161. Hillrock Double Cask Rye Whiskey Review

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 Craftist Dillery Monday. We are sitting at Jephthah Bend Farm once again, kicked back in front of the fireplace. No fire today because it's almost 70 degrees outside.

That's nice. It rained yesterday. this morning, I was a little worried about it. It's not damp outside, you know, it's still kind of, I wouldn't just damp.

Yeah.

Cloudy, but around one o'clock sun started peeking out, burning off those clouds and it's absolutely gorgeous outside right now.

Yeah. So we had opening day at Churchill downs. Yeah. I think it was yesterday. Was it? Yeah. Yesterday. And I had my app out on the phone. I was going to town. I won two out of the three races I bid on. I'm kind of excited that the tracks open and people can come out now. It's under some sort of a limited access, but how awesome is it to start to see things kind of return to a little bit of normalcy.

It's a little bit, I guess me and Vivian had talked about going to the track, right? And I think tickets are out and open a box. I think it was like 80 bucks a seat, which that's not bad. That's either. Wednesday or Thursday, I think.

Yeah. So next Saturday is Derby day. Yeah. So we're getting close.

It is a Louisville is a buzzing right now with all kinds of the head thunder. They had their marathon this weekend. So, you know, next weekend is the Oaks and Derby and yeah.

Derby and all the other things that, that happened around it, limited, limited access, but still it's happening. So that's a good thing. Well, let's get. talking a little bit about what's on the show today. So what bottle do we have?

So we got Hill rock farms on, um, pretty special bottle to the craft distillery world, right? Um, Dave Pickerel, the legendary master distiller at Makers Mark. He was there for 14 years and then left and he was almost like Johnny Appleseed.

He went around the country helping to sprout new distilleries.

Yeah. He just, you'll go anywhere almost and people know his name.

So instead of spreading seeds, he was spreading knowledge.

Yeah. And he was obviously good at it.

Yeah.

But this, I believe this was one of his last right here. Um, they still say he was the master distiller there, which is very nice. They have his name on the bottle, pay homage to him. Um, my hats always, I've never drank anything that he had to put his fingerprint on that didn't taste really, really good.

Yeah. Yeah. I've got great expectations here. Um, but so Hillrock, let's talk a little bit about Hillrock themselves. So Hillrock is based in Hudson Valley, New York. Yep. Okay. So it's a Hudson Valley and this is a, a true grain to glass distillery, right? I mean, they grow, they plant and grow everything that goes into their bottle.

Yeah, that's a, it's a true estate up there, uh, founded in 1806 by a revolutionary war captain. Um, kind of made his way up there. Probably was granted that land to him after the war. I would imagine we didn't do that much research on them, but, uh, Kathy from there, she was, she's one of the co-founders owners. Gracious sent us two bottles to do reviews on and then do a full episode with them. Sent us this and I knew. I went down to the basement, I was looking through bottles and I was like, I know Jim's going to love this thing because it is a double cast rye whiskey Jim.

Oh, loving it.

Loving it. 100% rye. So how can you beat that? Right? Cannot beat it. You know what's in there. This is some dark juice in the glass.

Yeah. It's pretty deep dark. It's got a nice red hue to it too. I like that. So let's go back to the fact that these guys are growing everything. So the rye they're growing is being grown on their farm. They also have, and there's no malted barley in this, but kind of an interesting note, you know, they actually have their own malting floor there. So they're actually malting their own barley. That's pretty cool. I wouldn't be surprised if we might ask them, they might be malting their own rye as well.

Maybe I would kind of expect that out of this right here. Now this right here, the bottle itself is, It is a stunning bottle. I mean, it's a square kind of shape, but the glass is thick. Um, it has their seal on it. Now what's their seal say Jim? It says Aqua Vitae. And what's that mean? Water of life. Is that Irish or is that Latin?

No, it's Latin. I don't know what Irish would be. I don't know. Come on now, David, like Shannon, you're supposed to know these things. I don't know because it's kind of, you know, that's a little bit hard. Are we supposed to go old Gaelic? Are we supposed to speak English?

Well, he could be speaking Nordic too, cause they, they influence a lot on England and, um, and Ireland, but from Hudson Valley, I liked that they have the water of life on there. Cause whiskey is the water of life.

So this is allowed to reach full mature age and then it's transferred into a second new oak barrel that's charred. Yep. And it's allowed to spend some time in that second cask. So we know what happens when you do that, right? Man, it just sucks all the goodness out. It pumps up that sweetness a little bit, doesn't it?

Yeah. You know, I'm excited about this too. You know, I'm not the right guy, but I have a great love for rye whiskey. Um, great respect for it. And this right here, I don't think we've ever had a double cast rye whiskey on the show before. Not that I can really remember.

Yeah. The listeners correct us if we're wrong, but I think you're probably right.

And I don't know if we've ever had a rye this dark before. This is, you're right. It's a red hue to it. Yeah. Let's check it out. Nellis knows this thing, Jim.

Wow. It's a very sweet and pepperminty and spicy.

I would almost thought this was finished like in a port wine barrel. Yeah.

It does have that fruity note to it though, doesn't it? That kind of that, I want to say fruity. It's yeah. Port wine kind of nose. Yeah. Like a dark grape juice or, um, dark fruit, dark cherries, plums, whatever you want to say.

It's a dark fruit that stone fruit, I guess.

Yeah. Now that, now that we look at the color and we see that reddish hue to it, and then we get that nose off of it and we get that sort of, that saw almost a port wine nose off of it. I would, I would be easily going with the port wine finished, but it's not.

The oak is definitely there in this too. Just some little bit of rich leather in that nose. I think very beautiful. I did. Or this is going to be hard to beat you.

Let's check it out. Cheers. There's a great amount of sweetness up front right when it hits you. Caramel, a little bit of anise, a little bit of conifer, some pepper as it washes back across the tongue. It hits the back and I'm getting the oak. And it's a little tannic, but not too bad. But it's a nice balance, I think, between the sweetness and the oakiness on the tail end.

It's hard to say you're wrong on any of that stuff that you just said about this. That fruit is just carrying over the tongue just a tad bit of spice. I wouldn't call it black pepper spice, but it's just a little bit of, it's almost like a sweet spice to me.

You know those little dried ginger candies? There's dried, dried ginger slices with the crystallized sugar on the outside. That kind of reminds me a little bit of that too. Very sweet, but gingerly up front.

So candy ginger.

Yeah. Candy ginger. Definitely the oak plays a big part on the finish on this whiskey. You might even say that it's a little on the bitter side, but it's so wonderfully sweet up front and it's got that nice peppery sort of lead into the tail end of the finish, back into the palate. that I'm going to call that a very balanced drink, very, very balanced. And that the little bit of bitter oak that I'm getting on the end is, it's okay. It's actually very good. I like that. Hard to believe that this is nonny proof. Yeah. It drinks higher than that. It doesn't attack you with ethanol by any means. It doesn't taste like a, like a foolproof rye, but it does taste like something that's north winter proof.

I think this has that medium to long finish. Uh, that cherry is just kind of staying with me. The Oak is there. You know, I could tell it's double cacks now. Oh man.

This is, yeah, it's kind of a cherry tobacco on the tail end, isn't it?

What was those? Uh, those little cigars that you smoked back in the day. Oh, Swisher Sweets. Swisher Sweets. Yeah. You could get the cherry flavor once.

Oh, this is a beautiful whiskey, Mike. This is a wonderfully crafted whiskey. It's very delicious. I'm going to say that it's well balanced. It's got exactly what I think it's got what it takes to please people of different palates like you and I. So it's got something for you and it's got something for me and the two come together and give you a nice balanced taste. And I like that.

For me, this, this is a buy all day long. I'd probably go out and buy another bottle of it if you can find it. Um, and I've seen it on your shelf here in Kentucky, $80 MSRP. Okay. So it's a little pricey. It is.

It's a beautiful bottle, gold foil writing on it. Definitely would be a showpiece on your bar. The flavor is very good. You could pour this for just about anybody who visits your bar and I think they would be impressed by it. Well-crafted.

I'd tell you this. If you're looking to gift a whiskey to somebody and you really love them, I'd buy a bottle of this for them. You want to introduce somebody to rye whiskey. This is a rye whiskey to introduce somebody to rye whiskey. You want to sit around and just drink some rye whiskey with friends. This is that rye whiskey right here. $80. Hey, it's got Dave Pirkle's name on it first off.

Well, and you know, $80 isn't what $80 used to be, right? I mean, not in the bourbon world.

Not really.

Um, you know, well in the rest of the world, $80 still means a lot, but in bourbon whiskeys, unfortunately with the pricing increases that have been coming, it's buying less and less every day, isn't it?

Yeah, this is, man, like I said, I can drink this all day long and this is a rye whiskey guys, everybody out there now, still the Weedy King of Kentucky all day long, but pretty special, right? This might be one of the best rye whiskeys I've ever had before. And that's saying a lot, cause we've, we've tried some really, really good rise before, uh, from free ranch. Um, our friends down in Leapers fork makes a really good rye whiskey. I don't know. This is, this is up there, Jim.

Yep. So Hill rock double, what do they call it? Double cast rye, um, double cast rye 90 proof out of, uh, Hudson Valley, New York. Hudson Valley, New York. Well-crafted rye whiskey, 100% rye. We're not sure of the age statement here, but they do make everything on site. It's 100% ground to glass production there. And this is definitely a whiskey that you could share with your very best friends or you can gift a bottle, like Mike said. Definitely like to see one of these on my bar.

Now, have you ever been up there to the Hudson Valley?

I have. I used to live very near there, yeah.

Stunningly beautiful. Different than most people would probably think. If you sail up the Hudson River there and keep going past New York, just keep going. You'll see West Point on the banks of the Hudson River up there. I mean, that's the Hudson Valley up in that area. Very, very beautiful. Um, some of the nicest homes, probably in America or up there.

It's a gorgeous place. Absolutely beautiful.

Well, Mike, where can people find us? So you can find the bourbon road on tech talk. You can find us on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, heck, whatever comes out next. We'll be on there too. We'll try to be, we won't do Snapchat though. Um, No, no little dog faces for us. But you can find us on all that right there. We're also on Facebook. Like I said, we have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies. Jim, what do you got to do to be a roadie?

Well, when you find that button on our Facebook page, it says the bourbon roadies private group. You click on it. It'll ask you three questions. I want to make, we want to make sure you're 21 that you understand you're getting yourself into a bourbon group. Cause we're going to talk about bourbon and that when you're in there, you're going to play nice. Cause we just want one big happy family.

Yeah, we just don't want anybody to be rude to anybody else in there. We want everybody to play nice. Uh, people from all walks of life in there, um, drinking all kinds of different whiskey from the bottom of the shelf to the top of the shelf. Um, you go visit a restaurant, you think it's a good restaurant celebrating with a friend that you haven't seen in a long time. Put those photos in there. If you're drinking whiskey, we want to see it. We want to talk about it. Um, great group.

Well, we do two shows a week. Every Monday we do a craft distillery episode, like today's episode with Hill Rock, where we feature an expression from an up-and-coming craft distillery or a well-established craft distillery, or even sometimes a super well-established big boy. But, you know, we always like to feature one bottle every week, usually a short show like this, about 15 minutes. And then on Wednesday, we'll come at you with a full-length episode of about an hour where we'll take a deep dive on a group of expressions or have a guest on the show. It's always something exciting. We'd love to have you listen to both shows every week in order to make sure you don't miss one. What do they need to do, Mike?

Well, you want to go up there and hit that subscribe button. hit that subscribe button. It'll tell you, hey, these two jokers, these two bears are gonna drink some whiskey today. They're gonna tell you the truth, sit down and just shoot the shit with you. They are just two normal fellas, but you're gonna get to know about that show. Then you wanna scroll down, hit that five star review. We would appreciate it for sure. That opens those doors for us, gets us great guests on. People send us, great whiskey like Hill Rock did, this beautiful bottle of just amazing double cast rye whiskey. We get to get bottles like that and we get to share our experience with you.

Absolutely. Well, Mike and I would love to hear from you. We do hear from you all the time. We get messages on social media. We get messages through our website. We get messages by email. Some of them are good and some of them are slapping us on the wrist and say, do better next time. That's okay. We like to hear it. But we'd love to hear from you, so make sure you reach out to us. Probably the best way, though, is on Instagram, and you can reach me at jshannon63. I'm OneBigChief. And we will see you down the Bourbon Road. You know, you can't drink whiskey without glassware, and Mike and I are extremely pleased to have a sponsor like Premium Bar Products. Premium Bar Products offers direct to consumer, the finest whiskey glasses, cocktail glasses, and bar tools with your own personal engraving. I mean, you can write anything you want on these glasses, anything from a company logo to a personal statement, and there are no minimum orders. Their direct consumer platform offers you the opportunity to purchase small quantities of your favorite glass shapes that enhance the pleasure of enjoyment and drinking a whiskey and make it all very positive. They offer the absolute finest trending and handmade classes as well as a comprehensive range of styles and all of their items have been designed with purpose, practicality and longevity in mind. So if you're a bourbon or whiskey group and you need custom logos, you need to reach out to premium bar products. If you're an individual, you just want a few for your bar to impress your friends, to give out as gifts, you need to call Premium Bar Products. They need to be your one and only source for custom glassware. I can tell you right now, the Bourbon Road, that's who we use. Janie and Carson and the team there at Premium Bar Products will take care of you. They'll treat you like family and they'll take care of you with every order.