143. Gold Zephyr Straight Bourbon 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 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, it's another Craft Distillery Monday. We've got a new bourbon in the house, one that we haven't had before. New distillery. Yeah. From the Midwest.

So we got J.K. Williams out of Peoria, Illinois, and we're going to drink some of their Golden Zephyr tonight. It's a four year old, supposedly a weeded bourbon. We don't know the match bill on this, but we would we bumped into the one of the owners in Bourbon Bistro in downtown Louisville. And he handed us a business card and they shipped to some of their whiskey.

Yeah. I love it when they ship us the whiskey. I love to try the new stuff. I get kind of, yeah, get a little anxious. Sometimes we get a new bottle. Can't wait to record an episode.

I know we're, we're, we're stacked up right now, um, with some, with some bottles, which is nice. Uh, I quite enjoy that having some, some, uh, stock, I guess, um, that we can go back and make sure that we do do reviews, but, um, we got some stuff to record with.

Well, we're going to talk a little bit about JK Williams and kind of the backstory there, but first, what do you say we get, get to the whiskey? Let's do it. All right. So, uh, I'm looking at this, Mike. Now you've, you've given me two, are these four ounce sample bottles or four ounce sample bottles? And I would say the color on this is a medium. to light amber. So a little bit from medium, it's a little on the light side, but it's not a light whiskey. It's got some good color in it.

And I'd say this is non-chill filter too, I would think, because it's got a little bit of cloudiness to it. I don't know what's giving it that cloudy appearance, but I have the full bottle and I get the same thing you'd get is just a little bit of cloudiness in there.

Yeah, I can see that it is cloudy. It's not crystal clear. It's not like, uh, it's got some, uh, it's got something in there that's causing it to have that cloudy appearance, but it's not putting me off. I'm ready to nose it and taste it. All right. Let's know this thing.

Very light nose on this.

Yeah. I mean, I'm getting a little bit of youth there, but it's, it's definitely a four year stated whiskey, but being a wheat whiskey, it can still have some of those younger notes coming through on it, which in this case, Are kind of nice. I think these, these notes are kind of nice. This is a little more floral and fruity.

Would you say, I was going to say exactly that I'm getting a little bit of a almost spring Daisy on this. You know, if you ever gave your girlfriend or your boyfriend out there, some daisies, I get a little bit of that Daisy on there.

Now, daisies them, them's the ones you pull off the side of the road and pick when you forgot, when you forgot to get flowers, right. Or when you're cheap. Yeah. But usually they grow along the roadside. You can see them, they're white and they've got a little, what a little orange center to them, don't they?

Yeah. Um, I get a little bit of fruit on that. Maybe a little bit of, uh, like fresh peaches.

Yeah. And it's got a little bit of a cherry to it too. I think I'm kind of picking that up. I actually, Mike, I kind of like the nose on this. It's fresh. It's light. It's a, it's fruity, a little fruity. I'd say it's decent. It does have a little hint of youth to it.

Ever had one of those bottle honeys? I think that's what it's called. Bit of honey. Bit of honey. Kind of get that nose on here a little bit. I'm wondering if the nose is going to match the palate. I say let's taste this thing. Let's do it.

Yeah, a little bit of, and this is what I typically get with a with a weeded whiskey, weeded bourbon that's four years old, a little bit younger. They kind of lag behind like a rye bourbon, right? I mean, rye bourbons tend to age a little bit faster and they lose those useful nodes. It takes the wheats a little bit longer. I think this one's just a little behind the curve. But it's nice.

Yeah, I'd say another year on this. I still get that bit of honey in there. A little bit of honey on this. Just that little bit of caramel. Maybe another year, five year, six year. This will turn out to be a spectacular bourbon. I don't know if that cloudiness is doing anything to this. I'm not positive on that why it's cloudy. And I don't know if that affects what I'm tasting or not.

Well, this is a 90 proof whiskey, so it comes across a little bit thin. And Mike, you and I kind of talked about this. We can't blame the whiskey for that. That's kind of us. We've been drinking stuff a little bit higher in proof and a little bit more body and more thickness and more viscosity to it. So we need to get back to these 90 proofers and back to this 90 to 100 range and try to readjust our paddle a little bit. That way we can really appreciate a 90 proof for when it's good.

I'd have to say, and I can definitely tell this is a weeded mashbill. And if I drank this, like compared it to Weller Special Reserve, I would say it's right there with that. Maybe Weller's Special Reserve is a little bit older, more refined, but I can see those characters in this bourbon. Those floral notes are coming out in it. Just that little bitty hint of honey in there, some caramels, not a whole lot, no spice on this, just a tad bit of bite. I've said white pepper on the podcast before, something that's not so spicy. There's no Kentucky hug to this at all.

Yeah, there's no, there's no real hug to it, but there is a pretty decent finish on it. I'm really surprised. I mean, it's in the white pepper for me on the finish, I think.

Yeah, I get that too. It's, it's sitting there. Um, is it a beautiful robust? Like you said, it's, it's not very viscous, but we're so used to those cast drinks lately that we haven't been visiting and we need to get back to these, these 90 proofers. That way we're not so shocked by drinking. We're like, Oh, well, But I had, I think this is a fine separate. Now the price on this is $60, Jim. That's a, that's a little bit much for a four year old. Not bad. It's still craft, craft whiskey, a heavy bottle, a different bottle shape. I haven't seen a bottle shape like this. I can't think of another bottle out there like it. So kudos to them. You had said that this brand, somebody bought them out in 2018. They bought all their stocks and Peoria was known for whiskey back in the day and gangsters, right?

Right. So Peoria in fact is, well, looking at your geography is not too awful far from Chicago, right? Chicago was kind of the hub for gangsters, right? Al Capone and all those guys.

Yeah, if you take a boat ride, you can take a boat ride all the way from Chicago on the Illinois river and go right down to Peoria. And if you wanted to go all the way down to New Orleans. So that'd been a good way to get around revenue or just take that Illinois river from Chicago down to down to Peoria though.

So J.K. Williams, the namesake of the distillery was a prohibition era bootlegger. And he used to move whiskey back when whiskey was illegal. And word has it, he got run out of town, out of Peoria by Al Capone himself. Al Capone Al Capone running him out of town. Now, you know, Al Capone was in the bootlegging business himself. So if he wanted to territory, he just came in and took it, I guess. Right. Probably ran old JK out of town.

Yeah. I mean, if you have a whole army behind you, uh, it'd be easy to do that. Um, so I, I think I might be speaking out of turn, but I think road to redemption with Tom Hanks was in that, that area, you know, that. Al Capone area and stuff. And then that Peoria, Illinois area. So, you know, I could see something like that. Some guy that thinks he's a bootlegger and Al Capone's like, you know what? You're in my territory. I'm gonna get you out of here. So.

So in 2010, some of JK's descendants decided to start a distillery in Peoria. And they had a good run at it. They lasted about eight years, but I guess they ran into trouble. And their stills and their equipment and their stocks and all those things were bought by the current owners of the company. And that's who we're reviewing today.

So this is, if people question whether it's sourced or not, it is definitely distilled and bottled there in Peoria, Illinois. It's not sourced. So kudos to them for waiting on that. Or these new guys just bought the stock up and they're bottling it up and stuff. But hey, it's a whiskey out of Illinois. How many other people could say that? Hey, I got a whiskey out of Illinois.

And if you're from Peoria and you're listening to the show right now, I think you could be proud of this whiskey. I'll tell you what, this is how I kind of sum it up. If you like an easy drinker, something in the 90 proof range that's light and refreshing, Uh, that has, but I'm going to say an exceptionally long finish on it. Uh, finishes with a little bit of spice, a little bit of white pepper, not real hot. Doesn't have much Kentucky hug. Doesn't really settle in and burn your chest too much. But if you're looking for something that's easy to sip, that's light, that's fresh, that's got some fruity attributes to it. I'd say this is a good pick.

Yeah. If you're looking for that craft distillery out of your hometown, you want to have that on your shelf. You got $60 to spend. You can find it in the Benny's stores over there. Benny's is a big liquor chain there in Illinois. I'd say put it on your shelf. This for me, Jim, would be actually, you know, you brought up the long finish and stuff. This is a great, like a spring and summer sipper right here.

Yeah.

You know, if I was looking for a weeder to have like that, I'd go to this right here. Yeah. It's perfect.

Yeah. I think you, I think you got a good one here tonight, Mike. Uh, it's not a blow your socks off kind of whiskey. It's not something that's going to take you by surprise and you're going to run out and buy 20 bottles and give all your friends one. It's not one of those, but it's definitely respectable. It's from a part of the country. We haven't heard a lot about, right? I mean, we hadn't heard about a lot of whiskeys coming out of Peoria. So glad to hear it. Glad to hear the wealth is being spread nationwide.

Well, if people were out there, they don't have a distillery where you can go into, but hopefully that's in the future for them. We actually have a second whiskey from them. They have a rye also. So I'm glad to just see all these different distilleries across the country, reviving brands, just bringing some magic to us and stuff. And heck, I guarantee you, we'll empty this bottle right here together. No doubt that me and Jim could polish it off.

Absolutely. You know, we've got kind of an Iowa road trip kind of penciled into our books for some time this year. We haven't quite nailed down the time yet. We want to get out to Quad Cities. We want to get out to Iowa City. And we have to drive right through Peoria, Mike. Right through Peoria.

Yeah, beautiful little town and stuff right on the river, like I'd said. Kind of famous for their brewing history and their distilleries there, you know, bootlegging. Just a nice Midwestern town. You know, you can't go wrong there. There's actually a little fish house on the river there. Every time I have to go up and visit Peoria, because the Coast Guard has a unit in Peoria, Illinois, wouldn't go up there and eat and stuff. But I didn't know at the time they had a distillery up there. I'm glad I know now. I'm glad we're trying to educate our listeners on different distilleries across the nation. A lot of our Facebook group, the bourbon roadies have been talking about that and posting photos of bourbons that we recommended. So I can't wait to see a couple of them pick one of these bottles up and take a photo and put it on our Facebook group.

All right, Michael, let's summarize. How about Good zipper. Probably wouldn't mix at 60 bucks, a little bit, uh, pricey to be putting in with something else. I mean, you could do it if you want to, it's your whiskey, right? But, um, I would definitely say it's a sipping whiskey. It's probably a spring or summer kind of warmer weather whiskey in my mind. Probably not going to gift a bottle of this in my opinion. Probably not.

Nah, I'm there with you. You know, great summer sipper, spring sipper, early, even early fall. Would I gift it? No. Would I take it over to somebody's house to share? I'd definitely share it with some other people. I think it's a fine craft distillery. I can't wait to see where they go in the future. If they're going to bring the age statement up to a five or six year, even if they would put, they couldn't put a bottle and buying on it, I guess, because they bought somebody else's stock out. But yeah, Jim, I think a, not a solid bourbon, but a good craft distillery bourbon. If you're looking for something different, you don't want to have the same bottles on the shelf, go out there and pick this up, support this small distillery, support the state of Illinois. I don't think you'll, you can go wrong with it.

Well, Mike, we do one of these every week on Mondays. We release a craft distillery Monday episode. It's always about 15 minutes long or so today. We're at about 15 minutes every Wednesday though. We do a full length episode where we have somebody on the show or you and I go a little bit of a deep dive, right?

little bit of a deep dive, you know, we'll, we'll go on that link, full link show that last week we did the master's collection from Woodford reserve. We, we had a great time with that episode. Five, five whiskeys on one podcast for hours is a lot, but me and Jim definitely enjoyed ourselves drinking all that listeners. And we took the bullet for our listeners, didn't we? Heck yeah, we did. You know, Jim, you had pointed out before, me and you talked about this, but if you're out there, open your damn bottles. That's right. You know, people post those photos of their whole collections and stuff. And I'm saying that, I got some behind me, but open those bottles. You know, I'm sitting here and Jim's been down here several times where I'm at. There's empty bottles everywhere. There's open bottles everywhere. There's just too much going on really, but open your bottles, drink those bottles and tell people about that whiskey out there. You can't go wrong doing that.

Absolutely. I agree with you. Well, we always say your whiskey, your way, do what you want, but let me tell you folks, it's a lot more fun if you open them up. All right, so you can reach us on all the social medias. We're on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok. We're at The Bourbon Road. We also have a website called thebourbonroad.com, right, Mike?

Yeah, you can find our blogs on there. You can find our reviews. If you're looking for a whiskey that we've tasted, Every once in a while, we'll review that big boy like Jim said, but the craft is still remaining. If you're looking for that stuff, you're wondering about it before you pull the trigger, go on there, read our reviews. It's a mixture of me and Jim's tasting together. A lot of people don't do that. It's just me and Jim together. We write those, put those out there for you. It tells you the price, usually the mash bill if they'll let us know. Um, check those blogs out. We also have did three articles on there. Um, one for barstown, one for Louisville and one for the Frankfurt and Lexington area. And you know, Jim, I was thinking, I probably need to write a fourth one, uh, just for areas outside of those three, uh, places like Danville and, uh, down there at limestone and at maker's mark places that are not on the bourbon trail. It's kind of off the bourbon trail a little bit. So I think I'm going to put a fourth article up there, but if you're looking to come on a bourbon pilgrimage to Kentucky, check those articles out. We would appreciate it.

Yeah. So you've got some good picks in there. Some places I haven't been to, some places I really want to try. So I'm looking forward to reaching out and on my travels and going into a few of those places to either eat or get a drink or yeah. Very exciting, Mike. Glad you did that. Cause guess what? The trail is definitely getting ready to open up. Right.

The boom is about to start. I think, uh, So, if you're planning to come, you also need to buy some of our swag off there. Buy one of our Bourbon Road hats, buy one of our Bourbon Road shirts, buy one of the Bourbon Bullshitter t-shirts. You're going to want to have that stuff on when you go on a Bourbon Trail so people can say, hey, where'd you get that at? And you can say, hey, the Bourbon Road. You also want to have some of our glasses, our little Glen Carons that say the Bourbon Road on there. Great to drink out of me and Jim, drink out of them right now. Buy those on that website. We have a 10% off, right, Jim?

If you're a bourbon roadie.

So our private Facebook group, we are 1600 people strong in there, like-minded people. You got to be 21. You got to like bourbon and you got to agree to play nice to join our private Facebook group. There are master distillers in there. There's distillery owners. There's social media folks in there like us that do podcasts, YouTube channels. No rudeness, right? We don't want you trolling anybody in there and beating up on them about their kind of bourbon. If you want to help educate somebody or call somebody out, send them a private message and say, hey, you know, here's the facts on that as I know it.

Let me tell you about Kessler.

Yeah. Kessler whiskey is a whiskey up in Michigan that people drink with squirt. Not a bad thing. So it was a, it's a light whiskey, Jim. Kessler is a light whiskey. Yeah. Yeah. So go in there, join our group. I guarantee you, nobody is going to beat you up for anything. You put a bottle of Jim Beam, uh, white label up there. That's what you drink. You've been drinking it for 40 years. Not one person is going to say anything to you about it. They're going to say, cheers, you're bourbon your way. You want to mix it with Mountain Dew LA one. Um, you want to mix it with orange juice and champagne for a bourbon Mosa. You go right ahead.

Of course, if you post, if you post a picture of a unicorn, they're probably going to say, open that damn bottle, right? That's right.

Open, open it. Why keep it closed? I mean, I tell you what, Jim, I just emptied a bottle of, uh, It's all done. Well, I reached under the counter and I had a spare over there to open it up. And I actually sent some samples out this week to some people that were kind enough to write reviews. Please go on and write a review. If you're listening to this podcast right now, you're enjoying it. Make sure you scroll down and write a review on Apple podcast or Spotify or Google. or even on our website or on our Facebook page, you can leave a review on there. Please leave that review. If you really like what you're hearing, scroll up, hit that subscribe button. That way, whatever you listen to us on, it will remind you, hey, Mike and Jim, they got another episode out. The Bourbon Road guys have been on the road and it'll tell you. So that's what we got.

Alright, so if you're in a town like Peoria and you've got a distillery like JK Williams in your town and you want people to know about it, let Mike and I know. We'd love to hear about a distillery in a smaller part of the U.S. that needs some recognition. Let us know. If there's a person you'd like to have us interview, we'd like to know it. You can always find me on Instagram at jshannon63.

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

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