197. Bulleit Bourbon - Frontier 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.

Hello everybody, I'm Jim Shannon. And I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is the Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, it's Craft Distillery Monday. Yeah.

We say that every week, don't we? Yeah.

But this time, a little bit bigger than a craft distillery, I think. Just a tad bit. I think they're pretty much distributed nationwide and worldwide. Let's call it a hometown distillery review. It is. I cannot believe it's taken us almost 200 episodes to get around to our own hometown distillery, Bullet Bourbon.

Yeah, I mean, five miles from my house, probably seven, seven or eight miles from your house, right down the road. Nice, easy jaunt for us. It's nice to have them right there.

This is kind of their flagship bourbon. This is the bourbon you see on the shelf everywhere. Um, it is, uh, it's not cast strength. It's not a rye. It's just the good old bullet bourbon, Shelbyville, Kentucky.

Yeah, not a bad price for it either, right? You can pick it up for $22.99 almost anywhere. So that's a good price for a bourbon whiskey.

If you're listening to this show and you're anywhere in the US, you're in Europe, you're in... I'm just going to say pretty much anywhere. Chances are you can get your hands on a bottle of Bullet Bourbon. better known as the frontier whiskey.

Yeah. It's got that old school like bottle. Uh, I call that, I think on one of the old podcasts, one of the old episodes, I called it a saddle bag bottle because it's kind of, you know, flatter. Yeah.

Yeah. This is ideal. If you're, if you're sitting on the back of a horse to just slide it into your saddle bag, it's not going to stick out real far. Um, it's a Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. It is 90 proof. This is their flagship bottle. Oh, this is still in company Louisville, Kentucky. They say Louisville, Kentucky, but let's face it guys. They're in Shelby County.

Yeah. I mean that it is a Shelbyville, Shelby County, not too far out of town, almost right behind a high school there in Shelbyville. So, uh, kind of, kind of nice, like I said, just drive down there. They started having some events. If you haven't been inside of it, they got a cocktail tasting bar. Um, pretty nice place.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Mike, I say, and let's get straight to this whiskey. What do you think? Let's do it. All right. Got a great nose, a little bit of leather, a little bit of oak, not too much sweetness, but I get the spice.

There's some spice in there. Well, you'd expect that out of this, right? I think so.

I even get a little bit of mintiness out of it.

Now this is non age stated, but we would think this is right around six to eight years old, right?

Yeah. I think, I think it's probably six year old whiskey. It's a, is definitely not got any youthful notes to it whatsoever.

Yeah. 68% corn, 28% rye and 4% malted barley. That's a high rye bourbon.

And you can definitely pick it up on the nose.

A couple of floral notes in there. You expect that with that much rye. A little bit of leather, like you said, a little bit of oak. I'm not getting any sweetness from this though.

Yeah, very little. But you know, it's not tannic, it's not drying on the back end too much. It's kind of a nice rye bourbon, sort of a mid-pallet bourbon with a little bit of kick on the back end. But you're right, not much sweetness up front.

Now a couple questions people would ask probably, is this Four Roses bourbon?

Fair question. I mean, certainly bullet bottles have been known to have Four Roses bourbon in them. In this day and age, you know what? Who cares? It is important that when you take a sip of it, that it pleases you. And this does please, especially somebody like me who likes a little bit of Ryan or bourbon.

I'll say cheers. Let's taste this thing. Yes. That's definitely a Kentucky bourbon right there.

It's not a sweet monster. It's kind of a rye monster, a little bit more spicy, a little bit more mid and rear pallet. Like I was saying, this would be amazing in any bourbon cocktail. The price is right. The availability is good. There's nothing off putting at all by the, by the palette.

It's a fine bourbon. It's got a little bit of vanilla, just a tad henna oak, not a lot of oak. It's not overpowering. Leathery I would call it a little bitter on that back end, maybe because it lacks that sweetness to it. A little bit of spice.

Yeah, I think this is a, this is a bourbon that is solid aboveboard kind of middle shelf, right? Middle shelf. It's available. I think it has a place on anybody's bar.

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head when you said great for cocktails at that price, at that proof. Um, with that rice spice, it'll hold up in a cocktail, you know, you want to add your sweetness to it. If you don't like straight bourbon whiskey, like we do. Um, and that's all right. Cause we always say, what you're a burger in your way, right?

Absolutely. That's right. Um,

But this should have everything a Kentucky bourbon would have. That corn, you know, gives it just enough sweetness to let you know that it is a bourbon. Right. I think so.

And this bottle, if you were to peel the paper label off and just leave the glass bottle, the clear glass bottle by itself. You would have a hard time telling this wasn't from the 1800s.

Oh, most definitely. It's old school as it can be. Almost one of those old medicinal bottles. Like I said, a saddlebag bottle all day long. I could see a cowboy sliding this into his saddlebag and riding up the Rockies. Absolutely.

Well, Mike, you know, you and I both live probably, and we said this earlier in the show, we probably live, uh, me about 10 miles from the distillery, you about five miles from the distillery. It's a shame we haven't had them on the show before. I think we did have one of their, um, limited releases on the show, uh, with the bourbon house out of the UK. Yeah, we did. Uh, but we really didn't feature their flagship bourbon, their main.

skew. We haven't had it on the show before. I'll tell you this. You almost go into almost any bar today. You can see it on TV shows. You can see it on movies. Um, they're definitely put themselves out there. They're trying to make themselves a nationally or world known brand out there. Um, and then they put a new distillery up that says a lot in the confidence in the brand itself.

Yeah, if you're coming to the Louisville, Kentucky area, the Lexington, Kentucky area, I highly recommend you head out to Shelby County, which is sort of about halfway between Louisville and Frankfurt. All right, yeah, about halfway between. On I-64, head out to Shelby County, visit the Bullet Distillery, take yourself a tour, visit their cocktail bar, their gift shop. Take a tour around the facility there. I think you'll be surprised. Very modern. I mean, they may have an old school bottle, but they've got a new school distillery.

Oh, most certainly. Like I said, it's a beautiful grounds they have there, bringing a lot of money into Shelby County, a lot of tourism. Um, then stop on downtown. There's a couple of really nice restaurants downtown Shelbyville place called the bell house. You could go to our good friends over at the red line, a little tavern you can go inside of. If it's a Tuesday through a Saturday night, you can stop over at the barrel room, get yourself a pour of beer or a nice pour of bourbon honey of, uh, Mexican food places to eat at in Shelbyville.

Absolutely. And then, you know, one of our favorite bottle shops. Right there in Shelbyville, Paradise Spirits.

Right off at exit 35, you got to pass it to go to the distillery. So you might as well go in and see our good friend James. He is a veteran, owned and operated business. So go in there and spend your money with that man right there. He's a... Fair priced.

Absolutely. And I would suggest even staying in Shelby County.

Well, we got our good friends that they have the saddle bread sweets. You know, if you're looking for a getaway, saddle bread sweets has four giant sweets. I think they can sleep like 28 or something like that. People, there's coffee shop right now called the paddocks right there in Shelbyville. The sweets are super swank, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely gorgeous. If you want to experience Kentucky at its finest, that's the place to do it. That's where we interviewed Peggy Noe Stevens. We had that wonderful food pairing, bourbon and food pairing there with her. You know, Shelby County is, if you were to draw lines between Frankfort, Kentucky, Lexington, Frankfort, Kentucky, to Louisville, to Bardstown and make that triangle, Right in the center of that is Shelby County. And so if you need a place to stay during your trip to the bourbon area of Kentucky, there's no better place to stay than Shelbyville. Saddlebread Suites, we got a lot to do here in the county. chances are they'll run into us.

You never can tell who you're going to run into in Shelbyville or downtown Louisville. You never can tell we're going to be roaming about and stuff. Um, speaking of roaming about and coming to the Kentucky gym, we're going to be at bourbon on the banks in October, October 23rd. In fact, in Frankfurt, Kentucky, right on the Kentucky river. Don't want to miss out on that. You can come hang out with us, drink a little bourbon. Um, I can't wait.

It's a lot more than just Saturday though. It's Friday and Saturday and there's a lot of events going on. So I would say plan to make a weekend of it.

Yeah. They have a bottle auction on Friday night where you can hang out with master distillers, um, cost to get in. That's a hundred dollars for that ticket, but. You're going to get a chance. I would say there's probably a good chance there's going to be the antique collection from Buffalo Trace there.

And a few pappies maybe.

Yeah. So really good chance that the Weller collection will be there. Also, I think some other great bottles. You want to check that out. And then they have like a Cirque du Soleil. I don't know what you would call it. You know, acrobats and all kinds of stuff down, firethrowers downtown. You go check that out. And then even after the festival on Saturday, there's like two more events after that. There's a Jim Beam pub crawl, right? Yep.

Yeah. So there's a lot going on that weekend in Frankfurt, Kentucky. Frankfurt is kind of, uh, the de facto favorite as far as urban cities, but it's, it's kind of a tie between Frankfurt and barstown, right?

Well, Buffalo trace is there. If you, if you're going to go to Buffalo trace, you're going to be in Frankfurt. So come see us. We're definitely going to be there 100%. We hope to see every bourbon roadie there to come check us out. We got a lot of announcements about that, but I wanted to kind of get that word out there about it. So.

Mike, let's get back to this bullet whiskey here. Hometown bourbon for us.

Yeah. For what it is. I mean, it's got that tad bit of sweetness. It's got that Oak. It's got that leather. Um, all the things I always say, Hey, you know, think about your palette and the things you've had. It's got that vanilla. It's got the corn on it. It's what a bourbon should be 2299. How can you not beat it? I'm not even going to call it a buy cause we both have it on our shelves already. So Jim, I would call this, it has a, Um, I'd say it's a medium finish on this bourbon.

Yeah. Yeah. Medium finish. I had to go along with that.

Like Kentucky hug. Um, not bad at all. You know, that's a winner. So you can find us on all social media out there. If you're looking for us, we are on tick tock. We're on Instagram. We're on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Um, go check us out. One of those, give us a follow. Heck, you don't know. We might even give you a follow back.

You won't find us on Twitch though.

Not on Twitch. I don't even really know what Twitch is. I just see young people watching it. So yeah. We also have a website. You can find our swag on there. You can find articles that I write. You can find reviews from our good friend, Adam Boothby. Sometimes we'll have a guest reviewer on there that puts some reviews up for us. They'll send us one. So check those reviews out before you buy a bottle. See if it's worth your money. See what the bourbon road has to say about it might help you out.

Yeah, I think, you know, we've said it before. We're not bourbon experts. We're bourbon bullshitters.

Yeah.

But we have had probably somewhere between six and 700 bourbons on the show.

Yeah, we've had a couple of whiskeys.

Even if we don't know anything, we've tasted a lot of bourbon. Yeah.

Well, it's a good thing when you can open your palate up to different things and try different things. Um, you know, I'd say that to everybody, try different things and open your, open your mind up some different stuff. Some of those different bourbons that you're turning your nose up to might be really good like bullet.

Absolutely. Well, we'd love to have, give us a little bit of feedback. We'd love you to scroll on up to the top of that app, click that button that says, leave a review and leave us a five-star review, right? Tell us what you think about the Bourbon Road. We'd love to hear from you. Then scroll on down, hit that subscribe button. Cause if you don't, I'm telling you what's going to happen. No, actually we're going to let Mike tell you what's going to happen.

If you don't leave us a five star review, the big bad booty daddy of bourbon is going to come to your house. I'm a bring a couple of bottles. with my alter ego. We're going to drink all night long. We're going to talk shop. We're going to talk bourbon. By the end of that night, you're going to hit that five-star review. I guarantee you, because I'm going to have empty bottles that we're both going to leave happy. So please leave us with that five-star review. It gets us into distilleries. It gets us into doors that we might not be able to get into. And we'd love you for it.

Yeah. I mean, after two bottles, it might be kind of reading like gibberish, you know? All right. Well, we'd love to hear from you. Mike said, you know, definitely love to hear from you. We're always looking for ideas for the show. If you've got one, let's say you got a hometown distillery. Let Mike and I know about it. We'll we'll feature him on the show. We'll drink the bourbon and and we'll give a fair review and then we'll reach out to him and get some comments. Because that's what the Bourbon Road is all about. Getting out on the road and trying a lot of new Bourbons. We'd love to hear from you. Reach out to us. Bestways on Instagram. You can find me at jshannon63. I'm OneBigChief. And we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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