155. The World's Top Selling Bourbon

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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Hello everybody, I'm Jim Shannon and I'm Mike Hyatt and this is the Bourbon Road and today we are sitting in the veranda just outside Plaza de España. The Valentin Imperial Riviera Maya, right?

Yeah, you're right there. Riviera Maya, Mayan Riviera, any way you want to call it, as long as the drinks are cold, right?

That's right. So we recorded an episode here a few days ago. We had a couple of great pours that we brought with us. Yeah. And today we're drinking the one and only bourbon that they have on site.

Well, some people would say it's the king of bourbon, right? Jim Beam. I mean, how can you go wrong with Jim Beam? It's known worldwide. You can go anywhere in the world and you're going to see it on a bar. You've been all over the world. I've been all over the world. Has there been a place you haven't seen it?

No, it's always available. And yeah, so it's a name that's pretty much known everywhere in every language, right?

Yeah, I think anybody, you can say Jim Beam and somebody would know what to grab for. Exactly. I mean, you'd think it's been around since 1795. Jacob Beam, he started distilling it around that time. It was more corn whiskey then. It was then called Old Jake Beam Sour Mash. Okay. So it was just a corn whiskey. Corn whiskey, right? Yep. And somewhere in that time, he went ahead and started making bourbon though. Nobody's for sure what time that was, but that's about right, right? Yeah. 1792.

They all seem to be right around, you know, that right about the time Kentucky became a state, right?

That's correct. And now you got to think, what are they in their eighth generation of distillers there at? Jim Beam, even though that Suntory bought him out in 2014, they still continued that legacy of Beams in the family.

It's the number one selling bourbon in the world. Yeah. How could you go wrong with that? I think number two, we talked with some people the other day, had them on the show. They were number two, which is Heaven Hill. Yeah. I guess it would be the Evan Williams brand would be number two. Jim Beam, number one best selling bourbon in the world, the granddaddy of them all.

And you got to think, what a beautiful distillery they have, right? Beautiful campus, so many rick houses there, not too far off the interstate, off I-65, just about 30 miles south of Louisville, Kentucky. If you haven't been there, you need to go to the Jim Beans Steel House. They have a good lunch there, some barbecue. You can actually stay there now in one of their bed and breakfasts. And it's just getting better and better and better. It's that Napa Valley feel for bourbon. Yeah.

so if anybody's wondering you know we've got a little bit of background music here that's not our new theme song so if you can hear that and sometimes you know i'm not sure if you guys can pick up the background noise or not but we got some beautiful fountains here that are spewing out the water a nice garden and some Mexican guitarist playing over the speakers.

It definitely make you feel at home. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Jim, I say let's nose this thing. Let's give it a good review. We haven't reviewed Jim Beam before. Surprisingly. Surprisingly. But we're going to review it today. All right, let's do it. Let's say cheers. Cheers. You get that nuttiness right off that bat with this.

Yeah, that nuttiness, the oak, it's more of a new oak and a little bit of ethanol. Now, what's the proof on this? So it's 80 proof. Yeah, this has got an amazing amount of sort of wood, nut, oak. Little bit of caramel, little bit of sweetness, but mostly what I'm getting here is the nuttiness and the new oak on the nose.

For a four-year-old whiskey, not bad, right? I don't know if a lot of people know that. It's not very dark, is some of the bourbons we drink all the time. This is actually stepping it down with proof for us, right? Yeah, quite a bit actually. But this would be the same as their Basil Hayden, if you think about it.

Yeah, well, this one for me has a little bit more character, a little bit more oak character, I think. The 80-proof Basil Hayden comes across more like a, kind of washes across the palette without a great deal of depth and character. Whereas the Jim Beam, I think, comes with a bit of depth and character, all surrounding that nuttiness and oakiness that it has, a little bit of caramel, a little bit of sweetness.

You could almost get some peanut butter in that nose just a little bit. Very nice, very nice those on it. Like you said, that little bit of oak in there, a little bit of caramel, standard notes for a bourbon. What do you think a Kentucky bourbon is this set the standard for it for a long time now? I don't see them giving up that title anytime soon either. I would say you're probably right.

You know, just a quick note on this, you know, if you're anywhere in the world and it's your only choice, It's a damn fine choice, I think.

Yeah, I drank some down here. We'd taken a little break from drinking bourbon, but when I first got here the first day, I'd drink a Kentucky mule. And then I kind of switched it up. We didn't drink for, I think, seven days. We didn't drink a bourbon, which was kind of a nice break for us, right? That's something that we usually do. Not what we're doing with a podcast. So it's kind of a nice break and open back up our palace, I think a little bit.

Yeah. I'm really appreciating a sip of bourbon right now. And of course, the other day when we did the other podcast, it had an exceptional flavor after a week of drinking clear spirits, you know, getting a little bit of bourbon in there was just hit spot.

Definitely hit the spot. Those two bottles are so complex. Well, let's taste this thing, Jim, and see what the notes are on. That nuttiness is there. That nutty wood character definitely pops right away. Little bit of caramel on it. Not like popcorn. I don't get a whole lot of corn on this for some reason. More peanuts. There is a peanut butter whiskey, but I'm not talking like that type of peanuts.

No, no.

This is more like peanut shell, right? Yeah. Still beautiful. I can get a little bit oak. I get that little bit of spice rolling down. I'm getting a little bit of Kentucky hug with it.

Yeah. For me, I felt a little bit of a little bit of pepper on the tongue, a little bit of cinnamon, pepper, you know, a little bit of heat, not too much. Kind of missed the whole back end for me, went straight to the Kentucky hug. I would say the finish short, but the hug is right there.

For me, it's almost like taking some toasted bread, right? And you spread some peanut butter on a hot toasted bread and eating that. That's that warm feeling I get right now with that. Only I just don't want to drink any milk. We're going to drink some more bourbon. I love the little bit of honey note on this too. When I step on it, like you said, it doesn't have a long lingering finish, even medium finish. The finish is there. You wouldn't expect that out of an 80 proofer. Right. It is what it is. That's right.

Well, just think about our comments over the last few minutes. We've got, you know, sort of an oak character, you know, kind of that peanutty, peanut butter, peanut shell attribute, caramel, a little bit of cinnamon, a little bit of pepper. no bitterness on the back end, Kentucky HUD, short finish. We're not describing a terrible whiskey here, we're describing a good whiskey.

Yeah, if you wanted to sit down a sip for a long sip and to tell everybody we're not drinking out of our glasses, me and Jim both gave our glasses away while we were down here to some new listeners. So we're drinking out of these rock glasses, neat, but still a fine expression to drink. What I think, like I said, a standard Kentucky bourbon opens right up, not overpowering. It's not going to bite you or anything. Great bourbon to introduce people to good whiskey.

So if you show up in the bourbon roadies and you've got a picture of a bottle of Jim Beam, we always talk about this. Yep. And you're saying, this is what I had today. Good for you. It's a good solid bourbon. It's entry level. It's low proof. It's nothing special, but it's got some good character and it's a good training whiskey to start picking out those notes, right?

I mean, a lot of people mix this too. They mix it with Coke, ginger ale, you name it. They're mixing it with it. Kentucky meal. I like that they've stayed with 80 proof. There's a story behind that. I'm sure why they went to 80 proof to kind of stretch their whiskey out a little bit. You can buy their little bit better expressions or get more age and get a little bit more proof. Those are nice too.

But yeah, they've got a, they've got a number of, uh, premium expressions. I guess that's what you're called. Sure. They've got a double oak and they got a, what a distillers cut and, uh, there's some others.

Yeah. You can get all kinds of, different expressions. They got a new single barrel that came out last year. That's a very beautiful expressions. We've had that on the show. Yeah. But like we always say, nothing wrong with Jim Beam white label. I think bourbon purists give it a hard time. Yeah. But would bourbon be bourbon if it wasn't for Jim Beam at this point?

Yeah. And this is about as pure bourbon as you can get, right? I mean, this is 80 proof Kentucky made. bourbon with a lot of history behind it. This is the de facto defining bourbon that has been around for, like you said, 225 years.

Now think about their masters still over there. He's been there a minute too, right? He has, yeah. The Fred No has been there for a minute. His family's been there. And people might confuse that that we're saying Fred No, but he's part of the Beam family. That's right. He is. And he's passed that on to his son and son Torres embraced that with Freddie and they're taking it on. If you haven't heard Fred no talk, give the man a listen. Me and Jim got to see him down in Bardstown and talk to him. Hopefully maybe we could have him on show after this COVID scares over with and get him to tell some stories for us. Absolutely.

Well, Mike, I think it's a winner. I think it is what it is. It's a good price. Good representation of Kentucky bourbon. Solid all the way around. It's not going to blow you away. It's not some great bottle you got to have on your shelf. It's just a good solid bourbon. Multi-purpose.

I think you're right there. I know somebody's going to ask me about cereal notes on this. I get a little bit of Honey Nut Cheerios on this. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's Honey Nut Cheerios all day long. All right. I say cheers to everybody. Me and Jim are having a wonderful time down here in Mexico. This is our last day, so we've got to get going, Jim. That's right. Head back to that pool. Yeah. So where can people find this, Mike? You can find us on TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. We also have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies. Jim, what do you got to do to be a Bourbon Roadie? Real easy.

Just come to our Facebook page. You'll see a link on our Facebook page for the Bourbon Roadies for our private group. Once you request to join, you'll get faced with three little questions. Are you 21? Do you like to drink bourbon? And do you agree to play nice? If you can answer all three of those questions properly, We'll welcome you to the team. We'll welcome you to the family.

It's a better word. It's definitely a family. Come in there, post your photos, retirement photos, baby's births. You want to have a death in the family and you want to say cheers to somebody, to their life and the celebration of their life. You come in there and do that. That's what our family's about. Hey, a lot of people will send out those angel shares. Remember to do that. Just say that. Hey, that's enough.

Yeah. So a lot of posts, a lot of activity. It's a busy group, a lot of things going on. If you've been kind of disgrumbled with some other bourbon groups, you feel like you kind of get attacked there and you need a new home, come join the roadies. We'd love to have you. We'll treat you right there.

No doubt about it. So we got a website to the bourbonroad.com. You can find our articles on there. You can find our reviews like this one today that Adam puts up for us. Check those out. You can find our gear, our hats, our t-shirts, the bourbon bullshitter t-shirt, funny shirt to wear out there. You see your fellow roadies out there wearing them at distilleries and on the bourbon trail. Check those out. Check that gear out. Buy it. Help support our podcast. It gets us on the bourbon road and supports us. Absolutely.

We do two shows a week. We do a short one like today's where we review a bottle. In this case, we're not reviewing a craft distillery. We're reviewing a rather large distillery. So we kind of do both. But I would say most of the time there are smaller craft distilleries trying to need a leg up, right? Yeah. To taste their whiskey and give a good review or maybe not a good review, but. It can happen either way. But we also do a full-length episode on Wednesdays. It's anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour in length. We usually have a guest on. We sort of do a deep dive on the guest. We also drink bourbon on every show. We'd love to have you listen to both shows every week. In order to be notified when those shows are coming out, what do they have to be like?

So you wanna go up to the top of this right here on your phone, on the computer and hit that subscribe button. That's gonna tell you, hey, these two jokers right here from Bourbon Road, they're gonna have a new episode out today. After that, scroll on down, hit that five-star review button. We love those five stars. Leave us some good, great comments on what you like to hear, what you enjoyed about the podcast. It helps us, helps us open doors, helps us get into distilleries, helps us get great guests on the show. Absolutely.

And we're always available. Whether you reach out to us on Facebook or Instagram or on our website, Mike and I are very available and we will respond to your messages. Probably the best way to get ahold of us though is through Instagram messages. You can reach me at jshannon63. I'm OneBigChief and we will see you on down the bourbon road.

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