123. Castle & Key's Restoration Kentucky 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.

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Yeah, so the distillery itself is the old E.H. Taylor distillery, right? Beautiful grounds, got that castle look to it. Just super quaint. Got sunken gardens in there and stuff. A great place to walk around, take your wife, drink some cocktails. Creek right there flowing. Lovely place. And now it's owned by Castle & Key. So we've been waiting for this for a while. There's been whiskey come out of there already. There has. But this is their whiskey. So this is their restoration rye. That's right.

So they have been in that distillery now Half a dozen years? Yeah. I mean, they bought it out of basically total disrepair and had 50 years of just falling apart. They went in and bought the distillery, which wasn't a distillery anymore, just a bunch of dilapidated buildings, and they restored it. That's restoration rye, right? Sure. So they restored the distillery. They started up quite a big operation there. Marianne Eaves was their master distiller for quite some time. In fact, I'm pretty sure she was responsible for putting this in the barrel. And then they kind of spent a few years doing tours and waiting for their stocks to age and actually doing contract distilling for other distillers as well.

Yeah, you can get Panhote from there. There's a couple other big namers that come out of there. But pin hook is the one release first, right? Release first. It'd been the first whiskey out of there, but this is actually a super beautiful bottle they released it in. I kind of like that. It's different.

It looks like an old architectural column. like with the Roman column kind of design, right?

Yeah, I could see that. I was going to say Art Deco, you know, out of the 30s, I guess, with that, the 2030 area. It's got this gold cap on it. Nice to have in your bar. Yeah, it's a beautiful bottle.

A great story behind it. Long awaited for, I guess, you have a little story. You went to the store to get one and you actually got the very last bottle, right?

Yeah, I went over to Lexington Liquor Barn over there and that was the last stuff they had. I had one in my basket and the lady asked me if I was going to buy it. And I said, yeah, of course I'm going to buy it. I'm going to have this. And I was actually over there dropping off some of our barrel picks, some of our roadies. And I said, well, I might as well go in there while I'm waiting and see what they had. So I saw a bottle of that and I knew we were going to get a bottle. So $39.99. Um, being a veteran, I get a discount there at liquor bar. Um, we don't always like to shop there. We like to shop local, but like I was there, uh, seeing it, might as well buy it, right? Absolutely.

Well, I'm looking at the, at the bottle. I'm very impressed looking at the juice. I think it's a little lighter in color than I might've expected.

Yeah, but it's a younger whiskey too. It's only three years old. Right.

So this is a three year rye and this is a rye with some corn content in it.

Yeah, it's got 17% yellow corn, 63% rye and 20% malted barley. This came out at 60 barrels and it's 103 proof. Okay.

So will they always hold it 103 proof on this product?

No, each batch is going to be different, is what they said. They call it pods, I guess. So batch two is coming out, it's 57 barrels, and that's going to be 99 proof. So this was a 60 barrel batch. Yep.

So I have 60 barrels. I guess we would expect to see around 12,000 bottles. Is that right? I don't remember how many cases that came out of that.

So Jim, they did a limited release on this. You could get it in Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas, and Georgia. And Georgia. Georgia. We've got some listeners in Georgia. Hopefully we got listeners in all those states. I think we do.

Those are some of our key states there.

They are. We got a big following in Texas, obviously Indiana, Tennessee. Got a lot of boys down there in Tennessee.

But these things flew off the shelf. I mean, they were gone within how long?

They put that case out that morning, and I'm assuming that right before I got there, people were just grabbing them left and right. Also, they only had one case? No, not one case, but whatever that store had allocated.

All right. Well, let's check it out.

Not as much of that rye pungent. Maybe that's because of the corn.

Yeah, it's still got a little bit of an airy nose to it. Trying to draw some parallels between this and the pin hook. This one's a little bit more caramel, sweet, a little more baking spice sweet. The pin hook was a little bit lighter and airier, a little more minty. It's got a great nose on it though. I can get a little bit of that oak on there.

I just kind of smell that corn coming through a little bit more than I thought I would. And maybe that is that, that caramel, you know, you're getting from it.

Right.

Those sugars. Not as a, I thought it'd be more floral too, like pin hook. You get those floral notes coming through.

I don't get that on this, but it smells to me like a sweet corn puff, kind of a, Cornbread, sweet cornbread, a little bit of- I can get some sweet cornbread on that. A little bit of syrup on it maybe. A little bit of maple syrup and butter.

You eat your cornbread with milk? I've had it before with milk. That's so good right there. Take some hot cornbread, crumple it up, put it in a cup, pour some milk over it and eat it.

Yeah, this one's got a great nose to it. I'm really looking forward to tasting it, Mike. Well heck, let's taste it. Let's do it. Oh yeah. That's got a little bit of subtle darkness to it.

There's a little bit of... Witchery. Yeah. That's quite shocking for what it is. I did not expect that at all.

I am absolutely surprised at how the palette just makes you immediately forget about the nose. It's really good.

It's got like a honey spice to it, almost like Vivian a couple of days ago bought a jalapeno honey. Super good. And I could get a jalapeno sugary spice inside of this, like that honey. Get a little bit of that out of there.

I go back to the nose and the nose has taken a backseat. The palate is very powerful on this rye. Powerful in a good way. It's bold and it's full. It's got a lot of flavors going on. I'm still getting that sweet cornbread though, that jiffy. Jiffy cornbread.

Not the best quality stuff in the world, but it's sweet, right? It'll do in a pinch.

Still a little bit of spice there, leaning a little bit into the anise and the licorice, but just a hint. I'd say this is more in the cereal. cornbread, baking spice arena than it is in the minty, peppery arena of a rye. Wouldn't you agree?

You're spot on with that. I think it's got some great character to it. I'm just so shocked at it. Because of the color, I wouldn't have thought that. This is drinking a lot hotter than 103.

I will say this though, the finish is sticking around.

Yeah, it definitely has a, it has like a, like a bubble gum finish to it. Like you're chewing a piece of good bubble gum and it just kind of there that, um, I'm trying to think of a bubble gum that sticks around for an expensive piece of bubble gum because you buy a cheap piece and you chew the sugar out of it in about three seconds and it's done. There was something we drank recently. It had that cornstarch covered bubble tape. I don't remember what that was. This doesn't have that. It's just a different, that spicy minty spice to it is sitting on the back of my tongue, just calling for us to take another drink. It's got a little bit of Kentucky hug, but that Kentucky hug doesn't last with you It's just that first sip as it goes down and then it goes away.

Yeah, which is nice You don't want something that's gonna burn you and keep burning you a little bit more Mike I'm starting to pick up a little bit of herbal and earthiness on it on the finish and You know what came to mind is is a When you go to a steakhouse and you have a baked potato, you got all that big pile of butter on the baked potato, and at the end you got the baked potato skin, that skin, you know? You get that earthy flavor from that skin. I'm getting a little bit of that on the back end here. I think it's a good mode. It's kind of something I haven't really experienced before. I think it was pretty special.

So there were only 13,200 bottles of this made out of that 60 barrels. So I'm pretty...

I guess 12,000.

I wasn't too far off. Too far off. I'm pretty glad that we got one bottle for ourselves. I saw some other guys bought cases of it. Um, I always, I don't feel like we should ever do that. You know, we get plenty of whiskey. Um, that just kind of robs it from another guy. And I bet you would see all this on a secondary and, uh, your future probably be triple the price.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a respectable whiskey. So Christmas being here, if you've gotten your hands on a few bottles of this, I would say give one away, make a gift.

39.99 is not a bad price for this at all. Be it young, be it the nose was a tad off, it's a great zipper. It's a great zipper. I'd call it a buy all day long. I'll be excited to see batch two come out, to see how it is at 99 proof. I know there's only 12,540 of those bottles coming out.

I would be real interested to see how this plays in an old fashioned. I bet it would be darn good.

I would just probably open it right up.

Yep.

Yeah. You wonder how Castle Key, when their bourbon comes out, how that's going to play to this. If you haven't been to Castle Key, you're in Kentucky. You don't know where it's at. If you're at Woodford reserve, you drive right down the road. You can't miss it. Go past the stave, great little restaurant to eat at. Keep going, going down the road and you'll see Castle Key. You will not miss it.

Five miles, another way while Turkey five miles, another way. Buffalo trace.

Yeah. You, you're missing out.

Four roses, a few miles the other way.

Yeah. Rebecca Ruth candies. There's, there's all kinds of good stuff that you can do right there. You get places to eat. Like I said, the stave big, big, go big blue liquors over in Lawrenceburg that has, uh, one of the largest barrel pick programs, I would say in the country. Um, And now you've got to warn people when they drive up there because they don't have the best entrance in the world of the big blue lakers. You're not going to believe. But once you get back in there past the cash register, you'll be well rewarded for the entrance. Hopefully you can find one of these in here. Yeah.

All right, Mike, well, big thumbs up for me on this one. I'll be looking for a bottle. You got yours, sip on it, enjoy it, and hopefully we'll find another one laying around somewhere. Maybe we can send out a few samples one day or at least share some when a roadie comes to town. I was going to try to grab another one the lady tried to chew my arm off for. All right, well you can find us on all the social medias. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and on YouTube at The Bourbon Road. We do put out two episodes a week. We do a short version like this every Monday. We put out a longer version every Wednesday. We also have a Facebook group, right Mike?

Yeah, The Bourbon Roadies. We're riding around 1,300 members right now. Three easy questions you have to answer. Are you 21? Do you like bourbon? Do you like rye whiskey? And do you agree to play it nice? Because we don't tolerate no what Jim?

We don't tolerate any rudeness. We got good people in there. They don't jump on each other. Everybody likes to review and talk about the whiskey they're drinking and nobody wants somebody to jump down their throat saying they don't know what they're talking about. Yeah.

Somebody buys a bottle of Jim Beam and they say that's their best whiskey ever. That's their first whiskey. Welcome to the whiskey world. Welcome to bourbon world. Help them along if they want to buy their stuff, but don't knock somebody down for what they're drinking. Somebody might have been drinking that's all their life and that's all they can afford. I'm great with that. I walk in liquor stores and I see guys reach for the bottom shelf stuff every time. So what they're buying, they're supporting local community here by buying that stuff, not only to distillers, but they're also farmers out there that are making these grades and stuff. Absolutely. They're supporting us because that's how we do this podcast. We really appreciate that. We sure do.

We also have a website called the bourbonroad.com. On that website, you will find our podcasts. You'll also find our blogs. We write articles. Mike writes articles. We've also just opened up reviews. Adam's going to start helping us put some reviews up on the website. We've also just launched our store on there with our Glen Carons being offered a little bit differently than they were before. And we're also introducing a new t-shirt, right? Yeah, we got the Bourbon Bullshitter t-shirt.

That just means if Jim said it right on the website, You just two guys like us or gals like us that enjoy drinking whiskey, consider yourself an expert. Just two dudes, sit down, talk about the whiskey. We're not pretentious about it. We're just giving our tasting notes. We don't have a whiskey wheel in front of us or anything like that. We just tell like it is, and we want all of our listeners to tell like it is. So go in there, veteran owned and operated this podcast is, that website is, that money gets me and Jim out on the road, pays for that gas to get those trucks down the road. So we go to the distilleries. We thank you for your business.

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