of the boom. And I remember thinking, I was like, I really love this stuff. And I had this entire wall of basically every American whiskey that you could get your hands on at the time, which was a lot in the sense that, again, that there was no problem getting BTAC or any of these things. And but I just didn't know if anyone was going to want to try all these whiskeys, if they would be interested in them. And lo and behold, it just I think our timing was kind of perfect. And it just immediately took off. And GQ named Charter before one of what they called the three bourbon temples in the United States of America, which I think is more a testament to the fact that they're just outside of Kentucky. There really weren't many places. where you could go and taste all these American whiskeys that hadn't really happened yet. And so, you know, I kind of had the luxury of being a little bit early, at least as far as, you know, having a bar focused on it outside of Kentucky. And so I'm surrounded by all these bourbons and just I knew a decent amount when I opened the bar. And then every day, I'm talking to consumers. I'm tasting more stuff. Everything is hitting my palate. And I just got really excited about the idea that maybe I would have a different point of view to offer. Not a better point of view, just like a different point of view. And one thing that struck me about bourbon and rye, you say American whiskey, I guess, compared to wine where in Italy alone, there are a thousand registered grapes. And as you know, like different grapes have such a range of flavors. The category of American whiskey is really quite narrow. If you think about it, it's like, it's gotta be this much corn. You have to put it in a new chart oak barrel. Like everything about it is basically It's driving really high quality, but it's basically driving one distillery to be more similar than dissimilar from another distillery. Regardless of yeasts and mash bills, it's just like you have to put it in this type of barrel, you have to use this much corn, you have to use this much rye. And I just thought that if the category was really going to expand and become interesting to broader consumer base, you needed to have more variety. And again, this is before there were no single barrel picks back then like that, or maybe there were, but it wasn't like a thing. Uh, there was one maker's mark. There was one basil Hayden. There was one knob Creek. There's I think one Woodford, the craft bourbon movement hadn't really started. So there may be four or five craft things I can think of that were on the shelf. And I was again, just kind of like, maybe. you know, maybe we could just take a different approach and that will be interesting. Not better, but just something different.

So, so why Castle and Key? How did you partner up with Castle and Key?

So my, myself and two friends of mine were the, are the founders and we just started like everybody, uh, buying barrels from MGP. or what was still LDI when we first bought our barrels. So we started Penhook by buying 20 barrels of LDI bourbon for $465 a barrel for three-year-old bourbon back in 2011.

Now, if you could go back and do that again.

Oh, my God. I mean, look, the thing is, we literally could have bought, I mean, we didn't obviously have the money, but we could have bought 20,000. Like there was no like it hadn't all started to happen. Sure. I mean, just the return on the investment just even if you just, you know, resold the barrels would be crazy. But, you know, I guess, briefly, before we get to the castle and key piece, what happened was, I had actually spent very little time in Kentucky. And in my mind, regardless of the laws of where you can make bourbon, Kentucky is where all the magic happens. That's where we wanted to hang out. So we shipped our barrels from LDI to Strong Spirits in Bardstown, Kentucky. with Dave Schmier and Mike Cambor. Because they were the only folks that we could find that had a license. They had a bonded warehouse. They had a little bottling line. They had tanks for blending and filtering and proofing and all that kind of stuff. And our ultimate goal was to put this whiskey together. But we spent the next three years visiting our bourbon. going to Kentucky four or five, six times a year, checking in on the barrels and really just soaking it all in. And the one thing that I knew I wanted to do philosophically was, you know, the bourbon industry had primarily and still is mostly this way, but especially back then was really just built on the idea that you have a set flavor profile at a preset proof And even though there's a lot of variabilities in the barrels, as you know, you're just backing into the flavor profile. You're like, how do I put these different barrels together in the right combination so they taste like the previous batch? And then you're just trying to basically create a batch that tastes the same over and over and over again from different ingredients. That's the complete opposite of how good wine is made. So the thing that occurred to me from a wine perspective was wine is all about vintage. Wine is about how do you take the variability to make a unique vintage? And then when people go and taste four different vintages of the same grape from the same vineyard, they enjoy the variability and how different one can taste from the next because of the natural elements. Whiskey has all these natural elements in the grain harvest, in the mineral content, in the water, in the barrels themselves, in the weather, in the rick house position, creates tremendous variability as we all know, you know, anyone who's done barrel picks knows how. significant it is. And so the basic kind of idea was, well, what if you looked at a group of barrels and instead of saying, how do we get this group of barrels to taste the same as the last group of barrels? What if you said, can we just make the best whiskey we can, irrespective of a flavor profile or there's no predetermined flavor profile or proof, right? And let's just make the best whiskey we can each time. And maybe those vintages will be interesting to people, you know, next year in the fall of 2021, we'll come out with a new orange wax burden. it will still be castle and key distillate from the same Nashville. Uh, but it may taste nothing like what you just tasted, partially because we'll have some slightly older barrels to work with, but also just cause the barrels are different and we're just going to try to assemble the best whiskey we can. And that might lean, it might mean to be like less floral and even more spicy, or it might be less spicy and end up being like more fruity and sweet. And each one is meant to be its own thing. So really,

It's almost like you would be a person that went and did picks every year and released picks from your own bourbon, right? For every year. And that's what people do is they go out and do picks and everybody covets those picks. You're hoping that they covet.

You know what's funny? You just made, to me, that's my exact, to me, it's the perfect analogy is everybody likes single barrel picks because they're fascinated by the variability. This is just that translated into blending.

Yeah, I think it's a great concept. It's a different concept. It's different than somebody else is doing. Anybody's doing really out there. I don't know anybody that has that vertical series or what you guys are doing. Um, masterful. I, I think it's just awesome that you're doing that. So castle and key, if people don't know it's a, It's down on Little Road, McCracken Pike. It is the old Taylor distillery. Very beautiful, very quaint. They have some sunken gardens there. Yeah, it's gorgeous. I don't understand how that you guys were the first bourbon to come out of there. I've asked that question several times. It doesn't make sense to me, but if I was you, I'd feel lucky.

The one piece that I missed, and I'm sorry, I'm not trying to not get to Castle Key, is one of my friend's co-founders that we bought the barrels with, his best friend from high school grew up in Thoroughbred horse racing. His dad was a vet at the track. And so this guy, Jamie Hill. So we would always stay with Jamie when we'd come, we'd go to Lexington and then we'd drive to Bardstown to check on our barrels. Jamie grew up in thoroughbred horse racing, as I said. And so we were just hanging out with him and naturally going to Keeneland, going to some horse sales, depending on what was going on, watching horses train. Jamie explained to us this part of his business called pinhooking. Which you know people in kentucky would know about but if i had certainly never heard before and so he's explaining to us the idea of you know by baby horse based on the lineage and how you think it looks physically it's attributes at the time with the idea that it's gonna mature into a thoroughbred that you're gonna sell to someone else so they can race it so it's just a flip it's a buy to sell and so we connected this idea we're like oh that's like that's what we're doing we're buying baby bourbon based on his lineage and its attributes when it's young and we're gonna sell it when it's mature. He also manages a racing stable called Bourbon Lane stable and he names every horse in the stable with bourbon or rye in the name of the horse. And he was already doing that. And we had this vintage idea and we're like, wouldn't it be cool to tie each vintage to a thoroughbred and not just a thoroughbred that had done well or was a former champion, but an actual active racing thoroughbred. So Jamie picks horses that sometimes have not even run. In a race or maybe they've been in one race and so bohemian bourbon is a current active racing thoroughbred ride on is an active racing thoroughbred and if you go to our website you can actually see an actual picture of the horses the races they've been in where they finished how much money they want and all that kind of stuff so. Besides you know basically. creating the inspiration for how we would express our vintages. The other thing Jamie did for us is introduce us to one of his oldest and dearest friends, Will Arvin. So Will was the guy that bought Castle and Key and decided, you know, had the vision and then ultimately ended up pairing up with Wes Murray, but decided that he wanted to bring this historic distillery back to life. So we were, we couldn't believe it. We were standing there with them before they'd hired a master distiller. They're just a bunch of guys in hazmat suits, doing asbestos abatement. And we were the first people they approached. So we were very small. So at this point, like 2014, we started doing these tiny little 15 barrel blends of pin hook. But within Kentucky, we've gotten like a little bit of notice because of the obvious connection to Thoroughbreds and Jamie's local ties. And so they knew they needed to have a contract model where they had a way of getting cash flow. Obviously, they make 5-pin gin as well, but also to have cash flow while they're waiting for their product to mature. And so that's how it all came about. Now, to your point, why or how were we allowed to be the first ones to release it? We were definitely, besides them, the first ones to start distilling. So that has a lot to do with it. But yeah, I mean, besides just being first, and I know they're actually coming out with their rye pretty soon, which I'm excited to taste. But, you know, we were just We're just very, very fortunate again to be in the right place at the right time. And I just feel so fortunate too, because I think, I think we put together a cool story around the horses through our friend. I think that the idea of vintages was something a little different. But now to be tied to one of the most historic distilleries in the history of American whiskey and have that connection on top of it is just, and I think they're making great distillate. I mean, it's just, I think we got extremely lucky because as you know, the model, most people start by sourcing from MGP and then they have to build their own distillery. We got lucky. We started sourcing from MGP. Somebody else refurbished a historic distillery and we just got to like piggyback on that. So.

Kind of like horse racing, right?

Yeah, exactly. That's what it all, it all ties together.

Corrosion is, it's more than luck, but I'm sure it took a lot of hard work on your partners and your to come up with this, but it took some luck too. Um, I gotta say cheers to you on this Bohemian bourbon. It is a fall sipper. Even as it's set in the glass, opened up a little bit that, that spices still hits you on the tongue. It'll warm you right up.

It still has that little bit of Kentucky hug that you're looking for in a bourbon.

Um, beautiful expression, Jim. I think he, he's just going to love this. I know he loves it because me and him already sip some, um, beautiful bottle. Uh, who come up with that wax idea and the different colors.

Yeah. So that's been the other fun part about this. So, uh, one of my other, uh, co-founders, Charles Fulford does all of our packaging design. That's his background. So that's been the other fun thing about this is, you know, not to, you know, discount like the luck element. But we had a good complementary group of people with complementary skills. You know, I had the wine background and the restaurant background. Charles is a designer by trade. This isn't just like something he did for fun. Like this is what he actually does is design things. And Jay Peterson, our third founder, you know, has a business background and also had spent a lot of time in Kentucky and grew up with Jamie. So between the three of us, We had some, like I said, complementary skills. But the cool thing to me is we never went outside for anything. We didn't hire a marketing firm. We didn't hire someone to come up with a name. We didn't hire someone to design our packaging. We did it all ourselves. And so Charles was... Because he loves this stuff and he really dug in to horse racing and horse racing history is the idea that jockeys always wear these brightly colored silks because before the Jumbotron, the only way to see your horse on the back stretch through your binoculars was based on color. And so that was the inspiration for creating these brightly colored wax bottles is an homage to that. And you also see our bottles have different each year, there's a different geometric shape. And of course, jockey silks usually have you know, a big polka dot or a big square or something like that. So all of it from the name to the colors of the wax, to the shape of the geometry, to the hand-drawn horses, which are drawn by Noly Novak, who does all the portraits to the Wall Street Journal, to even the terminology, which someone outside of Kentucky, again, might not know, but the number of hands, the color and sex of the horse and all of that kind of stuff is authentic to Kentucky thoroughbreds.

I gotta say, it's simple but elegant. I always talk to Jim about this is something that you wanna have on your shelf. You don't wanna have something on my, I don't wanna have something on my shelf that's cartoony or anything like that. I always want something that looks elegant. Whenever my guests come to my house, they're like, man, it's a beautiful bottle. Could I taste what's inside that? Because you almost, when you eat something at a restaurant, you eat with your eyes. So if you brought me out a pile of mud, I'm not gonna wanna eat that, right?

I love that you said that, to be honest, because I think people are too quick to just say, oh, that's just marketing. But I think the reality is we all know that there are a lot of people making a lot of tasty juice. And the fact of the matter is you drink a bit with your eyes, too. And when you see a bottle that looks beautiful, I think especially in our case where the price is very reasonable, it's going to have a pretty big impact on how you feel about the whiskey when you pour it in your glass. And I also think, to me, the amount of detail that is in it is a signal to how much effort we put into what is inside the bottle. And so that's what I like about it, too. If you look at it, you're like, wow, these people really cared about the product just on the packaging alone. And hopefully, again, the idea is that that's the amount of effort and care we put into all of it, that it all matters.

Well, once again, a great bourbon. I think you guys hit the nail on the head when it comes to a Kentucky bourbon. You put a big giant horse on the front of it.

You couldn't miss that.

So on the second half, when we come back, everybody, we're going to drink right on. We'll keep talking with Sean about what the future is at pin hook, what else they got coming out. And then very at the very end, you guys send them some special bourbon and we'll drink a little bit of that. We'll be right back.

We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Loghead's Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Loghead's 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 Logheads, and that's what they like to call themselves, are skilled woodcrafters 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.

So, hey listeners, it's the Big Chief and we're back with Sean Josephs. Like I said, he is the Wizard of Oz at Penhook Bourbon. And Sean, on the second half here, we're going to drink some Ride On. It's your guys' Ry Bourbon, your standard expression. I guess it would be, but next year is it going to be different?

Correct. Yep. So next year, there will be another rye from our Castle & Key Distillate. We will have some older barrels to work with. The average age of rye on was actually only two and a half years old. So I'm pretty happy with the flavors we were getting. And I think a lot of it has to do with the quality of the distillate and also the fact, of course, that young rye tends to drink better than young bourbon, or I'd say basically always drinks better than young bourbon for the most part. And also I think our mash bill at 20% barley, it's 60% rye, 20% barley, 20% corn. I think that high barley really softens what could be rough edges on a younger rye and brings that kind of savory nutty element to it. But anyway, to what I was saying before, next year, in the spring of 2021, we'll release another rye. It'll be our 2021 rye. It will be whichever horse Jamie tells us he thinks has the best chance of making it to the Kentucky Derby will grace the label. And to your point, this was a great kind of spring summer rye. It's got a lot of spearmint notes in it. There's just something very bright and refreshing about it. All of that said, when I tackled the blending, for this 2021 ride. I'll of course understand what ride on was like, but in no way are we trying to replicate any aspect of it. So it'll be fascinating because what we essentially do is we're pulling significantly more barrels than we're actually blending. So we're working from a larger set. And then after tasting through many of the barrels and playing around with different barrel combinations, again, we're just trying to make the tastiest whiskey we can. And that could very well produce a rye that tastes nothing like rye on or our 2020 rye. The thing that I think is fun about this is maybe to your palate, you'll be like, man, rye on was so good. I just don't think this one is as good to me. But then the cool thing to me is somewhere out there is someone who thinks that the 2021 is better than the 2020. And again, like you mentioned around single barrels, that's kind of the fun of the conversation. And I think it sparks fun conversations for people that are enthusiasts because they can talk about like, you know, why they prefer one over the other, just like the way they talk about why they like one Knob Creek single barrel pick versus another.

Well, hopefully me and Jim will be the first people to receive one of the 2021 rice so we can review it. Now we reviewed this one back on June 29th and I'm sitting here nosing it now and the nose I get right now is the same nose that I got back then. Very fresh, very floral, spearmint, peaches, key lime, pie, Uh, it just said it was so refreshing for us. Um, now the palette was a little bit different. We'll see how I taste it. Uh, me and Jim always do these together. So I'd have, you know, always me and him disagree sometimes, but this was one of them ones that me and him drank together and we were both just blown away of how good it was. And we bought that bottle ourselves. So, um, nobody had sent it to us. Well, we just, we just wanted to do it. Jim was like, Hey Mike, you really got to try this right, right here. And I thought, Hey, why not? Let's do it. Um, so look, you're pouring it out there.

I'll tell you what, because I'm allowed to do this, not that I get to make, you know, unilateral decisions on behalf of the pen book all the time, but I will make sure that you all get an early sample a hundred percent.

Well, I'm going to go ahead and taste this. I say cheers to you, Sean.

Cheers. That diggity dog, that's good.

I tell you that. Same notes that I got back in the early summer there, late spring. I get a little bit of mom's cherry pie with that baked buttery crust. Just that hint of mint on it. And that peach comes carrying through. It's still light. know, and I still would consider this that summer sipper, you know, you're looking for something light on your palate with that fresh fruits that are cut. Maybe some, that mom's cherry pie with a dollop of a big old vanilla bean ice cream on there. This is perfect.

But you know, it's crazy too. You're like, I love all your notes and I think people will get into like specifics little differently, but I think the broad strokes are there's an herbal component, this mint note, there's a fruit note, there's a citrus, and you do get this like honey, caramel, and almost like you said pie, I think there's kind of like a there is a note of like almost pastry in some way. But I think that what's cool about all the things you're saying that it's light on its feet, but it's 97 proof. Like if you think about, you know, the entry level product for many distilleries is an 80 proof to 86 proof, 90 on the high side, this is 97 proof. So we're not that far away from that, not old enough, but from that bottled and bond tipping point of under proof.

Now, to be honest, I had to go out and get this bottle today right here. You guys did send us some bottles, but we're going to talk about those two bottles that you sent us separately because we want to do something special with those. So I did go out and, well, at first I called Jim and said, Jim, you still have some of that left. Jim said, no, I drank the whole bottle, which is a testament to you guys. If Jim polishes off a bottle of whiskey, it means he really loves it. So that says a lot. So I did stop by Paradise Spirits and Wine and picked up another bottle. $35.99 from our friends James over there. opened it up today, let it breathe a little bit, poured a glass out, sit on it before the show. The finish on this, I'm still getting that slight bit of heat, not too much, not too much of that Kentucky hug. Goes down about midway, a little bit of cloves, a little bit of cinnamon on that finish. Still fresh though. I mean, how can you not go, you can't go wrong with that. So you, you, you guarantee him that it's going to be different for everybody. So everybody's going to have to go out and pick up another bottle.

Yeah, they have to pick up another bottle, but hopefully, um, you have a rationale, even if you have a third of a bottle left on the shelf to go try the new one. But also, you know, like I said, I think the idea of trying to take a different approach was to spark a different type of conversation. Um, it would be one thing if I said, okay, here's right on, or here's pin hook rye, castle key rye, this is what it tastes like and this is what it's going to taste like till the end of time. There's nothing wrong with that. That's not easy to do and there are so many great distilleries doing that already. But if you want to have a different kind of experience around whiskey. That's what we're offering, which is you could say, Hey, I'm kind of and especially at $35. It's not a huge investment. Let's see what happens when the 2021 vintage comes out. What happens when I do a side by side of ride on and whatever the 2021 rye is like, which one do I like better? Or maybe I like them both for different reasons. And that's kind of the to me, that's what's exciting about it. And it's just bringing a different approach and a different philosophy and conversation to American whiskey. That was the goal really.

Well, I'll tell you, it's very hard to beat guys like Jimmy Russell and the nose out when they've been doing it forever. They've had that same bourbon out there. And for somebody else to say, you know what? I'm going to have the same bourbon and I'm going to make the same same stuff and try to compete with that. That's tough to compete with. Your business model, I think it works. It works for me definitely because I'm looking for those new expressions that come out. Something exciting. I'm looking for that little funky wax because it definitely stands out on the liquor shelf. And I think you guys went right down the right path with this right here, giving somebody that summer sip or something different. Because to be honest with you, sometimes in the middle of summer, a full proof or a barrel strength, that's hard to choke down in the middle of summer at 108 degrees.

You're bringing up one of my favorite things to talk about in whiskey, which is I think sometimes people who like whiskey look at it in a vacuum. Instead of thinking about different whiskey's for different occasions and i'm not saying that it needs to become fussy or over thought but it's simply the idea that like. Not every occasion calls for that cask strength nine year old whiskey i mean that. Sometimes like i said you know it's like three three in the afternoon or early evening in the summer and it's hot and you're firing up the grill and you're gonna be outside for a while and you want a whiskey to sit on if you want something a little lighter on its feet. and that's why we make a higher proof expression and a lower proof expression because we see them as it's not it's easy to say I think for enthusiasts like well obviously the higher proof one is better but I kind of think about it having been in the restaurant business of also like experiential and I think they might be better for different occasions I also think that Whiskey that's too high proof doesn't work as well for your classic whiskey cocktails i also frankly think that if you're gonna make something. Like a let's say a whiskey sour and you're mixing citrus and older with your whiskey doesn't really taste that good. When you're mixing it with lime and sugar so i think you actually want a three to four year old ryer bourbon. And also for me even if i'm making an old fashion i would rather take something like ride on this younger bohemian you're adding a little bitters you're adding sugar you're basically deepening the flavors. If I had some awesome single barrel pick that was a hundred and eighteen proof, like I'm not adding anything to that. I don't want to make an old fashioned that. So I see there's like a lot of versatility and different uses for these these expressions.

Yeah, I mean, you agree so much on so many different things. I love to see different expressions, different proof points. Some people will say, oh, I'm not going to pay that much for that low of a proof of a bourbon or a whiskey. I'm like, why not? You know, not until lately have we started having those high cast strength whiskeys out. And people can burn their pallets out with those. And outside of the United States, people don't drink high proof whiskeys. So why?

And also you reminded me of something which I kind of ended up forgetting. Probably one of the things that's the most important to me about what we do is there's no preset proof. So I'll taste this at 10 to 15 different proofs. So the blend gets assembled at cask strength. And then if we're doing a high proof blend, I'll kind of taste it between 105 and cast strength, you know, which with these was around like 116, 117. If we're making this more everyday whiskey, I'll taste it between 9,100 and pick the best proof. And it's really fascinating to see how different the whiskey expresses itself at the different proofs, because we could have picked a proof where You know, not just one thing I'm really looking for is a balance of flavors, but the other thing, sometimes the lower proofs actually hit your palate as hotter. You know, and the other thing that's interesting is sometimes you have 10 proofs in front of you, and it's really only two of the proofs that will really leap out of the glass and have great aromatics. And that's something that's really important and maybe that comes from my wine background, that you tend not to see disgust as much in whiskey as the nose and the idea that you want the nose to be really vibrant and interesting. And I like the idea, just like the palate, when a whiskey is complex on the palate, you keep coming back to it and being like, wow, this time I didn't even get that before, but now I'm getting this amazing clove note or like, wow, I didn't taste it before, but now it's like super licorice. Same on the nose. I'm looking for a complex nose if I can achieve it where you keep coming back to it. And the one time you're like, it's minty. And then the next time you're like, wow, that's really like tropical fruit. And then you come back, you know, so that's part of the goal of the proofing is trying to find the sweet spot for that particular blend.

So Sean, what in the future, what we can expect to see from Pan Hook?

Well, I think, you know, one thing you can obviously expect is older castle and key. So of course we're setting aside barrels so that we can have older expressions of our castle and key distillate. The thing we have built in, which I think we're going to be talking about is this vertical series. So we're only at the very beginning of a nine year series following these MGP rye and bourbon barrels that are all the same age and basically taking a small chunk of them each year and taking a small chunk of them each year and blending, improving them to the best that they can be at that moment in time. You know, the idea is we still have all these barrels of MGP and we were trying to think of something to do with them that would really be separate from our castle and key distillate. And so I thought it had to be something that really was distinct and also just something that was interesting to me. And, you know, different people will talk about the percentages, but clearly a huge percentage of the flavor of bourbon or rye is coming from the barrel. And what I had never seen before was the idea of what in wine you call it vertical, which is a, you know, a bunch of vintages in a row, but also where you have a one year increase in age. So you're truly understanding the impact of one more year. So to just really lay it out for you, we started with 1,350 MGP bourbon barrels that we bought when they were maybe 12 to 14 months old. They're all from the same lot. So they don't have the same fill date, but they're all roughly, you know, they're all the same age in essence, you know, they're all aging at Castle & Key. each year we grab 150 of those barrels. Well, we actually pull more to figure out which 150 to blend together, but each year is 150 barrel release of bourbon and a 50 barrel release of rye. The remaining barrels stay behind to age for another year. So then obviously the balance of the barrels is now all the same age, but one year older, and you keep doing the same thing for nine years. And so you're following bourbon, at least in terms of how I've always thought about it in the sweet spot, age four, which because of bottles and bond was always considered to be this marker of the beginning of quality and 12, which for many people, at least historically in the industry, barrels have gotten too old and too woody. And so let's follow these barrels. and each year tastes the next vintage, I'll pick whichever proof I think is the best. So just even from the four year to the five year, we went from 98 proof to 104 proof. We lost 20% of our yield. Wow. Just because, well, you know, four to 5% evaporation, which would be kind of standard. And then because I increased the proof by a good six points, that's even more. So think about what's going to happen. I'm like, I'm fascinated by this both in terms of what's in the bottle. And then if you just think about how things work in the bourbon world and the way people try to get their hands on stuff. every year it's going to get older, which is going to make it more desirable. And every year there's going to be less of it because of evaporation. And what I anticipate are what I've seen is you need to raise the proof as it spends more time in wood in order to balance the wood elements with the other flavors in the, in the distillate. So it's, you know, in a way that part of our future is already set because we've got eight years to go. The last bourbon will come out in the fall of 2027. And the 12-year-old rye will come out in the spring of 2028. And anyone who... And these are bottles that are... The four-year at retail is $45. The five-year, which just came out in the last two weeks and should be around in Kentucky, if you haven't seen it at Paradise, it should be there soon, is a $50 retail item. So they're not impossible to find. And they're reasonably priced. How fun is it going to be to sit there? Well, even in like three year increments to do like, let's taste the four, the five and the six, let's trace the 78 and the nine, all that kind of stuff. But then how fun is it going to be to taste age four through 12 to taste nine years of age from the same distillate aging in the same place? you know, I, I can't wait. It's going to be hard.

I think it'd be hard to get that, that 12 year old in your hand. Hopefully people, if you're, if you're out there and you're wanting this, you're going ahead and grabbing that four year old now. And as soon as the five year old comes out, grab it and then stick that thing back in a dark corner and it just don't open them for, don't touch it. Don't touch them for 12 years.

What I try to tell people though, and you know this because you've got James at Paradise or people have their local shop. My hunch is that James is not yet on this thing. Like Pin Hook is not Blanton's, Pin Hook is not Pappy, Pin Hook is not even, you know, the old Taylor stuff that's really hard to find. And if you went to James right now and said, James, here's the deal. Pin Hook's doing this cool vertical thing. Um, I want to make sure you get me a bottle every year. Right now, James would be happy to say yes to you because as far as he knows, he can pick up the phone right now and order two cases from, you know, RNDC, the distributor, and he doesn't feel like any pressure. He's not getting assaulted from all ends. Like, when's the five-year coming in? I have a feeling that will change. So my advice to people is like, well, get in with your store now where they'd be happy to make you that promise. And then maybe they'll regret it a little bit when like the nine year comes out. But by then he's like, yeah, but I promised you. So here's your bottle.

I don't know. I feel like I'm a kind of special guy.

Oh, he'll take care of you. I think James, you don't have to worry. I'm thinking of more of the average person that doesn't have a James in their life.

Maybe I've already made that relationship with James. You know, if I've seen it at the gas station, sometimes somebody will walk up to me and say, Hey, I have something for you. So back to that ride on real fast. You know, I, Jim said it was the summer sipper. I thought that it could have used another year in the barrel. And, um, am I right? Am I wrong? I don't know. That was just my tasting. Um, but I'm glad next year that I will actually get to experience that and see, um, the difference in how it tastes and stuff. Uh, I, I'm super excited that's going to happen. And, um, You know, we, we, we just were truthful about our reviews. Um, we say what we like and we'll say, I didn't say I didn't like it, you know, by any means. And I'm not the right guy either. I am the weeded bourbon guy. Um, so as many people know that that's just what we do, but. It's still great whiskey. Um, so I say if you, if you want it, you better get out there and get it before the 2021 and then go ahead and buy that 2021. So you guys were kind enough to send us, and we just talked about the vertical series. Um, you guys were kind enough to send us the 2019 and the, we already had the 2019 though. Um, we got the 2020 bourbon award that is about to come out. It's 104 proof. It's five years old. It's that vertical series we just talked about. Let's go ahead and nose that and let's taste that and see what it does.

I mean, part of what's fun about this to me, not that you have both of them in front of you, I also love this idea that none of these can really exist on their own. I mean, they can, like you can enjoy them, but then it's like, it's almost like you'll appreciate the five year more next to the four year. Right? So it's kind of, it's kind of like a dual thing, but on its own.

Now, and this, those right here, I'm getting some honey smack them cereal. Um, little bit of that grains coming through, but the honey, the toasted caramel, maybe a little bit of s'mores coming through there.

I think it has like a real kind of like almost caramelized brown sugar kind of thing going on too.

I'm going to go ahead and taste this thing.

Wow. That's good. Now that hits me. Now what's the, what is the match bill on this?

So the entire vertical series, it's all the same mash bill, right? Cause it's all the same barrel. So it's 75% corn, 20.5% rye. So higher, I mean, I think people are used to like the 35% rye mash bill as being really high rye, but 20, 20% is still high enough to be considered high rye. So there's a good amount of rye in there. And then the remaining four and a half percent is malted barley. But I think, man, this five year old, the four year old, it would be, I could totally forgive someone for just being like, Oh, that's a solid bourbon 98 proof. It's, it's good, but it could use another year of age. And I wouldn't blame someone for saying this could use another year age, but now you're starting to taste some more mature characteristics. I mean, again, it's still not, you're not getting those. And this is the part I find really interesting. At some point, the wood actually starts to taste woody. But we're still at the point where the wood is just giving it sugar. And so I just get a lot of the caramelization of the wood sugar in this whiskey without really starting to get the taste of wood. And I think that's kind of an interesting point.

I'm actually getting a little bit of maple syrup on this. When I taste it, that sugary goodness, like you said, it hits that sweet tooth. Little bit of the corn left there, but not too much. That's to be expected with 75% corn. It's that, I would call it that MGP juice. I think it's delicious for sure. I don't know how anybody couldn't like this, especially at this price point on this. You said $50.

Yeah, that's 104 proof. It's also the one thing I want to clarify too, because it is becoming a bigger kind of focal point in the whiskey industry. This is actually unfiltered. So this is not non-chill filtered. When people are saying non-chill filtered, a lot of times they mean carbon filtered. They just mean that it's not chill filtered, but it's still filtered from the standpoint that you're removing some of the oils in the whiskey that give it that weight and that density on your palate. And you're removing them because you're worried that once the whiskey becomes chilled, it will become cloudy. But this is unfiltered, meaning the only filtration is just a screen to remove the debris. Just to move the big chunks out of the way. just to get the chunks out of the way. Other than that, it's untouched, you know, of course, other than proofing it down to, to one Oh four.

I actually poured some bourbon last night that had a big chunk of a, a wood in it. Yeah. I thought it was kind of funny when I poured it out and I was like, what is that? What is that?

Well, I'm really glad you'd like this because to me, I mean, for obvious reasons, but I think you know, feeling like, um, you know, for some people feeling like they liked the four year, but you know, maybe it needs more time. I just think if you like bourbon, you should probably like this bourbon. Like it's pretty accessible.

I think a lot of people, um, wouldn't say that people that don't know bourbon, but people that think they know bourbon. They bash on that four-year-old bourbons, five-year-old bourbons. When really, man, there's some great four and five-year-old bourbons out there that people just absolutely love and they should cherish them because at some point people are going to figure out. the owners of those companies, we can charge a little bit more for that stuff. And then the next thing you know, they've priced people out. So enjoy it while you can get it at that price at that year, because eventually everybody's going to have to be buying that two year old and nobody wants to do that. Right.

And I would say to my recommendation to people too, like you said, it's like, get these four and the five year olds now, because you know, I think there are going to be a lot of people that get into it a little later in the game, and then they're going to be trying to chase the four-year-olds. At that point, the four and the five have either been drunk or they're already sitting on someone's shelf at home. you know, it's a pretty affordable collector series to get in on the ground floor.

Sure. Most definitely. I think that's the way to go. If you're a collector out there, you're trying to build your series, buy it now, buy it fast. And then, uh, you know, I think when it gets to that 12 year old, like you were talking about, You're going to have to be knowing some people. Hopefully, maybe the secondary market will be gone by then.

I pray. You know, part of what we tried to do was make it like this is 150 barrels is not small production. If you think about these tiny like 3000 bottle productions, like the, the four year was 38,000 bottles. So I was like to be clear about the fact that like, yeah, it's collectible, but 38,000 bottles is 6,700 six bottle cases. Like it's not this tiny little thing. So we're trying to make something that people could actually get their hands on not like, there are 340 bottles of it or there are 3000 bottles of it. Good luck finding one. This is more like, Hey, if you really want to find it, you can find it, especially now.

Yeah. But at 12 years, how many bottles are you going to get out of that 12 year?

That's a great question. I mean, it could be, I was trying to do the math. Um, I think so from the MGP barrels that we've dumped, I would say, uh, proofing aside, if you dump a single barrel of four year at cast strength and a 12 year at cast strength, there's half as much whiskey in the 12 year. Sure. But we started also by, by adding, uh, obviously by proofing. So you're adding water. So that increased it. But my hunch is by the time we get to the 12 year old, it'll be, you know, pretty close to cast strength. It's not cast strength. Sure. So it could be a third. of the production of the four year by the time you get there or maybe even less.

Well, let's hope not. Let's hope you have plenty for everybody out there. That's a pin hope. I hope so, too. I hope so, too. Well, Sean, I really appreciate you being on the Bourbon Road today. Why don't you tell our fans where they can find you on social media?

Sure. So, Pin Hook Bourbon is at Pin Hook Bourbon. I personally am at hashtag bourbon, hashtag.bourbon. You can check out our website, pinhookbourbon.com. And then also keep an eye out, we actually have a Pin Hook app that does some cool augmented reality stuff when you hold your phone up to the bottle and also has a library of all of our vintages, the mash bills for each one, the age, the tasting notes, some the detailed info on the horses. So these are all fun ways that you can kind of, as you alluded to, there's kind of a lot going on with PinHook and with the vintages and the horses. There are a lot of moving parts of this app kind of helps you have a tool to track it all and better understand what we do.

And how many states are you guys out there in right now? We're in 26 states. So 26 states. Anywhere online?

Yeah. I mean, I think, uh, I'd say the usual stuff, um, seal box is a great place to shop for pin hook online. Um, Kentucky, you've got Justin's house of bourbon. Those are good friends of ours. Um, certainly we pop up on Casper's and Flavior as well.

And those are some good places and single barrel program. Are you guys going to have a single barrel program in the future?

we actually do have single barrels. Um, and actually that reminds me too, though, one thing I should point out, one thing that makes us very unique, there's actually a pin hook text to buy, meaning you can basically, uh, if you texts, um, the word pin hook to nine two six eight four eight, um, you can sign up to be on kind of an exclusive pin hook club where you get basically, help you find bottles, but also you're going to get access to cool things that might not hit the shelves. But yeah, single barrels, we only do store picks. So I know Liquor Barn did a couple barrels, Justin's House of Bourbon, Galenstein's. So we've worked with some folks and in the majority of our markets, there are a couple single barrels here and there, but we don't release 10 hook single barrels. We basically just do let the stores pick the barrels so that they're truly their own thing.

Well, hopefully the bourbon room might be able to do one of those with our friends over there at Paradise Spirits and Wine in the future. We'd definitely love to do that. I know Jim would love that. Once again, Sean, I appreciate letting us drink your bourbon. It's good. I can't wait to see where you guys go in the future. I'm always excited for the future of the bourbon industry. especially with great guys like you, um, and seeing what's coming out of castle and key there. We, me and my wife always loved getting over there and checking everything out. So if you're in Kentucky, you go over to Frankfurt, go down to Bob Woodford reserve, McCracken Pike, instead of taking that left over to Woodford reserve, take a right and go down to castle and key and pick up some good bourbon.

Yeah, the Stave.

Our friends over there at the Stave stop by there and get you some great lunch. It's awesome. So you can find the Bourbon Road at the Bourbon Road on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram. You can go to our website. the bourbonroad.com where you can read our blogs. You can find all of our episodes. We do two episodes a week. We do a weekly review like we did of the ride on, on Mondays of craft distilleries. And then on Wednesdays, we do another episode with great guests like Sean Joseph of Pin Hook, the Wizard of Oz, as I like to call him. You can also go to our Facebook group, the bourbon roadies. That's a pretty special group to us. You got to answer three questions to become a member. Are you 21? Do you like bourbon? And do you agree to play nice? Just because we don't tolerate any rudeness in there. great people in that group. Sean, I invite you to become a member in our group. We have other master distillers from distilleries in there. We have industry folks, we have bloggers, we have writers, we have other podcasters, and we got a lot of people that love to share their bourbon with each other. Even me and Jim, we send bourbon out to people. If we send you out some bourbon, don't send us any bourbon back because we got plenty of it. What we'd like you to do is send it to somebody else that deserves it in the group so they can experience what you're getting to experience. It's like a little family. We got a pick coming out. I promise you, I promise you roadies it's coming. I was just on the phone with James today and he promised me he would get me some information out. So in the next couple of days, hopefully before this is out, maybe the information is already out by this episode, we'll have something for you on the pick. If you like our glasses that we drink out of, you can get those off our website. They come from Premium Bar Products and Distilled Products. Check them out. If you are a distillery, you want to go to Distilled Products, get you some glassware for your distillery. If you're just a regular guy like me and you want something that says Big Bob's Bar, go to Premium Bar Products. They can hook you up with a glassware. on Mondays, we're going to be adding a bourbon recipe to those episodes at the very end. So if you're a roadie and you want to get a recipe on one of our podcasts, it's got to be a bourbon recipe. Send us a recipe in the roadies and I'll pick one every week and I will read it out with your name and the recipe on that review show. Just to something somebody asked for us to do. We're going to do it. You can find me at One Big Chief. You can find Jim at jshannon63. And we'll see you on down the Bourbon Road.

We do appreciate all of our listeners. 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 on 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.