122. George Washington's Rye Whiskey

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. And I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is The Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, we're sitting at my kitchen table once again, but we are going to record a full-length episode. Yeah. Celebrate a little bit of Christmas spirit. That's right. It is Christmas time, and this episode will release Couple of days before Christmas, so we want to wish everybody who listens to the Bourbon Road a Merry Christmas and we hope that you have a great time in whatever restricted format you have to adhere to. Whatever state you live in, right? Yeah, I think it really depends on where you live in the country. I hope you get to enjoy a little bit of time with your family. You get to enjoy some good food and some good family fun and hopefully, A little bit of bourbon or rye or other whiskey. Other whiskey. Other whiskey being a key word here tonight. That's right. So we're drinking something tonight that has a tremendous backstory, a great backstory.

Most definitely. Probably one of the greatest stories in American history, I think.

However, the whiskey itself, we shall soon find out how good it is.

So we're going to drink some of George Washington's rye whiskey. Randy, what's his handle? Crooked whisker. Crooked whisker was kind enough to gift us a set of George Washington's rye whiskey here. Now, Jim, I've actually been to this distillery. Back in 2016, my daughter had to get her car, a little Mini Cooper from St. Louis, Missouri, to college in Fredericksburg. So she said, dad, will you drive my car from St. Louis all the way out to Virginia? I'm six foot three. Mini Cooper. And a Mini Cooper that sits on the ground. Not the most comfortable ride.

But while I was out there, I got to spend about seven or eight days with my daughter.

And I got to go out to the, we went to Mount Vernon for the day and spent the day together, ate some blue crabs that they're famous for on the Potomac there. and the kind of a watershed of the Chesapeake Bay. And then after we did Mount Vernon, really nice restaurant at Mount Vernon. You can eat at one of the most historical landmarks in America, but we stopped by the whiskey distillery. I had to.

How could you not? How could you not?

And it's a beautiful working grist meal. It is an actual working distillery. They're in there making whiskey. They did a great job of restoring it and they're still restoring it to this date.

Well, normally, Mike, we get straight to the whiskey. Today, I think we need to spend a little more time talking about the backstory here because I don't think the whiskey itself In my opinion, the whiskey itself is not going to be the highlight of our time here. Even though it's interesting to have a whiskey that represents something that was consumed around the creation the other time that the United States was formed, the 1770s, 1780s, we all understand that at that time whiskey was not an aged product, right? Yeah.

I mean, it came straight off the steel and people consumed it. That's right.

It went into barrels because that's how they got it from one place to another, but they weren't charred barrels. The barrel simply had served a purpose as a container. It was a cask. It was a vessel to move whiskey. When a cask of whiskey made it to wherever it was going, it probably didn't last a whole lot of time.

Probably not. I can't imagine it lasts that long. So George Washington really did, if you go to that distillery, he really did own and operate that commercial distillery. Matter of fact, in 1799, he made 11,000 gallons of whiskey and he made 7,500 bucks from that. Today's money, that's about $120,000 though. So he was doing all right. That's a year's wages. He was a man of many talents and stuff, but it was actually a guy named James Anderson, a Scottish farm manager who convinced Washington to begin his own distilling operation.

Yeah, so he actually started, now he was busy with the war and with Continental Congress and all of those things from the mid 1770s up until, you know, 1790 or so. You know, he was quite a busy guy. He didn't spend a whole lot of time at Mount Vernon. So he kind of returned to Mount Vernon after his time, after his stint as president. Sure. So, yeah, so his farm manager, I guess you said he was a Scottish fellow, huh? Yeah, they make small rye whiskey, right? I like to talk a little bit about the winter of 1777. Everybody's heard of Valley Forge. Yeah, that's a struggle. That was real soldiers back then. Yeah, real soldiers. Washington's army was the main column of soldiers that represented the Continental Army. They had eight different encampments as they traveled around kicking the British behind. But the third encampment they went to was called Valley Forge. And everybody's heard about the winter at Valley Forge, right? So from December of 77 until June, the summer of 78, they were at the Valley Forge encampment. And that winter was one of the hardest winters that Army had to endure. We've heard the stories about it. They had no food. They had no clothing. A lot of soldiers didn't have boots. But one thing they did have A little bit of whiskey. They had whiskey. Washington made sure that they had whiskey.

Well, a lot of people don't realize that that winter, a lot of those enlistments, those soldiers enlisted in the army, those enlistments were running out then. So he had to have something to keep him there. Why not give him some whiskey? Absolutely. Keep that morale up.

Well, that was their Christmas. Our Christmas is quite different here. We've got a wide selection of age spirits from hundreds of different distilleries to choose from. Back then, their selection was quite limited. It was unaged rye, typically rye back then. Bourbon was something that came a little bit later and came from the state of Kentucky. But up north, the time of the American Revolution, it was all about rye whiskey because rye was grown up there.

Well, hey, I mean, you got rye, you got water source, why not make some whiskey? Absolutely.

So this is not a Kentucky rye.

This is actual rye.

This is an actual rye. Now it does have some corn content in it. They actually did a little bit of research. They looked at George Washington's ledgers, his books, his accounting from back then, and they found they were able to take his accounting and what grains he had bought for the distillery And they were pretty much able to approximate what his mash bill was. So his mash bill was 60% rye, 30% corn, and 5% malted barley. That's not too far off of Kentucky rye now, is it?

That's pretty close. Pretty close. So he operated a total of five copper steels at that distillery. And it was one of the largest distilleries in Virginia at the time, or probably even in the Americas. The size of that place is pretty pretty large. I would say it's as big as Woodford Reserve. But when you go in there, it's about 80 feet long. It's two stories. It's a gristmill. What you think of a gristmill, it has some canals there that want to go in and operate the gristmill and stuff. It's just neat to see that they had that technology then to make a, I don't know, it's kind of an industrial complex for the

Yeah, he not only farmed the grains, he made the whiskey and he also ran a cuprage as well. So they had a cuprager, so they did raise their own barrels as well. Kind of interesting.

So the most common beverage they produced, and it still already was whiskey, but he also had a little bit of sweet tooth and he liked to make brandy too. Yeah. It wouldn't be some apple brandy, would it? I'm not sure what kind, probably some plum brandy. Yeah, it could have been some apple brandy there. So like you said before, more than neat facts about him and stuff. He didn't bottle his whiskey. So what they would do is, you know, you see that old twist knob on the end of the barrel of spout stuff. They would put that up on the shelf and in a bar or a pub. And that's how you would get your whiskey out of there and turn that little spout and more likely it'd have been in a wooden cup or a wooden vessel.

Well, you'd be the guy from the table that was sent over there to get a pitcher. A pitcher. A pitcher of whiskey. A pitcher. They didn't brand it, they didn't age it.

Like you said before, toasting or charring a barrel hadn't come about yet.

If you believe the legends, that happened a number of years later or around the same time in Kentucky with Elijah Craig.

So Washington did operate his Mount Vernon with slaves, and there was actually six slaves that actually worked in the distillery with John Anderson. You had Hanson, Peter, Daniel, James, and Timothy all worked alongside with John Anderson for the production of that whiskey and the mother spirits.

So half a dozen people. Old farm distillery, five pot stills, 11,000 gallons in a year. That's a big operation.

Well, you got to think, they were probably cutting a lot of wood. We've actually talked to some people that actually did a recreation of that, of making that whiskey, and they say it is just hard manual labor.

All right. Well, I'll tell you what, let's talk a little bit about that after we get a chance to taste this whiskey. We've put it off about as long as we can.

Before you take a sip of this, so what do you think they did with all that spent grain? They fed it to the animals, right? Fed it to those hogs, made them fat. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I would do. Virginia is known for its hams.

All right. So on the nose, I'm getting absolutely white dog, high rye white dog. It smells like hot buttered popcorn, a little bit of rye spice. It's got a little bit of sweetness to it. I think the corn is youth is there, right? I mean, you know it is. Smells like 1989 to me, Jim. But it's clean and it's fresh. Nothing musty or dirty about it. It's got a nice clean smell. But I do get that hot buttered popcorn and that rice spice.

I don't get hot buttered popcorn. I don't know. I never can get that out of this.

All right.

I get corn. I get corn whiskey is what I get, but I know it's a ride, but, um, corn liquor, L I K K E R liquor. It's a, it's going to be rough.

Let's do it. Cheers.

Oh, that's sweet. A lot softer than I thought it was gonna be. I thought it was gonna be very, what's the proof on this?

This is 86 proof.

I thought it was gonna be very hot. I didn't think it was gonna taste like that. A lot of that sweetness coming through on this. A little bit of licorice, a little bit.

Yeah, I'm getting a little bit of that. Copper penny flavor, too. Yeah, I could get that. Actually, I'm quite impressed, Mike. The nose really didn't. Of course, they're probably not smelling their whiskey back then, were they? They were just drinking it. I mean, when you look at this, it just looks like water.

I don't think the soldiers were sitting around with Glen Caron's. sniffing their whiskey. No, they probably had their little tin cups or whatever they had in their kit. They probably weren't sniffing it or nothing. They were probably just trying to keep warm. And you see paintings and drawings of Valley Forge and they got blankets wrapped around them. They got blankets wrapped around their heads and stuff.

They were freezing to death. Sheets wrapped around their feet because they didn't have any boots.

They were starving to death. And Washington was Some said he was feeding themselves out of his own money and stuff, because you're talking about poor, just basic people that came off farms.

Congress was dragging their feet, getting him money and provisions. And he would get visits from time to time from people from Congress, and he would rail on them and tell them, how can you expect me to hold this army together without food and without boots and without blankets and without whiskey?

I just can't even imagine being a soldier back then, how rough it was. The only thing you got is probably some music, some song, and a little bit of this George Washington's hooch. This is tasty, Mike.

I like it. I tell you what, if this is what I had to drink, I would not be complaining. Not even a little bit. But we have such a large selection right now. of well-aged spirits that we get to choose from. It's hard to imagine drinking something like this on a daily basis. But when you put your mind there, when you think about where they were, what they were doing, this is pretty clean. It's got a decent flavor to it. I've had some, I'll be honest with you, I've had some craft distillery stuff.

that I'd prefer this to. Well, I've made some craft distillery in a boson's hole on a boat. Some hooch. And I'll tell you, a soldier, a sailor, an airman, a coastie, a Marine, you put them in those predicaments. They're going to make the best of it and sometimes the best of it is to make some hooch. I've heard of stories in Afghanistan and Iraq. We've heard stories of Patton hiding his whiskey in fuel drums. all kinds of history throughout, or all kinds of stories of liquor where soldiers, service members drinking whiskey, and it made their time better, morale better and stuff. And we've got to that matter and age where it's frowned upon and stuff, but I mean, you grew up in that area where there were beer machines in the barracks. We knew the liquor store as a class six, and we've talked about this many, many times, and it just makes you appreciate life a little bit better when you visit these stories like this. I can pour a little bit more of this. Not for you. Yeah. This ain't my jam right here. I'd like to try some of their age stuff they're putting out from there.

Yeah. So there you have, I think they sell their whiskey in 375 bottles. So half bottles, right? The bottle of this stuff here is 375 is a hundred dollars. Not aged, it's... Unaged white rye whiskey, basically what we like to refer to as new make.

Man, that's a steep hall right there. I know when we visited there, I looked at it and I looked at my daughter and I could have either bought the bottle of whiskey or I could have take her to eat blue crabs. And I decided, well, she's going to get to eat blue crabs today. Yeah.

Well, they also have a straight rye, which is two years old. And it's $188. And then they have a well-aged rye, what they call their straight rye premium whiskey, which is 225. Now, these are not true to form. These aren't what you would have expected to see back in the day. But they want to give their visitors to the gift shop an opportunity to buy something a little more like what they might find on the shelves today.

Sure.

They're also selling Apple brandy there.

I think they're doing it the original way. And they're obviously paying for somebody to do that. And that person is making a lot of money. So that extra effort that goes in there because they're firing everything with wood, you know, it's not like it's a propane or natural gas or anything like that, it's wood-fired.

That costs a little bit. They're grinding their grains with a grist mill. They're wood-firing their pot stills. They're chopping the wood and splitting the wood and doing everything they have to do to do that. They're raising the barrels by hand. All of that's being done manually the way it was done 250 years ago. And so if you're thinking about the cost of a bottle of whiskey, $100 for a 375, you have to think about the poor fellows working down there cutting the firewood and everything just to cook the whiskey. Sure.

Well, it all goes back to a great cause. It keeps our heritage alive. It keeps that for the next generation so they can see now Vernon and see what a great man George Washington really was and stuff, even though he started off rough by chopping down that cherry tree. He's still, you know, I don't know if America would be what it is today without him and his story and his legacy. He could have been king of America, but he didn't want that for America. He wanted something different. And he wanted men to have whiskey. Absolutely. It's probably because of him we still get to drink whiskey today.

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 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. Well, the George Washington Whiskey Project didn't happen without the help of a lot of distillers around the country. A lot of well-known distillers traveled to Mount Vernon and assisted in resurrection of that distillery and creating the mashbill and the first whiskey that came out of there. Notably was Chris Morris out of Brown Foreman, better known as the master distiller there at Woodford Reserve. Brown Foreman donated a million dollars to that project. Big deal. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. And Chris Morris and Elizabeth McCall both been on our show before. They traveled there and they worked alongside people in the industry like Dave Pickerel and Jimmy Russell. and other master distillers that are well known in the industry went there for this great event to recreate this whiskey.

That's great that they actually went to industry and just wasn't some historical people, some professors. historians trying to remake this whiskey. They actually went to people who actually make whiskey for living and say, hey, we want to do this. How do we go about it? Will you come in and help us? And then Brown Forman to pony up that much money and stuff. You know, when you think about that Brown Forman ponies up a million dollars and that was in 2007, 2008 timeframe. We were just talking to them on an earlier episode on a craft distillery episode. E. H. Taylor, the old E. H. Taylor Castle Key bought that place for $950,000. So Woodford Reserve or Brown Foreman could have went down there and bought that place for what they donated that money for. And like I said, it keeps that

history alive. Absolutely. There's a lot more falling down distilleries around the country that I hope people take an interest in. The Glens Creek distillery down here with David Meyer used to be the Old Crow distillery. Old Crow, yeah. It's in a shambles and it's going to take a lot of money to restore that place and maybe he will and maybe he won't, but at least he's got whiskey being made there. And it's really great. Love to see the history come alive. Absolutely.

Well, Jim, this has been a good year for us, right? You know, I think of Christmas, it's kind of like Thanksgiving. I still want to thank people for coming on the show and helping us out, making us successful this year. COVID has been a struggle for the podcast. I know all podcasters, we talked to our friends over at Dad's Drink in Bourbon. You know, I got to give John, he's always given us a lot of knowledge, helping us out if we ever have a question about something to do or what's worked best for him and stuff. The guys over at Bourbon Lens, they're always three knuckleheads to talk to, but always love talking to them. The other podcast out there, YouTube channels, Jason up at The Mashing Drum, Dusty, Dan, I could go on and on and on about people that have helped us out. But the distilleries that have wanted to work with us, reached out to us and took a chance with us to see that we're honest. You know, you got Leapers Fork. Yeah, I can go on and on and on, but it takes all those people to help us out and make a good show. We'd like to thank you all. Our supporting cast in the roadies, we got Jason. We definitely got Adam. And now we're going to have Drew Allen on part of our team and stuff. It just makes it all happen right for us and stuff. And we struggle a little bit or one of us are out of town on vacation. We kind of call on those guys and they help us out. That's what makes a great team. It makes great family. And that's kind of how we think about it, I guess, is it's a family, right? It's all a family affair. And we want to keep this going and make it even better in 2021. So hopefully we'll be done with this COVID mess. We'll get on to next Christmas, have a regular Thanksgiving, have a regular Christmas next year. People can actually go and see Santa Claus. I called it on one of the episodes. I said, people wouldn't be able to sit on Santa Claus lap. What do they do?

You did, and I didn't believe it at that time. I thought it would be over by then.

You know, I just, I hope the best for everybody. Hey, go out there as craft stilleries, get some of that whiskey. I don't know, I don't have much to say about George Washington's whiskey. Randy, thanks for gifting this to us. I think if this was the only thing I had to drink, I'd drink the hell out of it.

Yeah, so you and I are a little bit different here. I tell you what, I have always enjoyed, I'll tell you one of my favorite places. Now, when we go to the distillery tours, we get to taste white dog. Everybody knows you get to taste white dog. One of my favorite white dogs is a Barton 1792. I absolutely love their white dog right out of the still. They'll pour it for you, you get to drink it. It is hot buttered popcorn all day long. I can sit and drink that stuff. I wish they would sell it. because I like that. And so we're different. You know, people like different things. For me, I can drink the white dog. I can enjoy it for what it is. It's not all that different from drinking other unaged spirits like tequila and vodka and gin. These are unaged spirits as well. They have different flavors. This is just something different. You either like it or you don't.

Well, I think to me, it just brings bad memories of better years. My wild child self had done, you know, self-punishment back in the teenage years and my early years in the army and stuff, sat in a barracks room, drinking bottles of Everclear, doing things we weren't supposed to be doing. But Everclear, that's a tough thing to swallow right there. But hey, those are the things that give you those gray hairs, give you some knowledge. That's hand sanitizer. There's plenty that hand sanitizer would get drank in a barracks on a Friday and Saturday night, especially when the beer machine ran out of beers. You had to go to something and soldiers are usually looking for that cheapest thing that'll get the job done. Add some Kool-Aid to that.

away you go. Absolutely. Well, Mike, this has been sort of a non-typical show for us. Probably not going to run an hour. We just wanted to sit down and sort of reminisce a little bit about what an early Christmas was like and drinking some of that early US whiskey. The earliest of US whiskey. The earliest of US whiskies. Take a few minutes to thank our listeners for a great year. Let them know that we're still going to be here in 2021. We're going to be I'm doing some great things next year and we've got some terrific ideas on stuff to do. Barrel picks for sure. A lot of new merch. We're going to probably do an event or two. We hope all this COVID thing has lifted and we're able to get some people to show up in bourbon country here and enjoy a little bit of time with us and drink some whiskey and visit some distilleries and have a great time.

Yeah, say if you're coming in 2021 and you're a roadie, make sure you give me and Jim enough advance notice that you're coming if you want to see us. We'll try to make some time, sit down and have a drink for you. Realize that each one of us works. We both have jobs. And we're committed to those too. So if you give us enough time, we could plan and, you know, sit down and just at least have a drink with you. We love drinking whiskey with roadies. If you, if you don't believe that ass Adam, he'll tell you that we'll put on a, we'll put on a spread for you. So absolutely.

Well, Mike, we, uh, as always, we do two shows a week. Normally the long show, this one is an hour long, but we're going to stop around 30 minutes this time, give everybody a chance to spend some time with their family during the holidays. Uh, we look forward to everybody coming back for our new year's episode.

We won't talk about what that's going to be yet because you're not going to want to miss those. You won't want to miss it. Be a funny guy.

But we do also do short episodes on Mondays. They're usually related to a craft distillery review. We talk about a bottle that's just come to us, come to our attention, and we taste it and talk about it and give a recommendation or not a recommendation in some cases. But anyway, Mike, we also have a group on Facebook called the Bourbon Roadies.

Yeah, so to enter it, you want to be 21 years old. You got to like bourbon. Come on now. Who doesn't like bourbon? It's like drinking breakfast cereal for me. It's great. And you got to be able to play nice. We have some great folks in there that just don't like any rudeness. We have master distillers in there down to your brand new whiskey drinker. Remember, if somebody posts something up, they post it up. That's the whiskey they like to drink. We always try to say, you're bourbon, you're whey, right? So just remember that when you're in there, play nice. Our moderators do a great job of keeping it clean. So just keep your posts clean. We appreciate it. Make sure if you post something, if you're sharing it, Link in there or anything. Make sure you talk to the rest of the roadies and stuff Just don't post a link up and leave it.

I'm the guy that kind of moderates that I like everybody to talk to everybody Yeah, so if you're a bourbon group and you're coming into the roadies and you're welcome We love to have you there and you're posting up interesting content for our users We welcome it. We love you to come in there post. We just want you to make it personal Take a minute say hey to the roadies explain why you're there, make your post.

Yeah. Um, we try to do the same thing in other groups. Um, and I appreciate all the love we get from other groups that were, we were allowed to post in it. It makes us better. So we're on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. at the bourbon road at the bourbon road we have a website you can get our swag in there you can get uh how do you say it swag swag swag swag you can get our bourbon bullshitter t-shirt uh just released uh 25 dollars charge a little bit extra for those big boys like myself but hey it's worth it we we take up a little bit more material we're not on patreon right we are not on we're not a patreon so any money we get

you get something in exchange, at least for now. We'll see about that all later.

Hey, I think you get a $25 t-shirt.

Hey, order those t-shirts though.

We will have Bourbon Road gear coming if you want to buy that, but we do have our Glen Carons in there. Great price, $15 for one glass. Um, you know, they're, they're nice, good Karen, nice etching on there. Nice to have in your bar. So go in there, buy that stuff. Uh, you can read our blogs on there. We'll have reviews on there. I have recipes in the future on there. If people start sending those things into me, but we have a new reviewer, Adam Boothby will be writing some reviews for us and stuff. Kind of take that, some of that stuff off me and Jim's plate. Our back reviews, our craft distillery reviews will still go in there and stuff. We're going to throw in a little extra in there. Check out our website. If you're listening to this, you love it. You love us. Hit that subscribe button if you haven't yet. Scroll down if you haven't left a review. Heck, leave another review. We need two more to hit 100. Two more. Two more. Hopefully by this episode right here, we've already hit 100.

All right. Well, we always like to hear about your ideas. We want to know if you've got somebody you'd like to see on the show or a whiskey you'd like to review. So reach out to Mike Ryan, let us know, and we'll be happy to oblige. You can always reach me on Instagram at jshannon63.

I'm One Big Chief. 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.