165. Country Smooth American Straight Bourbon 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 craft distillery Monday. We're at the new bar, finally.

Man, I'm going to tell you what. Listeners, Jim put up a bar. It is stocked, I'd say, with about 150 bottles. Am I pretty close to that? Yeah, I'd say it's about 150 or so. Those poor studs back there are screaming. I can hear them. A lot of whiskey on that shelf.

Yeah, it's a process. You can't just throw it up. You got to take it one step at a time and think about what the next thing is. Otherwise you just end up with clutter. So I'm not in any big hurry to actually finish it, but I would like to. to get some decorations up, you know, and some lights and stuff, but that's, that's on down, you know, on down road. But do you ever get in a hurry, Jim? I don't ever get in a hurry.

You wouldn't win a marathon. You'd just be like, ah, I've done this.

So who do we have on the show today, Mike?

Well, fitting, it's hay cutting season on Jep the bin farm. Hay's being baled as we speak right now. They're making square bales. But our good friends at Country Smooth, they said, hey, we're going to let you guys be some of the first people to try our bourbon when it comes out. And true to their word, they sent us a couple bottles. Not just one bottle, two bottles, one for each of us. And a nice note, right? That's right. From Lori Karchus. She sent us both a nice note. So today we have country smooths, small batch, American straight bourbon whiskey, 86 proof, distilled in Indiana, bottled in Tennessee. We could take a stab at where it's distilled and probably where it's bottled at. So, for people that don't know, Lori, she's supposedly the first woman to found a whiskey company by herself.

Founder and CEO, the first of her kind.

Yeah. Out in California, Orange County, she's big into country music. She's big into the country lifestyle, riding horses. Most of the photos you'll see her out of campfire or listen to country music or on a ranch somewhere. So she's very into that lifestyle and her whiskey kind of fits that lifestyle.

And it's been a while, it's been a minute since I had their American whiskey, but I have fond memories. You made a bunch of drinks out of it, didn't you? I did. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah, absolutely. I have fond memories and I was glad to get this bottle. And like you said, we got a nice private note from Lori in with the bottles and that was a kind of nice touch.

Yeah, it's nice whenever you get somebody like that, that pays enough attention to the podcast. She pays attention to what we're doing and it feels like she's, you know, kind of part of the family. She knows what we're doing. She keeps in touch with us. So, yeah, I'm excited. Let's go ahead and nose this thing.

Let's get to it. All right. That corn is on the nose for sure.

We don't know what the age on this is, do we?

Well, it does have an age statement on the back. It says age at least two years, but we know that already because it's a straight bourbon. So straight automatically means two years. Were it over four years, they wouldn't be required to put any age statement on the bottle. So I'm going to say this is probably likely greater than two, but less than four. But it could be greater than four. And they just chose to state it at greater than two years.

Very corn forward, I think, for a two-year-old.

A little bit of honey in there. I tend to agree with you. A little corn forward. But it's kind of soft.

Yeah, I think like corn pop cereal, a little bit of sweetness to it. Not like I said, honey. I wouldn't say honey nut Cheerios or anything like that, but those corn pop cereal. Maybe honeysuckle is what I'm getting off that.

Yeah, it's more of a kind of a woody floral for me. I think it's I get the honey Mike, I get the honey, I get the honey sweetness. I get the corn pops you said, absolutely. But I'm searching for that sort of earthy woody note that I'm getting on the nose there. Maybe a little bit of hay. Yeah, yeah, I think that's probably it. A little bit of, yeah, a little bit of hay.

Let's taste it. Let's do it.

Well, that's really nice for a younger whiskey. It's definitely less corn on the palate than there was on the nose.

I'd agree with you. It's kind of hit you with that sweet spice right on the front end. A little bit of kick for 86 proof. I'm shocked by this. This drink's a little bit higher than 86.

Yeah. I think it's got a nice, I'll just call it an even palate. I don't think it's, it's not too much upfront. It's not too sweet. It's not too, there's not much bitterness on the back end. It just, it's kind of an easy whiskey.

Yeah, I would say it's a, this right here would be that spring or summer sipper right here. At 86 proof, you would expect that. I do get that cereal note on it still though, on the, on the palate. A little bit of the spice though now too.

A little bit of, uh, ride notes there. Are you getting any of that?

Yeah, just a tad bit. Not super spicy, not overpowering me. Like I said, it's a light sipper. This might go well in a summer cocktail too.

Yeah.

So, do you know the price of this, Mike? So, it's very hard to find a price on it. When we had them on before, they said they wanted to stay under that $30 mark. So, I would think it'd be under $30 for an 86 proofer. That wouldn't be bad at all. when you compare it to a Basil Hayden that's cost you what? $39.99. Yeah.

So, you know, sub $30. I remember the American whiskey had a pretty attractive price tag on it. And if they hold true on the bourbon here too, I think that that'd be good for them. Let's kind of boil this down a little bit. I mean, the finish is kind of short. It is a younger whiskey. It doesn't really take over the back of the palate very much and you don't expect it to. But it's got a nice, in my mind, it's got kind of a balanced palate, a little light on the back end, a little bit of rice spice in the middle, you know, up front, not too much sweetness. I don't get as much corn. on the pallet as I did on the nose. You said you still picked up the corn pops a little bit.

Yeah, I'm still picking up that just a tad bit, picking up that spice. This is right where it should be for this price. You compare it to some other bourbons that are craft around this. This proof, they're not asking 60 bucks for it. They're asking the right amount, I think.

Yeah. I think this plays well as a mixer. I think you can sip it if you like. It is smooth and it doesn't really attack you at all. If you've got a new bourbon drinker, this wouldn't throw them off the game too much, I think. This would be a nice introduction to bourbon. It's kind of a lore-proof. It's got a smoother, well-balanced character. Yeah. I would say not over ethanol-y, you know?

Yeah. Great spring or summer sipper, right? If you were looking for that, then this would be right up the alley. It's got the kind of a straw color, you know, I'd say. Golden. No amber to it for sure.

Well, we encourage you to check out Country Smooth. Find out if they're in your market. CountrySmooth.com, I think, is what it is. And check them out if they're in your market. I would suggest picking up a bottle at that price point. Why not?

It's not bad. If you can get around 25 to 30 bucks, somewhere in that range, it's definitely worth a buy.

It's kind of a sharp bottle and you can feel free to mix it, feel free to drink it straight. I think it goes okay either way.

I think this fits all those categories. It's nice to try something different, get out of your wheelhouse, try something that you haven't seen on the shelf before. just get out there and sip on different whiskeys. If you're somebody's house and they have a bottle of it, say, hey, can I try that? I'd like to sip on it. If you see it at a bar, why not? Why not grab a pour?

And kudos to Lori for being the first female founder and CEO of a whiskey company here in America. That's pretty awesome. Ladies, get out there and start your whiskey companies. Or start drinking whiskey.

Or start drinking whiskey. Well, they already drink a lot of whiskey. Well, they do, yeah.

We know that from our private Facebook group. Sure, absolutely.

So Mike, where can people find us on the internet? So you can find us on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Twitter, YouTube. I don't know what else there is out there, Jim. We try to be on everything. It's very difficult, but we are on all those. Check those out. Check out our posts. We try to do a post once a day. Sometimes life gets annoying. We don't get to it that day, but we try to be on there every day and communicate with our listeners. You can also check out our private Facebook group, like I was talking about, The Bourbon Roadies. You got to answer three questions to be in there. Are you 21? Do you like bourbon? And do you agree to play nice because we don't do what? We don't tolerate any rudeness at all. We're just one big happy family.

Yeah. Birthdays, celebrations. Yep. Whatever life events, whatever they are, get in there, share your pictures, share your pictures of bottles and glasses. Or your new bar you just put up. Or your new bar that you just put up. Yeah. I need to get around to that. Yeah. All right, well, we do two shows a week. We do, like today, our craft distillery Monday episode. Usually 15 to 20 minutes, we take a quick look and do a review of a single bottle, single expression. Try to give you the low down so you know if you need to go out and pick it up or not. Then every Wednesday, we'll do a full length episode where we'll have somebody on the show, we'll get out to a distillery, we'll do an interview. And sometimes it's just Mike and I deep diving on something, a few expressions. We're always having fun though. So you want to check out both episodes every week.

Yeah. And we've been back on the road. So those episodes are fixing to come out.

Yeah. So we've got several episodes from your East Coast trip.

East Coast trip to Virginia. Got some good episodes coming out. tomorrow after this episode, Jim, we're going to be doing a giveaway. Listeners, you don't want to miss this giveaway. It'll be on Instagram and on Facebook in our bourbon roadies. You can be entered on Instagram, but if you're part of the bourbon roadies, you get that extra entry for doing certain stuff. So you want to make sure you're a roadie. You want to make sure you're checking us out on Instagram and following us and you'll see that giveaway. It'll be a really nice setup of stuff, a candle, a tasting kit. some glasses to go with that tasting kit. 25th, you'll see the giveaway. Make sure you participate in those giveaways. I might fill up some glass and send it out with those, Jim, just so they could have with that tasting kit four different or five different samples of something. There you go. So make sure you're checking that out listeners. You do not want to miss it. We we we do share some bourbon and whiskey. So if you want those angel shares, you got to participate.

All right. Well, Mike, we always love to hear from our listeners. We love it when somebody sends us a direct message either on Facebook or Instagram or they send us an email at jim at the bourbonroad or mike at the bourbonroad.com and we love to get those suggestions. People often have good suggestions for us. We don't get slammed too much but every now and then we make a mistake and they'll point it out to us. But we love to hear ideas. Who should we have on the show? Which bottle should we review? What kind of comparison should we do? Should we do like the best five bottle and bond bottom shelfers or something like that? We love hearing from you guys. So make sure you reach out to us. Somebody did reach out to us.

Erin from Illinois, she reached out to me and she said, one of our best episodes, Jim, was what bourbon makes Coke taste better. She said that's what got her interested in our podcast. Oh, cool. I'm glad to hear that. So, Aaron, thank you so much. Sorry it took so long to get you your bottle of our first pick, but you got it now. We loved the post you did for us in the video. We really enjoyed that, so thank you so much. Thank you so much for the great feedback. That just tells me and Jim that we need to do another show like that.

Absolutely. Laurie, thank you very much for sending us a bottle of Country Smooth. We thoroughly enjoyed reviewing it. We look forward to seeing you when you're in Louisville, Kentucky and touring the Bourbon Trail. We'd love to hang out with you a little bit. As I mentioned earlier, you know, you can reach out to Mike and I. Probably the best way is on Instagram. I'm JayShannon63. 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 are for 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.