201. Maker's Mark Wood Finishing Series FAE-02 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. I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is The Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, is another craft distillery episode. But I have to say, for the last few craft distillery episodes, well, I would say in the last five or six craft distillery episodes we've done, we've snuck in a few big boys. We have, we have.

And once again, I had to bring another big boy with me. Yes. I work down here in, as I call it, Big Jim Shannon's Bar Lounge. You got it all lit up now. Your bar lights and stuff. Yeah. Bourbon Road Studio 1A. Yeah, it's looking good. But I did bring a big boy with me and there's a reason for that and we'll get into that. Yeah. But just released hot off the press on Saturday to the public was Makers Mark wood finishing series, 2021 limited release FAE TAC 02. 02.

And it's a weeder. Well, yeah.

So this is a hundred and nine point one proof. It is finished with 10 virgin toasted French oak staves. You know, that's in two fairies and two fairies, which is Faye, right? Right. Faye is a fairie. F-A-E-O-T-O. There are two fairies in that bottle. Well, that means it's magical. So there's some of that little wasn't the little fairy off of Peter Pan. Yeah. Tinkerbell fairy.

A little dust came off.

Yeah.

You think there's some of that in there?

There might be a little fairy dust in it.

Well, I'll tell you what.

I think it's going to be magical.

So FAEO2 stands for fatty acid esters. This one's kind of focused on the mouth feel and fatty acids, you know, they can give it that body and that velvety mouth feel, right? Yep. Now this is non-A stated.

But we know it should be anywhere from about eight to 12 years old. These are some pretty special bottles, which pretty beautiful.

So this is second in the FAE series and the first bottle, FAE 01, was more of a fruit forward version. And this one's a little more focused on the mouthfeel. Well, let's quit talking about it. Let's check it out. All right. Cheers. Cheers.

Wow. So many floral notes in there. Like rich, deep roses.

And the alcohol is present, but it's not overwhelming on the nose. It's still got a bit of fruity note to it though. As well as the spice and a little bit of just a hint of chocolate.

What are you getting? Oh, I do get that chocolate right there. Like you said, cocoa crisp cereal. That cereal doesn't have a very big chocolate note to it, but just the cereal and that chocolate together is what I'm getting.

But I am getting, you know, I am getting the cereal part of it too, a little bit. A little bit of orange zest in there. Yeah.

No rye in this one. No, zero rye for you, Jim.

Zero at all. All right, well, let's taste it. Cheers. Okay. Very, very thick, heavy velvet.

But there is some Pop Rocks on that. Yeah, I'm actually getting a little bit of that orange zest on the tongue too. With that, you know, you said Pop Rocks. We always say that Pop Rocks, it's just kind of cracking a little bit. Sizzle as it goes back. Yeah. Yeah. know, if you ever got a little bit of orange zest on your tongue, you know, bit into an orange peel, you get that orange zest. That's what you're getting is that bite a little bit. You're right on the velvet.

A little bit of chocolate on there still. Yeah, I would say that they definitely succeeded in their attempt to improve on the mouthfeel on this one. It's very present, very obvious that this is a non-chill filtered, very heavy, very viscous liquid.

Yeah, I quite love this. Now, this at the retailer's price is $59.99 for this bottle. Fair price. Super fair. You got a love maker's mark for that stuff. They put plenty of them out there. Matter of fact, our good friend, moderator of the Bourbon Roadies, he's the one that got this for me. He had signed up for it. He went over there, picked it up. Still $59.99, but he was able to get six of them for different people.

Yeah.

to walk around with this thing, this bottle. I love it. Sure. It's really good. Yeah. I think it's got that long finish on this.

It's one of the things that Makers has done is to really explore the stave profiles, the multiple stave profiles and what it does to whiskey and to do this kind of research and development on their whiskey. A lot of interesting things come out of that kind of work and we get to enjoy the fruits of it. It's a little bit, it's got a little bit of a hug building over time. There's a little power to this. What did you say the proof was? 109.1.

I would have thought it'd been a little bit up there at 115. Still a lot of fruit notes on this. Maybe some dark cherries in this right here. That orange zest is still there. I would call it white chocolate on the taste of it.

Yeah, but it's not a super sweet chocolate though. It's sort of a little bit more of a... Baker's chocolate? Yeah, like a baker's chocolate.

Yeah.

Still, wow. Not a lot of nuttiness, more floral. Man, that sizzle. I like that sizzle though. The oak is there too. When I took the first sip, I got that sizzle and I hollered out Pop Rocks. But on the second and third sips, I've gotten the Pop Rocks as well. So it's not something that just happened on that first sip. It's something that's carried through to multiple sips. This is an exceptional whiskey. For $59, I would say a definite addition to your bar.

Yeah, it's like a smack in my face with that big bold aroma and flavor. I would expect nothing else out of Makers Mark, Denny Potter down there. So on this, that long finish, great Kentucky hug on it that you would expect from Makers Mark, a nice proof point for me. It'd be a buy all day long. I'd say go out and buy it. If you could find it, you see it on a shelf, pick it up. It's available in stores.

It's available at the gift shop. If you can find it.

If you can find it. I would expect in a week or two from this release of this review to start seeing it in like Froger and other stores.

Well, when the FAEO1 came out and when the RC6 came out and when some of the other special releases came out, they were a little rare right at first, but then you can start to see them showing up places.

So yeah, it's obviously good enough for me to take another pour of it.

Yeah. You've already finished and that was a healthy pour the first time. So you're on a second healthy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's amazing what happens to a whiskey when you put two fairies in it. Well, it's magic in a bottle. No, folks, there's really no fairies in this, but we're just making fun of the fact that it's F-A-E or Fae. I think that's how you spell Fae. No, anyway. Works for me. Somebody will tell us. Yeah. Yeah. So Jim, where can you find us on social media? Well, we are on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. We're on all the social media. Well, not all of them, but all the ones that we've got time to deal with. Yeah.

Yeah.

And we'd love to have you check it out and follow us on all those mediums. On Facebook, we also have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies.

2300 strong yeah 2300 good friends yeah you'd be surprised what a rodeo will do for you you got to answer three questions to get in are you 21 do you like bourbon well yes you love bourbon or you wouldn't be listening to us um and do you agree to play nice because we don't tolerate any rudeness that means uh don't tear someone down for what they're drinking if they are drinking 10 high from the bottom of the shelf Or if they're drinking George T. Stag, if you can find it on the top shelf, we don't tear people down for that. What we like to do, though, is see those open bottles, though. Open your damn bottle, people.

Open O.T.D. B. O.T.D. Hashtag O.T.D.

B. Open the damn bottle. Yeah, we like to see those open bottles. We don't tolerate any selling in there. What we want you to do is celebrate life in there. Birthdays, retirements, promotions, whatever you want to celebrate. We want to see you on vacation. We want to see you enjoy life. Please celebrate with us. Share your pores with each other. That happens a lot. Like you said, can't sell it, but you can give it away. Yeah. Believe in our giveaways on there. Please believe in those giveaways. our roadies that are working with us to do those giveaways. They are real giveaways. They are the true stuff. So somebody asked me if we really give whiskey away. And I said, yes, we do. So are there people that have giveaways and don't give it away? I think there must be. Oh, that's not nice. Not nice at all. But I will guarantee you our giveaways are for real. It comes from me and Jim or another roadie. We've got plenty of whiskey that the distilleries help us out with. Sometimes we have extra bottles and we like to share that whiskey.

Yeah. All right. So we do two shows a week. Every week we do a short episode like today's where we focus on a single bottle, a single expression, normally a craft distillery. But there's some craft that went into this. Most certainly. Even though it's from a big distillery, there's a lot of craft that went into this. We like to shine the light once a week on somebody that is stepping out of the box a little bit. And I think in this case, I think the Samuel's family stepped out of the box just a little bit. This is pretty good stuff.

But we also do a longer episode every week, closer to an hour, 30 minutes in the first half, 30 minutes in the second half.

Get to work and get you home. And that's a little bit more of a deep dive. We'll have a distillery on a guest. We'll go to this bourbon festival and interview people. We'll drink through a number of expressions. Sometimes it's just Mike and I, but you'll get a longer show once a week too. So twice a week, how do they not miss an episode?

Well, you want to go on up. at the top of your app that you're using to listen to us on, you want to hear that subscribe button, applying plus sign or a check sign, whatever you got to do to subscribe. That'll make sure that your app tells you, Hey, these guys have recorded again. They've got our episode. They've released. Uh, then you want to screw on down, hit that five star review. You know, we love that gym and we're getting a few, we are getting a few of them, just a few, just a few, but we want you to hit that five star. You know what happens if you don't hit that five star review? The big bad booty daddy of bourbon will come hunt you down. We'll bring some of this two fairies in a bottle right here with us. We're going to drink it. By the end of the night, those fairies will fly out of the bottle magically and we'll get that five star review out of you.

All right. Well, we do have a website called the bourbonroad.com, and on that website, you'll find our articles, you'll find our swag. If you buy our swag, we certainly appreciate it. It helps us get on down that road, doesn't it, Mike? Yes, it does. And it's real easy. Get on there. You can look through our catalog, find a glass or a shirt or a hat or a mug or a decanter. We got all kinds of cool stuff in there. Hip flask now, too.

Hip flask. That's right.

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Bye!