112. Gotta Love Some Whiskey Lore

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, unfortunately, I like your place, but you know, it's getting kind of old.

I know, I know, I know. But I got up at 3.30 this morning, went to work, worked a 12 hour shift. It was just to do a recording after that, which was a busy day. I appreciate you coming over here. I know, I know.

No, no, it's not that. I want to get out there. Oh, we do need to get out there. I want to get out there and do what we used to do that we can't do anymore.

Yeah, I mean... I'd like to record over your house though because your wife cooks good. She always has cookies or brownies or something. She's like try this.

I mean this is a great place. It's a wonderful atmosphere. It's a great place for us to record and actually we have a guest today. who will inspire us both to get back out on the road and start seeing some people.

Yeah. I mean, we haven't had a live guest in a while, really.

It's true.

We did StreamYard and we just haven't been on the Bourbon Road, but actually somebody took the Bourbon Road and came to us. So, today we have Whiskey Lore on with us, Drew Hanisch. He's been here in Kentucky doing the Bourbon Trail, been down in Tennessee a little bit. He's doing his thing. We tried to hook up with him before. He's got a podcast. He's got a blog. He's got a Patreon account. He's got it all. He's got two podcasts. So, he's been rocking it out.

All right. Well, and he came bearing bottles.

He did. Something that we haven't drank on the show before. I don't think we've had any scotch, right? That's right.

I'm pretty excited about it. Oh yeah. Drew, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here. A beautiful, beautiful spot. Nice little drive up made me feel at home going through the countryside to get here. You didn't hit any deer, did you? I did not hit any deer. I saw plenty of them on the side of the road, but I didn't hit any one of them.

Well, it's the rut in Kentucky. You know, like I said before, them deer, like teenage boys, they're just going crazy. That's crazy.

Yeah.

Well, Drew, we're going to spend a whole lot of time talking about you and what you do. And, and, but before we do, As usual, we like to get straight to the whiskey.

Okay. Perfect.

And this first one you've brought for us. Yes. So I would like to turn it over to you and let's introduce this bottle. Okay. And we'll go through the tasting.

So what's interesting about this whiskey is that I I read the label. I don't know how many people, when they buy a whiskey, spend the time reading the marketing stuff that's written on the back of a box. Scotch usually comes in a box, so you have some kind of literature to read over, whether it's tasting notes or something about the whiskey. It was very interesting. This scotch along with one other scotch called Kubaken were two that inspired me to do a podcast. And the reason that I was inspired to do a podcast by these two is because both boxes had very interesting stories that I didn't know anything about. And I thought I got to know more about this story. So the Kubaken was about a a ghost wolf or dog that haunted this little Scottish village. And they had this whole story about how one of the distillery workers had come out one night and he tried to catch it and it just disappeared. So he was unsuccessful with that. And so I wanted to find out more about this legend. This other bottle that we're going to be tasting today is Shackleton whiskey. If you walk into just about any liquor store in the United States, you can find it. It's me being from North Carolina. Carolina Blue packaging on it. It's got a nautical kind of theme on it. It says Shackleton. I bought it on a whim. I picked up the box. I didn't really read it initially. I just saw that it was $30 a bottle and it was a blended scotch. Maybe this will be pretty good. Let me see what it's like. And so I took the bottle home, pulled out the bottle from the box. It's a beautiful bottle. It's got glass with etching in it. a nice little message on the back. I started reading about this character, Cernus Shackleton, and that basically this whiskey had evolved from Cernus Shackleton, who was an Antarctic explorer, taking his ship down to Antarctica in 1907, I believe was that particular journey. They went down and they were unsuccessful on this particular trip. and they had to leave because of conditions changing, weather conditions changing, and they left a case of whiskey behind in the ice under their camp. And one of those bottles from that, or actually three bottles, were found a hundred years later by the New Zealand society that was down there excavating and seeing what else was left there around Sir Ernest Shackleton's campsite. And so they brought these three bottles back to New Zealand, contacted the distillery that made them and said, we have your whiskey, and do you want to interact with it in some way or another? They basically said, do you want this whiskey? And so the master distiller, whose name is Richard Patterson, he's a 50-year master distiller, He works for White Makai, who's the company that purchased McKinley, which is the original distiller of note or of record for this whiskey. He said, yeah, I'm the master distiller and I'd love to check this whiskey out. So he flies down to Antarctica or to New Zealand and He says, okay, I'd like to take this whiskey back with me and do some testing on it and see if I can nose it and figure out what it is, do a chemical analysis on it, and also do a tasting and see if I can match it. They said, well, you're going to have to take it with you in handcuffs. So they handcuffed it to him. And he took a private jet back to Scotland, could not let the bottles out of his sight. They did the chemical testing. He did the nosing on this whiskey and recreated the whiskey. And then they call him from New Zealand and said, now bring the bottles back. he said, bring them back. I thought I was going to get to keep these. They said, no, no, anything that comes from Antarctica has to go back to Antarctica. So we had to take them, take them back down there. So I read this part of this story on this box and it just intrigued me. So I thought this is another story I got to go chase. So I went ahead and contacted the distillery or the company White Makai, who does Dalmore and some other Federcan and Jura. So they're over a bunch of different whiskeys. And so I'd like to see if I could talk with Richard Patterson. And he called me while I was in Miami on a trip and said, sure, come on over. We'll have a chat about this. So I went there, recorded the interview with him. He showed me all of this Sir Ernest Shackleton stuff, which kind of freaked me out, because when I went, I said, OK, I'm going to tell the story about this 1907 journey. Come to find out, a few years later, Shackleton went back and went through one of the most amazing survival stories in the history of mankind. And I thought if I don't tell this story properly, then Richard Patterson and all the people in England who know who Sir Ernest Shackleton are, are not going to be very happy. So I had to really dig in and do the study on this. And it was amazing because it gave me two episodes. first telling the story of Richard Patterson and how he got this whiskey and matched it, but then also going through and telling the story of this later journey, that last expedition that ended up being such a crazy adventure. All inspired, by me picking up this blue box of whiskey and saying, I wonder what this tastes like. And it's 30 bucks. I wonder if it's any good. And the surprising thing is that I think it's actually really good. It's a malt blend. So it's not like a Dewar's or a Johnny Walker, which have some grain neutral spirit in them. This is a blending of all single malt whiskeys into one whiskey.

To try and create a profile that spoke his story.

Yeah, so it was really interesting because one of the things that I assumed about this bottle was that this was a recreation of the whiskey that he found that was 100 years old. He did do that, and you can buy that whiskey. It's about $200 a bottle to get it. And it's a beautiful packaging where they've put the bottle in straw. And just like he found it or pulled it out of the crate, And so if you spend the money, which I haven't done yet, I saw one actually here in Kentucky and I said, oh, I should buy it. I should buy it. But I didn't. I'm that way about buying whiskey. I'll see a price tag and I'll go. Do I really or I could get four bottles of that for what I'm going to spend. Yeah. So I think we all do that.

I think it's a fitting whiskey to drink on the Bourbon Road, not only because the story is great because the endurance got crushed in the ice. And obviously that whiskey, they didn't think it was good enough to take on their hundred seven hundred and twenty nautical mile trip. trying to get to actually civilization. I think at South Georgia Island, they tried to get to where there was a whaling station and a little bitty lifeboats is how they got there. That's a feat by itself. Yeah. But they didn't take the whiskey with them. I probably would have took a bottle of whiskey. But me and Jim are both sailors. So a sailor's whiskey, I guess, for us. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, let's nose this thing.

All right. So I think the first thing you're going to notice is that you're jumping straight out of the bourbon territory into something a lot fruitier, probably lighter kind of a. Yeah, there ain't no corn in that, Mike.

Yeah, I'd say it has that kind of a straw color to it. Super light. It's 80 proof, which for bourbon drinkers, We've talked about that on the show before. You know, most Americans think 90 proof is that's the low end. But if you go across the pond, people will there drink 80 proof.

You get a lot of 80 proof. What's interesting is one of my favorite whiskeys is Lafrogue. And if you get it in the United States, it's 43%. It's 40% over there. So that was something I found out too when doing the podcast episode I did about Jack Daniels and their evolution. I was talking to their chief historian, Nelson Eddy. And he said that I questioned him because I said, you've been a historian there since around 1988 or so. And that's when I had my first Jack Daniels and Jack Daniels back then was at 90 proof. And then it went to 86 proof and then it went to 80 proof. And I said, why did they do that? Why did they drop it? And he said, because the rest of the world drinks it at 80 proof and they just wanted to be consistent across the board. And that was the reason that they dropped it. But what was interesting too, to that point, he said, but notice that we now have a variety of different, you know, stronger proofed versions that you can get the single barrel and you can get, the one I'm interested in is that they sell a bottled and bond and duty free. And every time I see that, I'm like, ah, I want to buy that. But I always pack light on my trips. have nowhere to put it.

It's what you get on that nose, Jim. Definitely a fruity nose, Mike, a lighter fruit, um, uh, peach. No, no, a pear. Yeah. I think a pear. Yeah. Uh, but I'm getting a little hint of like, um, and I'm going to use the wrong word here. Sort of a campho, a little bit of campho, just a little bit of lightness, mintiness on the nose. That's kind of, uh, um, Kind of like a vapor, like a, I don't know.

It's hard to say very light, very refreshing. I'm getting actually a little, I don't know why I do this, but I get a little bit of a unripened banana on this.

I'm always interested in your tasting and nosing notes.

What I like about

What Mike does is that he comes up with things that aren't normally the things, you know, if you were looking at a flavor wheel, it's more like I like to try to figure things out. The first time I smelled Maker's Mark, I said I smelled toothpaste. I said, I don't know why I smell toothpaste in there. There was some kind of mint I was getting out of it, which was interesting. I've never seen anybody put mint as a tasting note, but there was something about the combination of the alcohol and that mint that made me think of toothpaste, a little bit of a bite along with that mint. And so I had to get to toothpaste. to be able to move into, oh, okay, that's a mint that I'm picking up and it's a bit of the bite of the alcohol.

I think that's the way I want to taste is from my personal experience in life. You know, when you're younger, you get those tastes that come out and I have some weird tastes sometimes. Like the first time my wife made me like a lemon meringue pie and she's like, how does that taste? What's it taste like? And I was like, it tastes like lemon pledge because I smell lemon pledge and that, that nose is what I would get off of that. And she was like, that is so weird. Like when I smell yogurt, I smell paint. Um, it's just me, you know, was growing up in the army and painting on boats. I had that smell of, of paint and yogurt has that somewhat of a paint smell to it. So, um, but I try to bring those notes out to, especially the whiskey novice that can, can't know stuff off of a wheel and they're not going to get that. A lot of people say, Hey, I don't get what you two are getting. Right. But whenever I'm saying, Hey, think back to what is a childhood. And, you know, Jim, one time he's like, I smell cedar and I gave him a hard time and I feel bad about it. Cause it was, he was like, I smell cedar. I was like, you tell me you go around chewing on cedar stick.

Yeah, but who, who choose on leather, but I hear leather notes all the time and whiskey tobacco tobacco.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, to each his own. I, my tasting notes are mine and you know, I smell a little bit of a ripe unripened banana in there. When I'm talking about as a green banana, you peel it back and you kind of smell a little bit of bitterness. Yeah. And I get that pair you get into Jim, just a little bit like a fresh pair, not an over ripened pair.

And so I pick up a little citrus in it. And because I picked up a little bit of like a hint of orange in there, I paired it with lints, intense orange chocolate. Man, it makes that chocolate just dance in your mouth. It's, it's amazing. The combination.

Well, I'll say cheers to you, Drew. Let's, let's taste this. Cheers.

So this is the challenge because when you're used to drinking, like I got used to drinking scotch. So when I jumped over to bourbon, bourbon was very hard for me because I just felt like, I was used to the flavor profile of scotch and I could pick things out very easily and bourbon to me was like it was a different territory. And so I had to really work at trying to figure out what vanilla really did smell like in the whiskey. toffee caramel, those kinds of things, and pulling those out.

Now to me, this has a totally different taste than the nose. This actually, to me, like a little bit of cream brulee or something to it. I think it's buttery. Yeah, definitely buttery.

You know, on the nose there, I was starting to get a little bit of like, Now, clover's different than grass and that smell, like if you crush clover in your hand, it's got that different kind of aroma to it. I didn't want to say this had a grassy nose to it because it really didn't, but I thought, man, it's got that just light hint of clover, which I think is a good thing. Yeah. I think it's a good thing. And as I taste it, I get that buttery wash across my tongue, a nice sort of warming finish on the end there, and a little bit of oak. That buttery intenseness kind of comes back on the back of the tongue. And then I start to pick up that clover again.

And that's on the exhale.

I'm getting that on the exhale.

It's, it's fun to really kind of dig into it. And sometimes you can be in a particular mood and any flavor jumps out and then you're in another mood and another flavor pops out of it. Um, it's like your mind is open to certain memories at, at certain times and, and at other times it's, it kind of blocks them off. So, I mean, I, I struggle at times to pull out flavors when I'm under pressure. I did not want to do live tastings on a podcast or on YouTube or anything for a while. It used to bother me going into distilleries and having the distillery manager doing the tasting and then looking at me saying, what do you think? What do you think? Because I would go, I can't taste under pressure. I can't do it because I don't know if it's my ADD or what, but for some reason I can't get my full focus there. What's interesting is that when I started doing tasting videos, I realized that when I did the video, I would come up with certain tasting notes. And then after I turned the video off and sat back and just took a drink with no pressure on, suddenly all these flavors started jumping at me. It's like, whoa, where did that come from? Where did that come from? So it takes a little relaxing, I think, to sometimes be able to pull things out.

I'm waiting for Jim to tell me some kind of candy.

No, not candy. No, I mentioned early on on the nose that I was getting a campho kind of aroma to it. And it's, it's so distant. It's so distant that it's not fair for me to say that because I'm getting it. It's there. But it's almost as if somebody walked across the room, the far end of the room in a big hall after a little bit of Vick's rub on it. And I'm just catching just a hint of that. But yeah, for me, it's in a good way. Both that clover, that just hint of campho, the pear, the buttery warmth, the oak on the end.

So, so this is where the whiskey lore part will, will come in. How many people I hear say, I don't like Scotch because I don't like that smoky aspect to it. You taste any smoke in this? No.

Yeah. I don't get, I've, every bourbon I've had is more smoky than this right here. Yeah. More oak into it. You know, it's just, this has no, none at all. And actually after I took a sip of water, I took another sip of this and the notes of honey, you're starting to come out and the sweetness, um, you know, almost like a bite of honey. You know, those little candies I'm talking about, um, that gets stuck in your teeth and you're going to pull your fillings out.

Exactly. Yeah.

So, um, that's what I get out of this. beautiful Scotch, I don't get the smokiness. And me and Jim are Scotch drinkers or whiskey drinkers. So I think we both can appreciate that for what it is and be able to pull those notes out, our notes. And that's the great thing about both of us. And he's a right guy. I'm a weak guy. This has neither of those.

I do have a bottle of Glyndronik that I like to go to every now and then.

So what's interesting about Glyndronik is that now Brown Thorman owns them. When I went there for my tour, It was the first place I went to where they had an American flag flying over the distillery. I'm in Scotland and why am I seeing this American flag? I didn't know that they had been purchased by Brown Foreman at the time, so they related that to me. It's interesting because Glendronik is probably the most sherry-influenced whiskey. While I was here in Kentucky, one of the bottles that I bought, which I can't find at home, is Glendronik's Cask Strength. So I'm expecting a sherry bomb out of that, that it will definitely be full of the plum notes and the kind of dark fruits that you get out of that, but on a much more intense level than I've tasted before. So Glen Drug is my favorite. It's not Speyside, it's a highland, but it's like right on the edge of Speyside.

So Drew, let's get to, how did you get into podcasting and then into whiskey podcasting.

Okay. So what's interesting is I've been a web designer for the last 18 years. And I have a company that basically I've got everybody doing everything that I need to have done. I don't program anymore. I'm more customer service than anything. I'm the CEO that they come to be the personality of the company. Other than that, I've got my guys working on doing the development of the sites. So I found myself sitting in the back room trying to find work to do. And I said, what am I doing? What am I not doing in my life that I really wish I was? And I thought, traveling. I absolutely love traveling. So, I mean, I could get a laptop and hit the road and do work from anywhere because all I need is a go to meeting or something like that to be able to have communications anywhere in the world with my clients. So I started taking little trips just to see, and then I decided to go to Europe and see if I could pull off doing a trip to Europe. went there for, I did a James Bond trip. I basically looked up all the different places that James Bond movies had been filmed and I plotted a trip across Europe to go to as many of those as I possibly could.

So did you go to Peace of Gloria?

I did not. That is one of the few places I did, and I love that movie. Yeah. No, that was one of the few places I couldn't go. I went to Soledon, which is where they filmed Spectre up on the mountaintop, which is not far from there. But because of the weather, I wasn't able to get to Piz Gloria. So that is on my list, but I have not gotten there yet. Another one is Goldfinger, where now I've forgotten the name of the stretch of the road, but it's in Switzerland. And it's really tough to get to, except in the middle of the summer when everybody's driving it. But it's the part where they're looking down this zigzag road down to the bottom and the girl sniper up above is shooting over his head. So that's one of those places I really want to go. I haven't been either. So I do this whole planning out of this trip. And I thought, I need to do a blog about this. And so I started a blog called Travel Fuels Life. The idea behind that name was that that was kind of an expression of who I was, that to me, travel fuels my life. And so I'm going to start traveling and writing about all the different places that I go. Well, that soon evolved into a friend kept nudging me saying, you should do a podcast. You should do a podcast. You should be in radio. And I was petrified of doing a podcast. I thought I'm going to get in front of a microphone. I'm just going to stumble all over myself. Why would I do that? I just don't feel confident with that. And doing interviews, I've never done interviews before. So I don't really know how I'm going to pull that off. And so Just finally one day, I said, just do it. If you fail at it, you fail at it. Just see what you can do. I have a radio background, so I should know how to be able to buy equipment and do that sort of stuff. And I know how to present. So I at least got that out of the way. It's the perfectionist in me. There's a part of me that wants to get it right the first time I do it. And so that was a struggle for me. But I ended up getting in contact with a couple of people doing interviews through GoToMeeting was basically how I was doing it. Did a couple of in-person interviews, basically talking to people about how they live a travel lifestyle and trying to get tips and ideas on how to do it. And so I did that for a full year. And then at the same time, I had gotten together with a group of friends who were really into, well, one friend was really into drinking scotch and another friend who was into bourbon and they said, well, buy a couple of bottles of whiskey, come on up. We'll all bring three bottles, bring a low price, a mid price and a high price whiskey and we'll sit here and we'll taste among us. And so I said, I don't know because I had a bad experience with whiskey when I was younger. I'm a beer drinker. I just don't know about this, whether I should try this or not. And then that first day walking into a liquor store looking for whiskey, I was at the mercy of the marketing departments. You know, which bottle looked the best? Which name did I recognize? There was really no knowledge in my head between Scotch or bourbon what I should buy. So my first purchase was for that event was Glen Fittick 12. because I love the bottle. It's a triangle shaped bottle. So that was my whole reason for buying that one was because of the marketing department's packaging. Another one that I got was, oh man, I'm forgetting actually now if I brought a bourbon or not. I brought a Canadian whiskey. I got Caribou Crossing. which looks, has it's, oh, you got it? Okay. Yeah. Because having been born in Michigan, I have this thing about, I wanted to, I always hear people talking down Canadian whiskey. So I said, you know what? I'm going to challenge people. I'm going to bring a Canadian whiskey and see if I can, I can pull this. I remember what the third bottle was. The third bottle was Johnny Walker Black. because my friend who is a Scotch drinker said, I only drink single malt whiskeys, you know, nose up in the air kind of thing. And I said, okay, I'm going to find a blend and see if I can fool him into liking a blend. So that was my first experience. Actually picked some pretty decent whiskeys to get started with on that. Tasting theirs was interesting, but I walked out of there going, oh, they all tasted like whiskey. I can't really tell one from the other. So we did another tasting a few weeks later. And I felt like I was getting a little more out of it, but we were all sitting here talking about whiskey like we knew what we were talking about, but none of us really did. And so I remember saying, bourbon, I think it's limestone water from Kentucky and it's, you know, it, It can only be made in Kentucky. And so I said, no, I need to know more about this. So I thought, well, I'm doing this travel podcast. Why don't I just travel to Kentucky? I can write blog posts about it. And I will immerse myself in Bourbon for a week. So for eight days, I planned out 19 different distilleries to go to, 17 in Kentucky, two in Tennessee. and just immersed myself in it. And it was so interesting. I video recorded myself at each place I went to. What am I learning here? What was this experience like? I started with Maker's Mark, which was a great first distillery to go to because I felt like I got a good amount of exposure to finishing because you get to see the you know, 46 barrel with the slats in it. And you get to see pretty much the whole process, taste the sour mash, do all of that. But then I went to Wilderness Trail was my second one. So talk about a complete shift. Now all of a sudden I'm into the science of whiskey. Then my third one on that same day was Towne Branch, which was doing pot still Scottish style whiskey. After that first day, I remember going, this is amazing. My friends were like, you're going to 19 distilleries, you're going to be bored to death hearing the same thing over and over and over. And I got to tell you, after 19 distilleries, I was ready to plan my next trip because every distillery was different. And it was finding those little unique things about that distillery that made those bottles so much more interesting when you walked into the liquor store and said, what do I want to buy today? Now I've been to Maker's Mark. I know about that bottle, why it's shaped the way it is, why there's wax on the top of the bottle, how they make it. And then Wilderness Trail, we didn't have any around us, but then you think, you know, If somebody is posting that online, I can tell them, hey, here's what I thought was really cool about that particular distillery. Or for my Scotch friends, I go, if you go to Kentucky, you're driving through Lexington, you should go to Towne Branch because that's the closest you're going to see to what a Scotch distillery looks like because they do the exact same process that they do over in Scotland. So it was just a real eye opener. So I wrote a blog post for every distillery that I went to. And after doing that, I said, I got to do this in Scotland. So I planned a trip to Scotland and I did the same thing. learned how to drive on the left-hand side of the road, took my life into my own hands, planned out all these little distilleries to go to. And I just fell in love with touring distilleries and hearing stories. Every distillery had stories. They were interesting. Sometimes they would contradict each other. You know, one of the things when I go through the distilleries in Scotland is they talk about the Cooper's Union. There was a Cooper's Union in the United States that forced single-use barrels. They basically lobbied Congress to get single-use barrels for American bourbon when they wrote the law. But you don't hear that anywhere. I've never heard that in any US distillery. But every distillery you go to in Scotland, they have that story. And it made me go, is that true? So I started researching it. And that's when I got the idea that you know, all of these little mysteries that we have, it would be fun to tell the stories of them. Like how did Bottled and Bond come about? And so I would start researching and I'm like, wow, this is really an interesting story. I got to tell this story. I got to get this out so that I help people who are like me, who started out spouting off a bunch of stuff that we heard secondhand that may or may not be true. We find out whether that actually is true or not. Or maybe we find out, like with Elijah Craig, that we'll probably never know whether he had a mysterious fire in his building that only burned the inside of his barrel for some reason.

I tell our listeners, if you were taking a long trip, And me and Jim have both been on those cross-country trips driving before. Whiskey lures, that kind of podcast. It's almost to me like listening to a Louis LeBlanc book on tape. Nice relaxing trip. You almost don't want to get out of your vehicle to stop to get gas or go to the bathroom or anything. Hey, we could drive 30 more miles down the road so we could get the next episode finished. That's what I like about your podcast is that you are digging into those bourbon truths, I would call them. That backstory that me and Jim always crave, those inside little mysteries of Was Weller really the first weeded bourbon? Did Makers Mark come from Wellers? You know, those kinds of stories to me are fascinating. You know, you said you went to the Samuels old distillery, which is the T.W. Samuels distillery, which is really the family that started Makers Mark. Some people don't know that kind of stuff. And that's the stuff that I think me and Jim find so fascinating.

Yeah, I think, you know, I'm sitting here thinking, you know, all of our listeners out there listening to you talk about your travels and you're just, you're living their dream. How many of our listeners would love to be just traveling the globe and visiting distilleries and tasting whiskeys?

Well, anyway, I'm really enjoying this.

Thank you so much for bringing this. I think we'll continue sipping on what we have. We're going to take a short break. When we come back, we have a bottle for you. 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 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 rotten 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, we're back with whiskey lore, Drew here. And Drew, so what we got for you, it's a bottle I've had on the shelf. I don't pull it out for everybody. It's in a nice wooden carved box over there. It's from Angel's Envy. They release it once a year. It's their cast strength from 2019. You can see I haven't drank a whole lot out of the bottle. And I've seen Jim's eyes light up when I pulled it out. Truth be told, Jim could come over here anytime he wants and pull out of anything. Maybe a couple unopened bottles I have closed up.

Well, I got here before you today and Viv invited me in the house and, and, and she said, just make yourself at home, you know, and I went straight over and got to pour your iron root harbinger.

That's a good one to get right there.

Is that the 115?

I think that is the one 15. I have, I have a couple bottles of that. Uh, if I see a bottle, I don't know, I got a bad habit about trying to buy more of it because I'm afraid it's going to run out or they're going to create something different. You know, when something's good, like Henry McKenna tenure, you want to get it and you gotta have a couple extra bottles, right? Yeah. This is a bottle that I, it's, I keep in a wooden box over there. I have some other wood carved stuff, like a rum, case over there, I guess. Bottle case from Haiti and I have some other wood carvings over there and some wood ducks. I set it over there and I kind of forget about it because it just kind of sits back in that shelf. But this is 122.4 proof. Um, it run at about $199. I think they only had about 1400 bottles of this. Wow. So, um, I would call this, this was probably my first big boy whiskey bottle right here. I'd ever bought. Um, I felt super sick about buying it. I get that. I get that. But I bought it and, um, It comes out for special occasions or for good friends. And I appreciate you coming out here to get the Ben farm with us and sitting down with some fellow podcasters and just talking about whiskey. Oh, it's great.

I appreciate you inviting me out. And actually I've only tried one angel of envy, which is the regular version of this versus the cast strength version. So this will be interesting.

This is the port wine finish is just cast strength, you know, and they kind of pioneered that, that whole port wine finished bourbon deal. In fact, you know, that was their, that was their flagship brand was the finished bourbon with sure. And you know, there's been a lot of, a lot of people who, you know, say that's not really bourbon. Well, you know, according to the law, it's not, but it is bourbon finished in port wine barrels.

Yeah. Well that's, and I think that's the trick is that you, it's how you state it. So if you say it is a bourbon finished in, then you are being truthful about it. We were talking about earlier, before we started recording, about Tennessee whiskey and Jack Daniels. Now people will say, overseas, they'll call it bourbon. And I remember being a James Bond fan the first time M pours and says, well, I like bourbon. And she starts pouring a Jack Daniels. I'm like, come on. But it's funny that I've mellowed on that over time now and I now say, you know, it is bourbon, but it goes through another step. There's one extra step that they throw into it. And we were talking about Evan Williams, Bottled and Bond, that it goes through that extra step too. It just goes through it at a different point in the process. Right. Exactly.

We can all say, agree on this, right? It's whiskey. It's whiskey. It's definitely whiskey.

It is whiskey. And it's released under a different category. So they do have control of that. But you just have to be a wise consumer. Like you said earlier in the first half, you got to read that label.

Yeah. Well, and then my other question that I've run into, the more that I've started experiencing some of this more creativity in making bourbons or whiskeys is, should a distiller always keep themselves to the rule or should they go outside and not be afraid to release something that they just call whiskey and not have to put bourbon on it because they really want to try something and see if it works. And yeah, it breaks a little rule here. Let's just put whiskey on it and see if we can, you know, see do something different to challenge people's idea of what whiskey from Kentucky could be or that sort of thing. I think the only reason why that doesn't happen is because you have the stigma, I think, that comes with stuff like early times. If you go buy a bottle of early times, it is called Kentucky whiskey because it's been put in a used barrel instead of being put into a fresh charred oak barrel. Maybe that's what they're worried about is that you don't want to just put whiskey on it because people will think it's not good enough to be bourbon. But could you not make something with whiskey on it that could outdo a bourbon? just by doing something a little extra. I'm not talking about doing the moonshine route where they're putting artificial flavors in and doing that sort of thing, but a natural process that just kind of enhances that whiskey and you make whiskey have a good name again from that standpoint.

There are some American whiskeys that hold just Quite honestly, I think blow you away. You know, uh, old Carter has a great American whiskey. It's, it's, it's hot. I mean, it's hot, but it's really good. Uh, Michter's has a great American whiskey. So there are some people putting some American whiskeys out that are, uh, that get your attention.

Yeah. And, and let's, to be honest, Lincoln Henderson and Wes, they went outside the box here and not that they were the first to do it, but I think they were the first successful at it. And they've introduced a lot of people into bourbon because of this bottle right here, not the cast drink, but the regular bottle. It's a beautiful sleek bottle and it's on port finish. So it might be more appeasing to a wine drinker to taste some of this before I dip my toes all the way into a bourbon bottle.

Well, I'll tell you who else that could probably help cross over is the Scotch drinker. Because Scotch really started experimenting around the latter end of the 20th century into the 21st century with doing finishing on different whiskeys. We talk about Glen Dronach. Glen Dronach was one of those distilleries that was early on. Glen Morangy, they did the same thing of introducing these different barrels to finish a whiskey. And if you're used to those notes that you get from that in a scotch, and then you move over and you try to experiment with bourbon, the best place to start would be with something like an Angel's Envy that has that same character that you have been pulling out of your scotch that's now starting to show up in bourbon.

Sure.

Absolutely. I agree.

Well, honestly, let's say I know this thing. Let's get to the whiskey. All right. Sounds good. No, I'd like to say that this right here is a dark, almost Ruby Amber. Not a Scotch color.

No, definitely not. Although when you, when you start getting the cast strength ones that are finished in like Oloroso Sherry barrels, you'll start, you'll start seeing those darker colors. But yeah, if you see a dark Scotch, it's usually got color.

And to be fair, this is 40 proof points higher.

Yeah, that's true. That is very true.

It's got that floral nose on it.

Super floral. Very, uh, very sweet. Uh, very rich. Um, it's got, it's got that, uh, that, that dark plum. Yeah. Um, yeah, I don't know. Plum raisin.

And see, after nosing a Scotch, I get the vanilla and the caramel notes right off of it almost instantly because... It's light. It's not a strong in either of those two, but it's there and kind of pick it up.

Now, Jim, you're going to laugh at me a little bit here. Why? I'm actually getting a little bit of prune juice off this.

Oh, OK. That's good. Yeah.

When I was a little kid, my grandmother might have a little bit of stomach issues. People her age, they would drink prune juice back then.

I almost said stude plums, but I didn't say it because I never had stude plums. I can just visualize them in my mind, you know what they might be like. That doesn't sound too good. Well, let's taste this thing.

All right.

Pow. A little bit of pow.

Yeah. That hits right home, right? It does.

It's rich. It feels a little thin towards the finish, but what's interesting is there's almost like a berry kind of thing coming on the finish. It just lingers on the tongue like maybe a raspberry kind of a... Yeah, so it's really kind of...

Concentrated, very concentrated flavor.

Yeah.

Not just a hint of it, but very concentrated.

This is a note I always pull out of, I seem to be the only one that pulls out of whiskey, but I get a Swiss cheese note on the very finish. And I don't know what it is. I think it's from the oils or something that maybe reminds me of Swiss cheese, but There's just like a little Swiss cheese note in there.

There's berries on this. Um, there's a berry cereal, like a fruity pebbles, maybe. I don't know. It's just that there's a, there is a berries here. I can't, it's on the tip of my tongue.

Well, there's like raspberries, blackberries. I, I, I'd seem to be getting a little bit of it's just, uh, yeah, that, that's, uh, got some punch to it.

It does.

But it's some older whiskey in there, because I'm getting that leathery oak, that older oak flavor on the back. I don't think this is just their normal.

Is it a single barrel?

I don't think so.

Nah, it's not a single barrel. Okay. I get a baking spice of some form on the nose too. I like to say I'm still learning. I conquer a flavor every once in a while. And then I'm like, yes.

Yeah, it's like three by five cards. Every time we drink a whiskey, every time we eat a meal, every time we have a snack or visit a new kind of food, we file away one more three by five card with a little bit of knowledge on it. And we're going to pull that out one day when we taste the whiskey.

Well, I think the way that I do it that really helps me out is I do comparisons. I never just taste one in isolation. If I'm doing an Irish whiskey, I'll put another Irish whiskey with it. If I'm doing a rye, I'll try to fit another rye in. I've struggled with rye in trying to figure out what the differences are in the different types of rye. Rittenhouse is the one I usually have in my cabinet and I've been happy enough with that. But I've brought some Sazerac home and I tasted it and I went, this is very different. I had Knob Creek rye, I didn't like it. I actually made it into an infinity bottle because it was too sweet. for me, I've had Canadian rise. So it wasn't until I put three rise next to each other, one was Pendleton 1910, which is a 12 year Canadian versus, was it Rittenhouse? Yeah, Rittenhouse and Sazerac. And they were all so different from each other. Yeah, they are. I mean, but still to try to pick out you know, and label one, I could say one's maybe a little more herbally, but I'm trying to find what those adjectives are that I'm looking for to describe one rye flavor from the next. Now, when I did the 291, That rye was like, I could taste caraway seeds. I felt like I was eating rye bread. I mean, it was so heavy with rye and the bourbon tasted like rye to me. Whatever they're using for their rye is really dominant because it just seems to take over whatever it's in.

You're talking about the berries and I was thinking about what that berry taste was. And Captain Crunch actually has a crunch berry and just that little bit of cereal note plus that berry sweetness and stuff. This cast strength has to it. I know people get weirded out when I bring out some cereal notes and stuff. I love your cereal notes.

I mean, because if that's what it takes to get you to what ultimately it is, I think that's how I try to help people when I'm going through a tasting, is I say, it's your experience. I had one that tasted like Nutter Butter to me, and I love Nutter Butter's favorite cookie in the world. And if it tastes like Nutter Butter's, it sold me because- It's been Noah's Mill. No, it's well, I don't know what it was, but it was, so you get that as well.

Another butter will be something from heaven Hill, right? Cause it's that nutty taste.

Yeah. Yeah. But it's funny you brought up a heaven or, um, Henry McKenna 10. I had it in two different places. I had it in Nevada, Lake Tahoe, tasted it there, loved it, just savored that whole glass that I had. Then I had it at Bardstown Bourbon Company, loved it, savored it. I was like, this is a lot of vanilla. It was the first whiskey I ever really picked vanilla out and said, yes, that's vanilla. I bought a bottle. And I have a bottle, I had a bottle of the cheap Henry McKenna.

Okay. Yeah.

And I brown label. Yes. And I tasted, I was like, this Henry McKenna 10 I have is so bad. versus what I've expected it to be. I mean, it was a competent whiskey, but it just wasn't what I was expecting. And I actually did a blind tasting of the two with each other, tasted like the same whiskey. Really? I don't know what happened, but for some reason that, and I think it's down to single barrel. Maybe I just got a barrel that wasn't a great barrel.

And a lot of people have said that about Henry McKenna tenure, and I've heard people say that about Eagle Rare, the same thing, and maybe it does come down to that single barrel and, you know, they just got to put it in on. barrel, but you'd think at the distillery, they're tasting those barrels and be like, mm, you know, this ain't going to make the cut for that. So we're going to push this aside. This is going to go in that 300 barrel batch. Yeah.

This is going to go on the Brown label. Right.

It's just not there. They're human. They miss a few, I think, maybe. But yeah, I've heard the same thing, Henry McKenna. I mean, nine times out of 10, you're going to get a great bottle, I think. Every now and then you're going to get that one.

same thing with single barrel Evan Williams. I actually started buying the bottled in bond regularly now because if you buy the single barrel, man, when you get a good one, it's really good. But when you get one that's not quite there, then you wish you'd bought the bottled in Bond. It's interesting how I feel like there is a consistency issue with Heaven Hill single barrel whiskies. That's the impression I'm getting. I don't know if it's true or not because I'm not drinking enough of it. to be able to pull that out. But it does make you wonder after you've had two incidents very close to each other with the same distiller where the single barrels let you down on a particular one.

Well, in addition to traveling the world and visiting distilleries, you've also taken time to write a little bit of that down and to put out a book.

Yes.

Tell us a little bit about that.

So, I was writing all of these different blog posts about different distilleries that I was visiting, but they were basically me just kind of running off at the mouth and saying, here's what I experienced here, bullet points on different things. And it really wasn't organized in any specific way. And I looked out there to see if there were Bourbon travel books, and I found some. But again, they weren't really organized to help you figure out which distilleries should I put on my list. If I am coming from California, and this is my only trip I'm ever going to be able to take to Bourbon country, how do I pick out which distilleries that I'm going to go to? So what I wanted to do was I wanted to give my own experience in this and say, here are 32 different distilleries that I went to. I'll take all this blog post information I have, I will condense it down and I will put it into a format where you can compare every distillery side by side, the experience that I had, my top three reasons to go to this particular distillery, my top three reasons to go to this particular distillery. how to get there, what you're going to taste, or at least what I tasted when I went there, what kind of freebies you might get. Are you going to get a Glencairn tasting glass when you get there? Are you going to get maybe some extra sample of this or that? And I thought that'd be really good information for people to just be able to flip through and find that and then be able to easily get to the website, to the page they need to go to. Because the struggle I had in planning out my first trip is that I don't know how many times I entered my birthdate into a website just to be able to find out what their hours are. And then I click that little box that says, remember me. And then the next time I come back, that box would pop up again. They don't remember you. Yeah, nobody remembers me. I have that kind of face, I think. I don't know. But for some reason, it just, it annoyed me. And it made the job so much harder. Plus, when you look at that website for any distillery, there's beautiful pictures. There's what they want to tell you they're about. But you really have no way to compare apples to apples. What's this distillery experience going to be like versus what this distillery is? So like if somebody wants to learn about the process, they read my page about Wilderness Trail, they're about the science of whiskey. They're going to take me through the process. I'm going to see that there. Let me check that off and say maybe that's one of the distilleries I want to go to. If you're interested in you know, the marketing side of things, or you're just really into like Maker's Mark and you want to read what am I going to experience when I'm on that tour? What are the sorts of things I'm going to see? Then I wanted to give enough detail on that that somebody could say, wow, okay, I am going to give you, I could dip my own bottle. Here's how much it's going to cost for me to dip my own bottle when I get to the end. And here are some of the things that I'm going to see along the way so that you could really craft the perfect trip for yourself when you go. And that's the last half of the book. The first half of the book is first teaching you a little bit about the history of whiskey so you have a baseline knowledge about the history of whiskey, the baseline process of whiskey. And my goal with the book is not to give the tours away. You can jump on YouTube and you can watch all the videos you want to of people who have videotaped when they've walked through or recorded on their phones. of their journey through a distillery. But to me, the joy of going to the distillery is discovering it for yourself. So I want to give just enough information for you to make an informed decision about what distillery you're going to go to, but I don't want to give away all the secrets. In fact, one of the things I do in there is I say what to look for. And I give a tip on something to keep your eye out for or to listen for on the tour that's unique to that distillery as just kind of like an Easter egg to go hunt for. When you go to Angel's Envy, we're tasting Angel's Envy, it was an old warehouse that was a tool warehouse. And there's some elements of that tool warehouse getting that into somebody's head, when they're looking around that distillery now, they're not only just listening to the guide, taking them through and telling them the specifics about the distillery they want to tell them, but they're getting to see some extra things or look out for extra things that they wouldn't really have noticed probably right off the bat. So it kind of builds in the warehouse.

And what's the title of the book?

So, it's called Whiskey Lure's Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon, but it says Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon pretty large on there. It's on Amazon. And so, if you do a search for Kentucky Travel Guides, it comes up in there or just type in Whiskey Lure and it comes up that way as well.

Well, Drew, you gave both of us a book. I think it's fascinating because I'm going to find out some different stuff that I might not have seen. My question for you is you have a podcast, a whiskey podcast. You have written a book. Super successful man. So. what would you say the top three distillers if somebody had to pick? Cause people are always asking us, Hey Mike, what distillers would you go see? And I'm, I'm a different cat than most. I'm going to want to look for different stuff than most people would go to. So if you had to tell people they only can pick three distilleries to go to, they're limited on that. Where would you go?

So I get this question. I actually did a blog post called the top 10, my top 10 favorite whiskey distilleries that's on my whiskey-lore.com page. But this is what I tell people. It's the same as with a whiskey. They're, as you say, you have certain things that you're looking for that you're going to be interested in that somebody else may not be interested in, or that you'll really get more joy out of seeing this or that out of. And so, when I get to my number three choice, it's going to fit that particular line of thinking. I will say that if there is one distillery, if you had only one distillery to be able to see the whole time you're in Kentucky and you wanted to get a whole view of what Kentucky bourbon is from the beginning of the process to the end of the process, I would say go to Old Forrester. because the Old Forester Distillery has the history and it has the process. It's very visual. I was very impressed with the way that you really could go in and just read the boards while you're walking through and it's very clear and concise. They have gone into a distillery location that they were in when they started. They went off a whiskey row for a long time and they rebuilt in the same spot they used to be in. We're talking about a building that is not that large in terms of footprint, yet it has more things in it than any other distillery that you can see as a visitor. And it's mainly because you can see bottling there and a lot of distilleries, you don't get to see bottling and you can see, barrel being fired there. And that's not something you can see at any distillery in Kentucky. Kentucky Cooperage is probably your best bet as a tourist to go see, and they're shut down right now. Actually, Old Forster may be shut down at this point too, because they're in downtown Louisville. But you see everything in that one little compact building. It's in Louisville, so it's an easy place to get to. Two blocks from your hotel. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So to me, if somebody said, just give me one to go to, which one do I go to? I think Old Forester is probably the one that I would put up at the top. My second favorite, and it's a specific tour to go on, it's not on the Bourbon Trail. But it is a large distillery and that is the Barton 1792 tour. And you have to sign up for it online, but it only runs once a day. It's the estate tour. It runs at 11 o'clock. And the tour guide, Rick, the day I was there, he said, I remember him saying, how much time he got? And I thought, well, this is cool. I mean, he's basically saying, this is going to go on as long as you really want it to go on and we'll go see every bit of this distillery. Now, funny story to go along with that is that the day that I went to Barton 1792, we saw the fire marshal driving around. And we were standing in the warehouse and I said, is it normal to have the fire marshal driving around the whiskey distillery? He said, no, not really. And somebody came over to him about halfway through the tour and whispered something to him. And he said, after they left, he said, well, unfortunately, we can't take you everywhere in the distillery. I can't tell you why, but right now, we just can't take you everywhere in the distillery where we're going to go to. You'll still get to see the world's largest bourbon barrel and have your picture taken with it. We'll still go in the bottling hall and all that, but we just can't do the whole thing. It wasn't until my next tour when I went to Willett And I was there and somebody said, did you hear what happened over at Barton's? I said, no. They said, oh, a warehouse collapsed. I was there the day that I was on the tour when that warehouse came down. But that was a great tour. I felt so bad too when I heard that because I thought that was such a great tour and such nice people and you don't want to see that happen to somebody like that. But that was a, you leave with a little bunghole stopper and they stamp it with a date. So that's how I can prove I was there the day that the warehouse collapsed because they gave me the bunghole stopper when I went in there.

So before you get onto your last one, some of our listeners might be wondering, and they might have picked up on this, that that's not part of the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and neither is Buffalo Trace. And I just wanted to kind of point that out that Sazerac doesn't belong to the Kentucky Distillers Association. because they wanted money from them. Right.

And they do free tours. And they do free tours. So this great tour that I went on didn't cost me a penny. And the same with Buffalo Trace. I've done that tour, you know, two, three times and you get to do a tasting at the end. It's a nice tasting. They don't take any shortcuts and just really good tour. So like I say, if you're looking through your Kentucky Bourbon Trail through the website, you're not going to find these two particular distilleries. And there's other distilleries that are going to be the same that are, I've listed a couple in the books that aren't on the trail and are worth checking out. A lot of people don't go to Western Kentucky, but there's some really interesting stories that are going on in some of these Western Kentucky distilleries and there's actually a mini trail out there where you can conquer the entire trail in one day. It's called the state line tour. And if you go to MB Rowland and you go to Casey Jones and you go to in Tennessee just across the border in Clarksville to Old Glory, That's the state line tour, and each one will give you a little shot glass with their logo on it. And when you get to the last one, they'll give you a stave to put your whiskey glasses on. So it's a nice little quick way to do, to conquer a tour instead of, you know, taking a- You know, Mike, we need to get over there to the Western Kentucky and check that out.

Yeah, it's just right down the Bluegrass Parkway or Western Kentucky Parkway. Drew, what's that last distillery?

The last one is Find the one that fits your personality. Find one. There are, again, between history. If you love history, there are ones that are great for history. If you love the process and you want to learn more about the process, there are ones that are great for that. Or maybe there's a brand you just love and you've wanted to learn about it and learn more about it. That the great thing about going to the distillery is you will be closer to that whiskey that you love. more intimate with it than you ever could be just by pouring a glass of it. Because when you can actually pour that glass and it starts reminding you of the smell of the warehouse that you walked into and got that experience of it or seeing the still that it came out of, those things, I think, add to the richness of the experience of drinking a whiskey and hearing those stories and hearing where they came from and why they made the whiskey? Because every distiller started their distillery as some kind of passion project. There's very few of them that I've heard say, well, we just got in it for the money. Most of them have a real desire to try to do something unique with whiskey. Absolutely.

Well, Drew, it's been amazing to have you here on the show. We really enjoyed our time with you. We've had a couple of great whiskeys tonight. Absolutely. I certainly hope we get the opportunity to do this again in the near future. Same here. So next time you're coming through the area, or maybe we're through your area, we'll hook up. We'll have a drink and talk about good times. Perfect. I love it. I'd like to give you a few minutes to let everybody know where they can reach you, where they can find you on the internet, on social media. where they can get your book, those kinds of things. Okay.

Yeah. Well, thank you. And thanks for having me on the show. This is great. I enjoy listening to your show too and picking up and hearing the people you talk to. I was listening actually today about one of your episodes where you were talking to the folks at Leapers Fork, which I toured not too long ago. It's a great little distillery, fun, beautiful inside woodworking and all the rest. It's a fun place to visit. So, I love hearing that. I love hearing the questions that you guys ask because as a podcaster, for me, you know, it's like, what am I going to ask? What am I going to ask? And so, it's fun to hear other people interacting and kind of getting deeper in and drawing things out of the guest that's on the show. So, it's always fun to hear that. You can get my book, Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. Again, just look for Whiskey Lore on Amazon. It's available on there. I think it's on sale right now. You can also buy it through my website. And I'm actually doing a November sale on that one. And that's at whiskey-lore.com. And that's where I also find my journal, which is my blog. I write about both Scotch whiskey and bourbon. I'm always looking at other whiskeys as well. I actually have a trip planned to Japan in February that I know isn't going to happen, but I will push that ticket further on because I really want to learn about Japanese whiskey as well. And I'm mostly on Instagram, Instagram.com slash Whiskey Lore. Or you can find me at, I have a Facebook group and that is at, just do a search for Whiskey Lore under Facebook and you'll find my page and my group there as well. And those are the main places to reach out to me.

Where you can find us. at the Bourbon Road on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. We also have a website, thebourbonroad.com. I write a blog on there. We got some swag on there, our whiskey glasses. Jim's actually wearing a Bourbon Road hat tonight. Hopefully we'll have some Bourbon Road hats on there. Yeah, check out our website. We also have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies, which Drew is a member of. Absolutely.

I'm sure after the show, if you guys pop in there and send Drew a message, he'll answer any questions you might have about the show today. The Bourbon Roadies is a private Facebook group. If you go to our Facebook page and you look on our page, you'll see a place for groups and on there will be the Bourbon Roadies. We just ask you a couple of questions. We want you to know you're getting yourself into a bourbon group. We don't want any entries by mistake. And then we want to make sure you're 21 and that you agree to play nice once you're in the group because we want all of our members to play nice and lift each other up, not to knock each other down. So we love to talk about whiskey in there. We love to take pictures of whiskey. We love to do reviews and share. The big thing is share, right, Mike?

That's one of the things I love about our group so much that's a little bit different than everybody else. There's a lot of whiskey going from place to place. Some people can only buy a bottle, but a way to get to try different bottles is to share your whiskey with others, and then you'll get some whiskey in return. If me and Jim send you some whiskey, just please don't send us whiskey back. We got plenty of people sending us whiskey. We're doing all right. Send some whiskey to your fellow roadies out there in return. Pay it forward, as I like to say. It just makes that family we have a little bit better. Drew, man, it's been great having you on. I gotta say thank you for the book. Thank you for sharing your whiskey with us. Um, like I said before, if you're a listener and you looking for another podcast out there to get you on down the road, get you on down that bourbon road, you know, maybe you're traveling between distilleries or you're making a cross country trip, put on whiskey lore. Um, I promise he won't put you to sleep. It'll keep you interested. The history, the backstory of distilleries in America, in Scotland and Ireland, and hopefully his trip to Japan, I guarantee you'll like it. If not, come knock on my door and we can talk about it.

In the meantime, if you need to reach out to me or Mike, I'm jshannon63 on Instagram. I'm OneBitChief. And we will 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 it 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.