156. Should You Buy Store Brand Bourbons?

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. I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is The Bourbon Road. And Mike, we're back in Kentucky.

We are. We've made it safely back into the country. Yeah. I didn't know with our tans if they were going to let us back in though. We had to prove it by passport, right? Yeah.

Well, I definitely didn't look like my passport when we came back. No? Now I'm starting to look like some kind of lizard. I'm peeling and all that brown color is starting to come off. Well, I have to say, I had an amazing time down there. I can't thank you and Vivian enough for inviting Mel and I to go to Mexico with you. Time of my life, my friend.

Well, we appreciate that, man. We definitely had a relaxing time as a way just for us to kind of unwind. We both really needed that time off, right?

Absolutely. I mean, COVID makes it even more necessary, right? Because you kind of feel a little shut in. You feel a little bit like, you know, you haven't been able to get out and stretch your legs and really enjoy vacation. And, you know, things were a little bit different down there. I mean, they still took care to make sure that, you know, all the people who served you and every places wearing masks and they got social distancing and everything going up. But being outside all the time, like we were. we got to really enjoy just kind of being normal people for a while. That was nice.

Yeah. That just relaxation in the pool or at the beach or whatever you wanted to do. Um, plenty of booze, right? Oh yeah. Lots of booze. I don't know if bourbon, but, uh, plenty of booze to make up for that. And it was kind of a, I wrote last week in our blog about getting away from that and taking a break from bourbon for a while. It wasn't designed as that, but it made the bourbon taste that much better when we came back to it.

So what was your non-bourbon drink of choice in the pool in Mexico?

I don't know at this time I kind of split it up. So usually I do just a cranberry vodka kind of light and refreshing and it's gotta be gray goose almost all the time. Um, but this time I did a whole bunch of bloody Marys and Coors lights.

I mean guys, gals, I'm telling you when he says a whole bunch, he means a whole bunch. Cause that trip across the pool to the bar was only about 50 yards and you made that trip. I don't know how many times, but you came back every time with a, with a Bloody Mary in one hand and two cores stacked on top of each other in your left hand. Core lights, I'm sorry.

Yeah. I mean, that's just the way I do it. Even if I had drank something else, I'd probably still have those two cores lights at the end of the day. And you know, the bartenders by the end of the 10 days know just that's what I'm going to order. They already have it set up.

Well, they say keep hydrated, right?

I was keeping hydrated.

Well, anyway, so we're back home now in Kentucky. We get to enjoy a little bit of nice weather here. It was a little bit, nice when we left. I think we have a chilly day coming up tonight, but you know, the weather's getting good. Everything's turning green. The flowers and the trees are all blooming. It was nice to get away for a little while. I'm happy to be home though. How about you?

Yeah, I was ready to kind of come back and get back to work and come back. And I know I have a plethora of projects I need to get done here at the farm. So I was excited to kind of get those started and stuff I wanted to do. Obviously we have a garden that we need to get planted. I had some trees that I want to get planted, some trees that didn't make it over the winter. I need to pull those up, probably plant something else. So there's always, you know how it is, there's always something to do.

You got to kind of pick up where you left off and catch up on a few things. But so today we're actually reviewing a couple of bourbons that we've been told in the past, not by everybody, but by a few people. They say you guys kind of, You talk about a lot of high price bourbons, but lately it's been just the opposite. Hadn't it? Yeah. We just relate. We just, uh, just reviewed Jim beam.

Yeah. Right. So that's pretty low on the spectrum. And these two are even lower on the spectrum.

These are ankle high on a shelf, aren't they?

Yeah. I don't even know. You might have to ask these to get the, you got that special bourbon in the back room, not the high stuff, but the low stuff.

Yeah. So these are bourbons that, you know, our listeners have probably seen on the shelf. They probably have wondered about them and more likely have wanted to ask about them, but nobody's really talking about them. I mean, you don't really hear a whole lot about these two bourbons, but they are widely available.

Every once in a while you hear about them. And one of the bourbons is almost brand new too. So we're going to drink the bourbon from Trader Joe's. They've got 530 stores nationwide. And then we're going to drink Earl Seller. And this is from Total Wine, just released. This is going to be their house bourbon.

This is their store brand. It is. And they're sourcing this from somebody. And we'll talk a little bit more about that later, but both of these are actually sourced whiskeys. Trader Joe's does not have a distillery nor does

Total wine. Nope, neither one of them, but they sell a lot of bourbon though.

They do. So, uh, both of these are pretty similar in proof. So which one are we going to start out with today, Mike? We're starting out with a Trader Joe. All right, let's do it. So, uh, let's get straight to it and then we'll talk a little bit about it. All right, let's do it. Sweet caramel, little red fruit.

Yeah, it's definitely what you think of as bourbon. I wouldn't be anything shocking in this. You got the oak, the vanilla, the caramel.

It does have that, uh, so in addition to like a little bit of like a cherry note there, it's also got a little bit of a raisin to it too. So it's kind of got a duality going on there between the dark and the light fruits in my mind.

I get a little bit of rich tobacco on this one.

Now this is, uh, This is a nice nose. It's not overly ethanol-y. Neither one of these are well-aged bourbons. These are not mature bourbons. These are bourbons that are just a few years old. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes.

Well, if they were well-aged, I'd have stocked up on them.

Yeah. But the nose is great on this.

Yeah. Beautiful bourbon nose on there. It's the alcohol is not a punchy to the nose or anything. It's nothing shocking about it. Like I said, um, the color on this bottle is I'd say a light Amber. It's not as light as Jim beam is.

I mean, if you look up at the shelf and you can see a bourbon in a clear bottle and it's got this color to it, you're thinking, okay, that's, that looks good. That's a good color.

If this was a scotch, I'd say that's a dark scotch.

Yeah. A little bit of cinnamon Mike. Um, and I'm getting that Oak and that you said tobacco, a little bit of leather there. So it's got some of those, it's got some of those nice barrel aged notes to it.

Yeah. Like I said, all those characters that you're looking for in a bourbon, it's going to be in this right here. Now let's go ahead and taste it first.

Kind of nutty. It is a little nutty. I'm getting a little bit of bitterness off of it though. And it's, um, it's got kind of a sort of a bitter oak to it.

Sweet. When it first hits the tongue, that nuttiness comes through a little bit of cherry juice on this. I get that bitterness on that backend a little bit kind of drying, like a dry red wine.

Yeah, this is a little sweet up front, a little dry in the back. Kind of a, again, a duality going on there. It's like a dry spice almost. Yeah. Kind of not much on the mid palette, is it?

No, and it's, it's still sitting there with me though. It's a, it's got, I'd say a medium finish on it for the, for this, this, which is pretty nice. Now people, this is 14.99 at Trader Joe's for a 90 proof bourbon.

So $15 bottle. This is what you call entry level price. That's pretty much entry level.

You get from that nine 99 to that. You get somewhere below 9.99. I don't know. I haven't seen anything like that.

So as it sits, as it, as I sit and ponder the finish on this, the bitterness kind of dissipates and that, that, that oak finish, that dry oak finish just sort of sits on the back of the pallet. A little bit of hug, not too much, but it's getting nicer. I'm wondering if we didn't let this sit in a glass a little bit because we literally opened the bottle and poured it, right? Yeah. I wonder if we didn't let this sit in the glass a little bit, if that wouldn't develop a little bit more.

Oh, I'd almost think it would. Very, very tasty. I mean, you were looking at both the bottles and researching a little bit. Now, both of the bottles have Kentucky straight bourbon on them.

Right. Exactly. Which means what? A Kentucky straight bourbon is any bourbon that has spent a minimum of two years in a new oak barrel. New charred oak barrel. So first of all, it has to be bourbon, right? That's the first qualification, which means it has to be made in the United States and it has to have at least 51% corn in it. And then it has to be placed into a new charred oak container. Most times that's just a barrel.

Yep. That makes it a bourbon.

And then the next hurdle they have to overcome is the straight bourbon, which is two years old.

Two years in that barrel, you can call it a straight bourbon. Now, but if it's four years old, they don't have to put that age on there.

Right. So any bourbon that reaches that age of four years in the barrel, you don't have to age state it any longer. So anything less than four years, they're going to have to say somewhere on the bottle, how many months or years or whatever of age it has.

So we could assume this right here, cause it doesn't have an age statement on the bottle at all. We could assume that this right here is over four years old.

One of two things. It's either over four years old or they're breaking the rules.

And we do know that Sazerac is, um,

distilling this. It seems like the general consensus that, what's the name of the distilling company? I don't know if you can read that, Mike. It's kind of small lettering there.

It's the Bourbon Square Distilling Company out of Louisville, Kentucky.

Okay, so I guess the general consensus is that Bourbon Square Distilling Company is owned by? Buffalo Trace, Sazerac. Barton maybe. And that the juice comes from the Barton Distillery in Bartstown.

What's that nuttiness that you always get from Barton?

Yeah, Barton's typically, I haven't really had any of, I guess I have had some younger Bartons. I normally get more of a rye spice, more of a bite to it. I would say this one probably has that. It's got a little bit of a rye spice bite to it. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it's from 1792.

Well, they, they do have a little bitty distillery there that could make a lot of juice. So, uh, I mean, would it be, I'll tell you what, Jim, I didn't finish my glass off. I'm going to have another little pour here of this.

You know, Mike, I'm starting to pick up a little bit of some buttery notes on it. It is developing in the glass. That bitterness is kind of gone for me now. It's not, and you know, we've, we've talked about this hundreds of times on the show, how your first bourbon of the day can present itself as a little bit of, you know, a little bitter. That may had something to do with it because this was my first bourbon of the day. But as it settles in, the tail end of this seems to be a little more pleasing for me. The finish seems to be a little bit nicer. I mean, it's not long, but it's medium and the hug, not overly, you know, boa constrictor anaconda hug, but it's kind of, it's kind of nice though.

You know, when we, when you talked about doing this episode and having something from a big box store, which Trader Joe's is not a big box store, but it really is. They got 530 locations and we talked about Sam's Club and Costco, but what we found out is you can't get member's mark, which is Sam's Club or the Kirkland brand, which is Costco here in Kentucky. And the reason you can't is I guess they got some kind of agreement with Kentucky saying they can't sell their bourbon

Some limitation that they can't do it. Yeah, I was really surprised because if you go to, let's take Costco for example, if you go to Costco, they've got their Tennessee whiskey there, they've got their scotches and their vodkas and gins and all the different things that they have contract distilled for them, but no bourbon. So something's going on there.

Well, I've had their bourbon from both the places before, uh, in Missouri and both are really decent. I mean, really, really good, but she couldn't even buy it here. Um, and not, that's not a bad thing. Cause you know, Costco is not everywhere and neither is Sam's club, but we do know that total wise has 230 stores and it, Trader Joe's has 530 stores.

So it's pretty darn sure that both bourbons we're drinking on the show today are within reach of you. They may not be right next door, but they might be in your state.

Yeah. So, yeah.

Well, Mike, you know, this one here, I think I would have to say for $15, I would not be opposed to having this on my bar. Is it a sipper? Could be, could be a sipper. If you're running low and you got to sip on something, I might just put this in my glass.

Yeah, not bad at all, right? I thought it was rather tasty for the price. You know, a lot of people, I've heard people say, Hey, don't knock that Trader Joe's bourbon. If it's coming from Barton, good on them. The only thing I would knock about this is the little sticker for the label. Some of the stuff on there is hard to read. And then the bottle is... Kind of a cheap bottle, right? Yeah, it's ugly.

It's just ugly as sin. It has the general shape of like a Stag Junior bottle, but it's not the Stag Junior bottle. Not at all. And it's a screw top.

Yeah. Which, Hey, you know, there's water screw top. Well, it was.

Yeah. Yeah. So, um, not a great presentation, but you know, they're just trying to move some juice here. They're not, they're not trying to overly impress you with a, some to show off at your bar.

Yeah.

I mean, I still, I might pour this into a canner and make it look beautiful. I think this might stand up decent in a cocktail. I think it might, cause it's got enough spiciness on it that I think it might do well in like an old fashioned. This might make a great old fashioned.

Well, I have no doubt that this is going to get drank some way, somehow maybe down by the Creek. We'll make some old fashions with it, drink it. I'm sure this will get drank though.

So this is Trader Joe's Kentucky bourbon whiskey. It's a straight bourbon. It's 90 proof. Probably Barton juice, probably produced under the Sazerac umbrella. We don't know that for sure, but that seems to be the general consensus. The quality is there. The price is great. It's an entry-level sipper, I should say.

Yeah, I'd call it all that right there. Good reason to go into Trader Joe's here in Kentucky. You have to go into a separate part of the store. It's really a separate entity to go in there and stuff, but some great prices. You might even be able to pick up some other stuff in there. Now you were telling me that they also have a weeded bourbon.

Yeah. So it's called Kentucky Best, Kentucky's Best. bourbon whiskey, and it's a weeded bourbon.

I'm sick that I couldn't find it, but I'm going to go hunting for it now.

Yeah, go hunt for it. Because from what I've heard, and I haven't had it myself, from what I've heard, it's pretty tasty. And you're saying that might be from Heaven Hill. Yeah, that one is supposed to be attributed to Heaven Hill, distilled by Heaven Hill, bottled by Luxco.

Wow. Yeah. There's a mixture there, but that might would stop, I would assume because of the new buyout by a MGP.

Yeah, it could be.

Well, on the second half listeners, we're going to try this total wine bourbon that has just been released. We're going to check it out, see how it tastes. It looks just as dark as the Trader Joe's though.

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It's called Earl Settler. Yeah. He actually, when I went in total one day and I asked about it, they pointed me at another one and then they pointed me this one. I said, Hey, what's your house bourbon? Do you guys have one yet? And he's like, yep, we just got this one. We do know it's in other states in other total wise besides ours. So it's out there. $9.99.

We are scraping the bottom of the barrel, so to speak.

This is, this is probably. I don't know. We've had some other big box bourbons, like Flat Boat from Liquor Barn. That's their exclusive brand. Yeah, that's right there.

Well, I don't want to say anything negative about it. The bottom shelf has a negative connotation to it kind of naturally, right? People think our bottom shelf, yeah, can't be that great. We just proved by the first half of the show that you can get a decent whiskey down there.

Well, that's Trader Joe though. Trader Joe, everybody knows Trader Joe. You can go in there and get some good stuff.

Yeah.

I buy food in there.

So this bottle, it's got a black label. It looks like an Ezra, an old Ezra bottle or a Jack Daniels bottle or a, so one of those square bottles with a bulb, what do you call that on the neck there? I call it a bulb. Bulb neck.

Yeah.

So it pours easy, pours quick from the well.

That one leaked easy. Cause when I took it out of the bag coming home, It blew the seal on it or something.

Actually a nice looking label on this bottle. It's got kind of a black label with early lettering, kind of a gold foil look to it. Yeah. Got a big Florida Lee on the front, um, to represent Louisville Louisville, I guess. Yeah.

It's also got that, uh, he's got the name, the name, you know, and I think of that some dude, Earl Settler, did he come here plowing in Kentucky?

Yeah. So Earl Earl was a settler here in Kentucky and he came here back in So let's make this up as we go. Came back here in 1792, settled in Shelby County. In Shelby County, right here. Yeah. And he grew corn. Well, they grow some corn. Made whiskey. North Shelby County. And, uh, but he never sold any, he drank it all himself.

He just drank it all himself.

So there's a story of Earl Settler. Um, okay. So let's get straight to this, Mike. Let's talk a little bit about, we each have it in our glass now. It's a little bit lighter in color than the, um, trader Joe's bourbon, but this one is, uh, it's only 80 proof. It's not 90 proof like the trader Joe. So it's a little bit lighter. So we're actually going down and proof.

We don't normally do that. Yeah. I misread the label, I guess.

That's all right. Um, both of them are relatively low proof, 90, 80. I don't think it's a big deal.

Well, let's notice this thing.

Boy on the nose. I'm getting, uh, I'm getting corn. Yeah.

I was going to say, uh, I'm getting kettle corn, a lot of caramel in there. A lot of sweetness.

Definitely a lot of sweet almost almost, almost a cotton candy sweetness.

Yeah.

A little light fruit on there too. Yeah. Actually, it's not a bad nose. It's a little corny, a little bit younger. So this one is a straight whiskey, so we know it's at least two years old. So when you look at the label and you see it and you say, well, where's the age statement at? You flip it around the back and small print at the very bottom of the back, it says a minimum of 24 months.

So that could have some older barrels in there, but probably not many.

Probably not. It could be blended for this profile. It could have some older stuff in it, but the youngest barrels are going to be at least 24 months old. So they're keeping to the rules here. They're doing what's, they can label it a straight whiskey because it's at least two years in the barrel. And it must be less than four, the youngest barrel, because they have to put the age statement on the label and they do. So they're following the rules. Good job, Total Wine.

Well, I mean, they got to have a house bourbon, I think something to compete with everybody else. So let's, uh, let's taste this.

All right, let's taste it. Same here. A little corn, a little sweet washes over the palette, kind of little watery, super light.

Uh, it is like you said, sweet corn to it. I don't know. It's, uh, There's a word I was looking for there. It just, it is just kind of watery. Yeah.

So there's no young bourbon offending notes to it. I mean, you can tell by the corn sweetness that it's a younger bourbon, but it doesn't offend you. It doesn't have any off notes. It was distilled by somebody that knew what they were doing. It's almost like drinking flat Coke.

It just lays flat.

Yeah. Nothing, nothing wrong with it, but at the same time, nothing exceptional about it either. Nothing great about it. Just a very basic kind of one note, two note kind of bourbon.

No spice, no Kentucky hug to this. It's a little let down, but I mean, if you gotta have it, you gotta have it 80 proof.

Um, I mean, if you're making bourbon slushies, Why not?

Yeah.

I don't mean it won't offend anybody. It won't have any off notes to get in the way. You're slushy. I think it's a, I think it's a great mixing bourbon sitting here sipping on it. Like I said, nothing that offends me.

I might even buy this is because the handle of it is a, I think like 15 bucks. I'd buy it and use it for cooking whiskey, maybe. Um, or like you said, mixing, um, you know, I like them bourbon mimosas in the morning. Put it in that it's not overpowering. You don't have to worry about the complex taste. I just, there's no spice. There's no bite there. There's very flat.

Yeah. I mean, if you're, if you're introducing somebody new to bourbon who's never had real whiskey before, this will be a gentle introduction, I think, because there's nothing here that's going to chase somebody out of the room. It's not hot. It's not overly ethanol-y. It doesn't have a spike or a burn to it. It doesn't have an off flavor. It doesn't have a medicinal note. It's just kind of.

Nah. Is that what, is that what now we do know who's making this though. We know where it's being made at. It's made by artists and distillery over in Crestwood.

Yeah. So what I, what I said earlier was, is that this has been, this has been distilled by a craftsman. There's nothing here, no notes to this that make you go, Ooh, this, this kind of went bad or something wrong or anything. There's nothing wrong with this. It just doesn't have anything to impress you. There's just, uh, what is it?

Oh man. I'd like to see where it is in like two more years or something. Um, and I'd like to see it obviously at a higher proof than 80 proof, but then it wouldn't be a $9 bottle on the bottom shelf.

Probably not. And that, you know, there's, there's a need for that out there. People are buying it all day long. There's stuff down there. They're reached down ankle level to get something off that bottom shelf.

Well, you know, I was, talking this week to somebody about when we did a review of Jim Beam, right? And Jim Beam's 80 proof. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And it's still relatively cheap. You could buy Jim Beam at Total Wine or you can buy it at Trader Joe's, I saw, for like 14 bucks. Right. So $14, but people pay twice to three times that for Basil Hayden, which is 80 proof.

Right. And honestly, the Jim Beam, and we talked about that on the show, Um, is a widely acceptable bourbon. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's got, um, it's got full bodied taste to it. It's got a lot of notes. You can start picking it apart. You can talk about, you know, it's well aged. Um, there's a lot of good things about just Jim being white label. Now it gets a lot of flack because of, you know, bottom shelf bourbons tend to get a lot of flack, but of the bottom shelf bourbons, It shines, I think.

I thought it was all right. It was nice because we hadn't drank bourbon in a while and we got to taste that. Now against the other two, against Weller 107 and the Eagle Rare, it didn't even touch them.

Right. I mean, I think when you get to $15 and below, when you get in that price range, $15 and below, a $1 difference in price can indicate a huge difference in quality and flavor. Cause it's, you know, $1 out of 15, you know, that's a lot. $1 out of 10, that's 10%.

Well, look at the price on this, you know, $5 compared, you know, $5 difference in the difference in these two bourbons we just drank. Huge. And Trader Joe, I got to give it to you. You did very fine, very respectable. out of these two, they would have worn out every time. Oh, no doubt.

No doubt. I'm trying to think about what my recommendation is on this.

I would just say pass.

Yeah, pretty much pass. I think the only reason to buy this bottle is if you're 21 years old in college and making the making slushies, bourbon slushies or something.

I guess you're going to buy it for something like that. But if I was going to do that, I'd probably just reach down for some old crow or something. Um, and a bottle of that or some ancient age or

Yeah. Now you get a bottle of ancient age 80 proof and it's just, it's just, it's just good.

Benchmark. I could just go down a line of bourbons that you could still buy at a good price and, uh, blow this out of the water.

Well, it's got its place. I think people will reach for it. They will buy it. Anything that's priced under $10 is going to get run through the scanner on the checkout.

Now they do have a bottle and bond version of this, but they were sold out. So maybe that's the difference there is the bottle and bond because you're obviously at four years old at that point. 100 proof. Yeah, I would be very interested to taste that and I might go buy a bottle. Now, you know what I say, shame on me if it bites me though, right?

Yeah. Well, I'd be interested in doing that review with you. I think, uh, like I said, this was skillfully distilled. There's nothing wrong with this. There's nothing that scares me away from it other than the fact that it's underwhelming. It has really nothing there to, I would not be inclined to pour a second, pour second class of this, particularly not in a Glencairn.

That's what we're drinking out as Glencairners today. So, um, yeah, there's nothing wrong with it. I think it's just, uh, that bottom shelf or that most people have disdain for, um, it would be a pass for me. We bought it because we wanted to check it out, tell our listeners, Hey, we do go to the bottom shelf sometimes.

And we do, we do want it. We did want to try some store brands. you know, some source door brand whiskies, um, and see, you know, how they fare. So, Hey roadies, Hey listeners. Um, yeah, give them a shot. This one, uh, maybe not.

But we still, we're going to mix this bottle. Don't, it's not going to go to waste or I'll cook with it.

There's no such thing as a drain pour in this house.

No, we'll figure out something to do with it. Um, it'll, we drink it by now and by the cat fire, make hot toddies for all I care whether you still got that Oak bottle. Yeah. And somewhere I'd put her away cause I cracked that thing, but it doesn't leak. I know I sealed it up with some beeswax.

Oh, you don't think that beeswax will affect the flavor of the whiskey?

I don't know. I just was like, Hey, I could probably, I think Oak bottle should send us another one. I always see. I don't know. Yeah.

Oh, well. All right, Mike. Well, it's been a great show. I really enjoyed going through a couple of these, uh, big box store whiskies and trying them out. I think maybe we'll keep our eyes open and, and try to have that bottle and bond on from trader Joe's.

Yeah, I think the Weeder would be from Trader Joe's if we can find that. The Weeder from Trader Joe's and the Bottle and Bond from Earl Settler from Total Wine. We'll try to find those, get them on a show and drink them and prove our worth that we do drink from the bottom of the shelf all the way to the top. Now, next week for our review, we'll be reviewing a new product from Barton 1792. I'm excited to try it. We're going to step it up a notch listeners. Um, back into that one notch. What a couple of notches, Jim. Yeah.

Okay. We're not going to knee high. We're going to about chest level.

Okay. We're not, I did, uh, we did have a friend ask us, uh, about the price of two pappy bottles. Um, and Vivian asked me if I wanted to buy one of them and I was like, no, I'm all good in life.

Great whiskey, wonderful whiskey, delicious whiskey, overpriced.

I'm not paying $1,299 for it.

As soon as, uh, as soon as one of our friends that own a liquor store gave us a call and say, we saved one for you, we'll run down and get it.

Yeah, that might be all right. I might run down there and bite it at MSRP, but $1,200, $1,400 for one at a 10 or 12 year, I can't afford that. Nor I think should anybody want to bite at that.

But you know, if you're out there and you're kind of chasing the unicorns and you feel like it's your deal and what you need to do, and you know, it's all relative, Mike, to the size of your wallet, right?

I guess my, my wallet's not that fat. So, yeah.

Well, I can't blame somebody that's making seven figures if they want to buy a pappy. So whatever I'm going to buy a new steel weed eater. That's what I'm going to spend my wallet money on.

That's my, I think that's Vivian's actually buying that for me. Hopefully that'd be nice. That'd be nice. All right. Well, Mike, great show. Where can people find us on social media? So you guys can find us on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. pretty easy. We also have a private Facebook group called The Bourbon Roadies. Jim, what do you got to do to be part of that?

So, you know, go to our Facebook page, The Bourbon Road, and on that page you'll see a link for a private group called The Bourbon Roadies. Click on that to join and you'll get presented with three questions. Pretty simple stuff, you know. Are you 21? Do you like bourbon? And do you agree, once accepted, to play nice with everybody and not come down on people about what they're drinking, right? Just accept everybody for what they like.

Yeah, just put your birthdays in there, your anniversaries, your celebrations in life, your achievements in life. new babies, new grandbabies, retirement, whatever you want to put in there. We'd like to see that stuff. What bottle did you buy or was gifted to you for that occasion? A lot of people buy bourbon for each other for those kind of occasions. We'd like to see that. Yeah.

I mean, if you're tired of the haters, you're tired of being in another bourbon group somewhere. We'd like a lot of, Mike, you're in a lot of bourbon groups.

I used to be at 54, or it was the last time I started to count.

So there's nothing wrong with all them bourbon groups out there, but every now and then the people that are in the groups can get a little out of hand and come down on somebody because they're drinking something that, well, maybe not be a unicorn or something else. If you're tired of that and you don't want to deal with that anymore, come to the bourbon roadies. I mean, we drink it all here and proved it today with this bottom shelf stuff. We drink it all.

Yeah. No doubt. So we also have our webpage. You can go to that, the bourbonroad.com. Check out our articles, check out our reviews, buy some swag from us on there. We've got a little bit of that. Hopefully this summer we'll add some more cool stuff. Maybe some coins, some challenge coins for people. Yeah, challenge coins. A roadie challenge coin. So you roadies out there can have your own challenge coin, cover up your glass with it, and maybe some roadie t-shirts.

Yeah, I think that'll be well accepted. All right, well, Mike, we do two shows a week. We do a short episode every Monday where we review a bottle. Normally, it's a craft distillery. We like to give these young craft distilleries kind of a leg up and introduce them to our listeners. But every now and then, we'll review another bottle like, you know, Jim Beam, white label. We did that last week. But every Wednesday we do a longer version show like today's show where we kind of do a little bit more of a deep dive into a bottle expression. We have a guest on sometimes a little bit longer format where we like to go into a little bit more detail. Uh, we'd love you to listen to both shows every week. We also like to hear the feedback, right, Mike?

Yeah. So we like reviews. We love to hear what you got to say about us. But if you really like the show, go up there, hit that subscribe button. So your phone, your radio, whatever you're listening to us on, we'll say, hey, the Bourbon Realm's got a new episode out. And then go down and hit that review button. Give us that five star.

We love that five star.

Just tell us what you love about it and hit it. Very easy to take you less than a minute to write. Unless you want to write a novel about us, we like that stuff too. We really appreciate it. It helps us open doors. It tells people in the industry, hey, these guys are really liked.

You know, Mike, we've been saying to our listeners on every show, reach out to us. Let us know what you think. How can we improve? What can we do better? What'd you like about it? Is there something you'd like to hear? Blah, blah, blah, on and on and on. We do hear from people on a regular basis. And we appreciate those people that take time to write us a note. If you want to reach out to Mike or I, you can always do it on the website through the contact us form. Or you can reach out to me on Instagram at jshannon63 and Mike is one big chief. We'd love to hear from you. We will see you down.

Bye!