167. Legends Barrel Proof Wheated Bourbon 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. But before we get on with the show, we'd like you to take a few minutes and recognize the fact that today is Memorial Day. It's a day in which we pause and we reflect on the sacrifices that were made in the 245 years that our nation's been in existence. 1.2 million Americans have given the ultimate sacrifice. either securing our freedom or maintaining that freedom and that's a lot of lives that's a lot of love given to a nation that is so deserving and so giving to its people we want to make sure we take the time to recognize even though You know, we're all having a great time. It's a wonderful time to celebrate and enjoy this freedom, spend time with family, spend time with friends, raise a glass, take a moment, and remember those who have given the ultimate sacrifice that we can enjoy what we do today. Hello, everybody. I'm Jim Shannon. I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is The Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, we have another Craft Distillery Monday, once again, at Jim's Basement Bar. Yeah, it's looking good. We've pulled out a bottle today, actually a bottle that was sent from a distillery in Georgia.

Yeah, Cumming, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. So, we've had Georgia Whiskey before, a couple different companies that have sent us stuff and we tend to like it, you know? But this is from legends. You know I'm excited about this one. Why is that, Jim? Well, it's a weeded burp. I mean, you were commenting the label is kind of confusing because it's got a green label and most green labels except for one green label is a what?

It's a rye.

Yeah. Well, I mean, except for the one, you know, the Special Reserve. A granddaddy. Granddaddy of green labels, right? Yeah, a granddaddy of weeded bourbon. But this has a green label. Maybe they're trying to throw back to that, I guess. This is 115 proof.

They're calling it through barrel strength. Yeah, that's pretty high proof for a weeded bourbon. Yeah, I'm trying to think. You had asked me this question earlier. Do I know any weeded bourbons that are higher than 115 proof? And I don't.

I'd say Wilderness Trail, you find a pick. Yeah. Makers Mark might have something that high range like that. The cask strength is going to be higher than that. Well, there's full proofs at 114, so it's close. So, there are some out there. So, this is right in that range. We know this is a straight bourbon whiskey. It's not age stated, so we know it's more than four years old.

Assuming they're following all the rules, and I would hope that they are. It's labeled as a straight bourbon, but there's no age statement on it anywhere, which means it's got to be over four years old. So, a weeded bourbon over four years, 115 proof out of Georgia.

Now, their spirits USA is their... brand, and their brand of whiskey is legends. Okay.

One of the things I noticed on here is they've got quantum purity. They've got a quantum purity process that's a patented process. I don't know anything about that. See it on the bottle, saw it on the website, not a lot of information on it. We'll come back folks at a later date and tell you when and how we know more about it. Is that like quantum physics? I don't know. It's kind of a neat logo. But, you know, this is a very, very clear liquid. Very crystal clear. I would say light amber.

Yeah, light amber. And that's why I was saying that, you know, four, maybe five years old, I would think. We could be totally wrong on that.

Well, I'm pretty excited to taste it, Mike. So let's get right to it. Let's check out the nose on this.

Right off the bat, I'm getting that honeysuckle, that floral. Not a whole lot of corn in there.

No, no, but definitely a little bit of caramel vanilla but that's all backed up by that. You could say honeysuckle, I'll go for it. I'm not a flower guy but yeah, I'm getting... floral notes there, a little bit of spice, not too much.

You know, I was driving my tractor to my neighbors yesterday, Jim. Yeah. And I was over there picking up horse manure.

Yeah.

I know people are thinking you're going to say horse manure. I'm not going to say horse manure. I was over there picking up horse manure. He takes and mucks his stalls and then he puts it into a compost pile and he tills it up with pop soil and I use it for my garden and I was planting potatoes. But it's probably quarter mile down the road and honeysuckle right now smells really good. So I'm driving along and I catch a big whiff of that because it was a hot humid day here until yesterday and I caught that whiff and that just reinforced that smell to me. So I definitely get that honeysuckle in here.

Yeah, it's light and airy. It's not overly sweet on the nose though.

Now I get a little bit of Not mint, but some type of spice. Maybe that's the barrel spice I'm getting from this.

Light and airy. You know, it's that note of lightness and coolness. Spare mint? It could be a little bit of mint. I don't know which one, but again, it's cool and refreshing and light is the impression that it gives me. Let's taste it. Cheers. Cheers. Now, they're that sweet. Yeah. Boom, boom. I had no clue from the nose that it was going to come hit the palate with that amount of sweetness, but it's a syrupy sweetness.

Almost maple syrup, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It's a very viscous to me. You said oily. That viscous, it's good. A lot of barrel spice on this. It's like that Pop Rocks we're always talking about.

So the barrel's contributing spice to this, no doubt. We're talking about a weeded bourbon. So in a weeded bourbon, we're dealing with corn, 51% or greater. The flavoring grain being wheat. And then some small percentage, I'm sure, of malted barley to kick off that process in the fermenters. But that spice that's coming from the barrel has to be.

This is a pretty good weeded bourbon. 115 proof. I really like this, Jim.

Yeah, I'd have to say that I'm pretty impressed with it. It's got a lot going on in the back and in the finish. And then all that Kentucky hug is starting to kick home, right? Definitely. So this is definitely not a sweet mash, right? Probably not. Well, I'd be surprised if it were, as this has got quite a bit of Kentucky hug to it.

Well, Georgia hug, right? I love it. Maybe something down there in Georgia that's got some magic and they figured out that magic. You know, in a hot Georgia sun down there, I think they get a little bit of more heat than we do. So.

Yeah, we're getting that sweetness up front, that syrupy sweetness. It's thick. Maple, you called out maple syrup. I'm going to buy into that 100%.

You know what I'm thinking about this? We both like pecan pie. Yeah. I get a little bit of pecan pie on this. You're getting some nuttiness on it? Yeah, just a tad bit of nuttiness, but I'm talking about that syrup. Is it Cairo syrup? Carro syrup is like corn syrup, just a little bit of that with it. It's a little bit thicker, but you know what I'm talking about? Not the pecan so much, but the other stuff in the pecan pie. Now, pecans are pretty big in Georgia, right? Yeah, but I think they call it pecan. Pecan. I had somebody the other day said, you know what the difference between a pecan and a pecan is? What's that? They said, well, you pee in a pecan. All right. You never heard of that before, Jim?

No, no, I never heard of that before. An old lady said that to me. So I'm starting to get a little bit of the nuttiness now. It's a, and again, man, I'm terrible. Which nut? Okay. I'm just going to, yeah. Nutty. There's a little bit of nuttiness there. Going back to the nose and revisiting it after tasting it. I'm getting butterscotch. I could get that too.

I mean, this is a, This is just delicious. And to be on, it's kind of unfair because I am just a weeded bourbon nut, right? I just dig them all. I haven't found a weeded bourbon I haven't loved yet. And for me, it's very hard to be nonpartial to a weeded bourbon. And to be truthful, I didn't know what to expect from this bottle. We'd freshly cracked it open today and said, hey, let's do it. And I didn't know what to expect from a young company with a weeded bourbon.

Yeah, so it says on the bottle, a smoothless like unlike any other barrel proof bourbon is possible because of our blending of traditional aging and 21st century quantum purity patented technology. Enjoy with friends as life is just too short. Cheers. That's Michael Gerard, the founder.

Well, we're, we're enjoying it with friends right now. Absolutely. For sure. It's a, I, this is a by all day long. Now 8199 that's from Total Wine. little high on a spectrum because you could buy a cask strength makers 46 for right around 56, 60 bucks. This is a craft distillery. It is a craft distillery. So they're not maker's mark. I buy into that. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't mean they're not able to produce the number of barrels it takes to get that price point down that far, but they are out there exploring and trying new things. I'm not sure. Like I said before, what this quantum purity is. would be interested to know more about it. But I will tell you this, it's a beautiful bottle. It's a great looking whiskey. Uh, the label is spot on. Nice. I'd love to see this on my bar, but I'm sure I'll leave it here for you. Are you really? Yeah.

That's hard for me.

I'm surprised. I usually get left the rise, but this time a weeded whiskey. Well, I have to have something when I come over to drink.

Well, I got a few welders up there for you. I don't know. Now, we were talking about price, Jim. If somebody can't get their hands on a welder foolproof, Don't be dismayed that, hey, I can't get my hands on that. Because they are very hard to get. Go out there and find something like this right here. This is going to cost you about half of what a well or foolproof is going to cost anyways. So why not pick up a craft distillery? Support a small craft distillery there in Georgia. Don't chase that well or foolproof.

Well, I would like to see this as it grows in maturity and gets a little bit older, and I'm sure they'll have some special releases in the future. This, in fact, already is at a limited release. They're barrel-proof, so maybe they're going to have some of this same whiskey, aged a little bit longer, which it's already pretty phenomenal.

Well, Legends, Spirits USA, if you're listening to this, I got to say thank you for sending this bottle. Me and Jim appreciate that love and trust in us that we're going to give you a fair review. I can't find anything to beat them up on. Yes, Jim.

Yeah, I would definitely recommend it. I would definitely say that if you see this bottle on the shelf, if you're at the distillery and you have a chance to pick it up, I'm urging you to. Of course, everybody's wallet is their wallet, a little bit different. $81 is not a small amount of money. But if that's something that you wouldn't, you'll have problems spending, I would say pick it up. If not, find it in a bar, have a drink.

Yeah, I think it's a very beautiful expression. Obviously, I liked it because I've emptied my glass already. I'm hard-pressed to leave it over here for Tim, but like I said, I can come over here and grab any bottle off shelf and drink it. So, it's always nice to come over here and have some weeded bourbon. There you go. Somebody did comment that my shelves were loaded down at home with weeded bourbon. And I'm sure once again, we'll work with Legends in the future. They're a very promising company, young company. They got some other stuff out there. Look for a future episode with them on one of our long shows, Jay.

So, they have a number of expressions that we need to get through. Got a whole bunch of whiskey hidden. All right. I'm looking forward to it because this is my first taste of anything from Legends and pretty impressed.

Yeah, I can't even imagine what their rye whiskey's like and their rye bourbon. It's very promising. All right. Good deal. Well, Mike, where can everybody find us on the internet? You can find us on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, all the social media outlets you can check out. We also have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies. You gotta be 21 to get in there. You gotta like bourbon and you gotta agree to play nice. Cause we don't tolerate any rudeness in there, right Jim?

That's right. We just want people to get along and enjoy their whiskey and have a good time. And how many roadies do we have now? 1,800. 1,800 roadies. Family. That's a big family.

It's growing. Speaking of that family, Roadies, listen, I know it's time for another pick for me and Jim. It's time for a pick. Me and Jim traveled down to Bourbon Road the other day. We had some time to talk about a pick. We've got an idea out there. So look for a pick in the coming months from us. We've kind of agreed on a pick what we'd like to do, keep that price down under 40 bucks, we hope, somewhere in that 40, $45 range. So, look for that pick. You'll have to go to our website to find it, but we'll probably put some postings in the bourbon roadies, but you'll have to be a bourbon roadie to get it. That's right. Because there's only usually a couple hundred bottles in a barrel. Less than 200 on the pick we've talked about. It hopefully is going to be a weeded bourbon this time for the Weedy King of Kentucky. So, I'm super stoked about that. We're working on it right now. So, look for that. You got to be a bourbon roadie to do that. pretty easy. So, Jim, what about our website?

Yeah. So, theburbanroad.com, it's our website. And on there, you will find, well, you can play our episodes directly on the website if you want to listen to us. We also have our blogs on there. So, every long episode we do every Wednesday, Mike writes a blog for it. And then on shorter episodes, we have reviews written up so that you can go back and read the reviews of the episodes that we've had. Kind of a library of bourbon reviews.

And we actually have Adam Boothby has written a couple of reviews in there. One of our bourbon roadies, one of our moderators, really awesome guy. salt of the earth, and we got a couple other roadies that are helping us out with some reviews that are writing really good reviews, drinking some really good whiskey. You want to check those out. Before you purchase a bottle, read the review, see what we thought. Absolutely.

We also have our Glencarens on there, our ball caps. We've got our t-shirts, our Burden Bullshooter t-shirts, right?

It's hard to keep those in stock. Yeah, just order some more for us to ship out.

I mean, I guess somebody sees somebody wearing a Bourbon Bullshooter t-shirt and they're like, I got to have one of those. They go, BourbonRoad.com, go get it. But yeah, we're having a hard time keeping those in stock, but we're going to do our best to always have them available. If you are okay with wearing a shirt that says you're a bourbon bullshitter, and you should be, make sure you hop on the website and pick one of those up. I think they're about $25, right? That's pretty fair. I think it's a fair price.

And if you're a bourbon roadie, you get what? 10% off on everything on the site every day. That's pretty good. And me and Jim talked about adding a couple other things. I'll probably put some fillers out to see about adding some candles to our deal, a bourbon candle, because everybody wants their house to smell like bourbon. I do. Yeah.

And some other glass types.

Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see. And we appreciate our sponsor, premium bar products. Almost definitely. Just great people to work with. If you are looking for some glassware for your home bar, Jim's got a nice bar here to put on the bar up there, work with the premium bar products. They can turn you out some fine glassware that's engraved with your logo on it.

Absolutely. Well, we do, as we mentioned, two shows a week. Every Monday, we do one of these craft distillery episodes. Every Wednesday, we do a deep dive into a distillery. We have a guest on. We do something fun. It lasts about an hour. We always want to hear what you have to say and you can reach out to us. 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.