204. The 2021 Bourbon Blending Challenge

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, we're finally coming through on a promise we made in the summer. Yeah, I think it was in spring, though. Was it in the spring? I think we had an August 1st deadline for people getting their blends in for the blending challenge.

I guess it was right before July. We almost had a bump to get everything in.

We thought about extending it a little bit. And I think we did extend it about 15 days.

I think we did. And then we kind of hit some roadblocks. And our special guest judge, she got a little sick on us. Oops. So yeah, so the 2021 Bourbon Rody Blending Challenge is officially on. We've got 10 different pours that we're going to taste today. We're going to judge them. But we did bring a special guest on today. We did. This is our third episode with us. She's just a regular. She's like that Saturday night life guest that has the title of been on the show the most. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh really?

Yeah.

Wow. I feel special.

So you know who we have on roadies. We have Ashley Barnes from the spirits group. I call her the witchy woman of whiskey. She's got that magical touch. She can just wiggle her nose a little bit and all of a sudden it appears magical whiskey. What do you think, Jim?

Yeah, I think so. I think that one thing she has going for her is a tremendous palette. And that's one of the reasons we brought her here today. Not only is she an often appearing guest of ours, but she's also got a tremendous palette. And this is what she does for a living. Yeah. Yeah. So welcome back to the Bourbon Rogue.

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate you guys. Having this really cool contest and getting these really nice samples in and look forward to sampling and tasting and seeing what the roadies have.

Yeah, but before we start Jim, why don't you tell us what the prizes are for this? Cause we do got two different process, right? We got a name process and then we got the grand champion, the blending master.

Even though we've got 10 samples here, we're not going to do like first, second, and third. There's just going to be one overall winner of the tasting challenge part of this. And the winner of that will get a Bourbon Road engraved barrel head to put on their home bar or whatever they like to do with it. Heck, I don't even have one of those. They'll also get a Bourbon Bullshitter t-shirt, a Bourbon Road t-shirt, a Bourbon Road hat, Bourbon Road Gland Karen, and then to top all that off, there's going to be a couple of fine pours in there. What are they going to get?

So they're going to get the old hoop, that's your blend, and then they're going to get Big Chief's, I don't know what you'd call it, weeded magic out of my blend or my affinity bottle. So you get a pour of each of those. It'll be four ounce pours because you know how I like to roll with that, the big giant Big Chief pours, right? That's right.

Now, everybody had to name their bourbons, and we'll go over all the rules here in a minute, but everybody had to name their bourbons as well. We wanted that to be a pretty fun part of this. The best name, regardless of how it scores in the tasting part of it, the best name is going to win as well. For that, the best name will get a Bourbon Road Glencairn, a Bourbon Road Hat, and they will also get a sample of your blend and mine.

Well, that's still magical right there. We must have been drinking or whatever. That's this idea. That's a lot of gimmick giveaways. Yeah, man. I don't have that much money in my pockets

We'll figure something out. Well, we'd like to get straight to the whiskey, but this time I think we do have to talk a little bit. So we need to talk about the fact that we've got these 10 bourbons. We've got five of them lined up for the first half. We've got the other five lined up for the second half. And we're going to sort of taste our way through. The three of us have no idea anything about these bourbons except the name. That's pretty much it. Your wife Vivian is the one that messed with the envelopes and kept everything away from us, so we really don't know. But just to go over the rules real quick, we want to make sure it was kind of a level playing field. So we basically said, first of all, you had to be a member of the Bourbon Roadies. And we kept the post to the Bourbon Roadies, so they're the only ones that really knew about it, right?

Well, they heard about an episode, but we said if you wanted to be part of this, you had to join the Bourbon Roadies. So to be fair, everybody had an opportunity to If they weren't on Facebook, make themselves a Facebook account, get in the bourbon roadies, and be part of us. If you're not a roadie, you can be one within a minute.

Yeah. So it's pretty easy to do. And we'll talk about that at the end of the show. But also the blend had to fall in the proof range between 95 and 105 proof. And we kind of explained in the blog post how people can do that and how they can keep track of their proof to the best of their ability. They had to send in two 2-ounce sample bottles or one 4-ounce sample. You needed to have enough material to do the testing. And the blend had to be a mixture of at least three burgers. You couldn't have a rye in there, you couldn't have American whiskey in there, and you needed to have at least three components. And we kind of talked about that in the show, why to have three. You know, something to form your base, something to take it in a direction that you are kind of wanting to go, and then something to sort of round it off or balance it. So rather than just taking two burdens and putting them together, it gives them a chance to try three. You had to name your blend something creative, something that is fun or witty or maybe describe your blend or your attitude or whatever. And you had to tell us the recipe, but the blend itself, the recipe, the proof, all the details of who these bourbons belong to are all in those sealed envelopes and we're not gonna know until at the end of our taste. So this really is a blind challenge.

best way to do it.

Well, I'm pretty excited about this. I'm excited about just getting to taste some of these. I think we're going to have something special here.

We might have the next great blend. And the recipes of all of these are going to get published, right?

Yeah. We'll put all the names on there. all the recipes and in this blog out here, we'll try to put all that in one blog for everybody to read. And, you know, we'll put the grand champion or winner down. That's what we do. Ashley, why don't you remind our listeners before we start this, your background in bourbon, kind of where you came from and where you're at today.

Sure. So I started my bourbon career at Buffalo Trace. And there I learned I had a very unique palette and started really honing in how I tasted what I tasted. And I started learning blending from Drew there at Buffalo Trace and worked with Harland, of course, and Chris Fletcher, who's now at Jack Daniels. So some pretty, pretty heavy hitters. I learned a lot from them. Left there and went to Four Roses where I got to work with Jim. Rutledge and Brent and Al and I learned even more. So I've blended a little bit of barbain, but I left for as I started the spirits group with a good friend and my business partner, Monica Wolf. And we have been working in the craft space for since 2018 now. So going on four years. Getting close anyways. So now I work with several brands and I blend and create whiskey and bourbon and help them manage their quality and their inventory. And it's just awesome. I have several clients in the US. I have one in Paris, France. I just blended a whiskey for the French palette, which was a pretty cool little project. Went in some pretty big awards with that as well. Our domestic guys are doing the same thing, and we're really proud of all of our clients. They're awesome.

Well, we know some of your bourbons. We've got to definitely taste them. Lucky Seven, one of the ones that I love the most was the Holiday Toast. It is absolutely delicious, right? Our good friends down at Leapers Fork, you're working with them. They've got something magical going on there. A small little distillery that's still trying to get off the ground, right? And in the different states, but still some magical stuff. And then you got Davidson's Reserve.

Yes, they do.

Yeah, that's that's named three of them.

Yeah, that's and those are three really awesome ones. And, you know, they're all doing really great things, uniquely different, which is what I love. Everybody has their own little thing. Everybody's doing something different. So There's a lot of variety, every day something different and usually every couple hours is something different for me. So I get to taste a lot of whiskey, I get to taste a lot of different things and then I get to blend with all those different things. Yeah.

It's kind of interesting. You know, it kind of reminds me a little bit. You think about like record producers, right? You go into their office and they've got these platinum and gold records on the wall, but they didn't actually sing those or play those albums. They were just the ones that produced it, right?

Yeah.

And this is kind of the same thing in a way. You know, her clients are the musicians in this case. They're the ones creating the music, creating the bourbon, and then she's the producer. You're coming in there and you're helping guide them to a successful blend.

Yeah, kind of the same. I like to think of it, that's a really good analogy, actually. I like to think of it like an artist with different paints in a palette. And, you know, your different whiskies and things are the different paints, but you're right, the distilleries are producing them. And then like Lucky Seven, they're not a distillery. So we also broker or bulk sell a whisky. So going out and finding the whisky and being able to broker that cell and then also be able to blend it. So yeah, very much a producer.

You're kind of living the dream. I've got a bunch of listeners are thinking right now, how do I get to do that?

Study hard sciences. Don't shy away from chemistry and biology.

Yeah. And submit your samples to the Bourbon Road Blending Challenge.

Well, let's get started. The first one we have is Cedric's Reserve. This guy or gal, I'm just thinking that Cedric is a guy. He actually made his own little label up here. I don't know if Cedric is his dog or not, but he's got a dog on his label. Cool little label and stuff. went that extra mile for us, I think.

You don't get any extra points for that, but we will mention it, right? Yeah. No extra points for the dog on the table. All right. So let's begin.

While we're doing this, we use the American Bourbon Association's tasting notes. They're sheep, and that's kind of how we're scoring it. Now, Ashley over here, I don't even know what she, she made up her own list and she's, she's going down on it. Um, me and Jim make that sophisticated.

I do this a little often.

Me and Jim are just two burger bullshooters.

Yeah, I have a system. So I'm going to share it with you guys. Cause this, I found it and I've done it with clients too. And it seems to really help think about things when you're, when you're tasting, especially if you're tasting several things. I'll take and I'll write the name, the proof, any pertinent information. But then beside that, I'll make a list for nose, palette, finish, and then comments. So I kind of break it down into those little areas and anything in those categories that I feel are pertinent or, you know, This is really smooth on the palette, but maybe it dissipates on the finish or anything of that kind of nature. That's how I break it down in the comments. Of course, they're just things that kind of fall outside of those, but definitely helps, especially when you're blending, because you want to look at the anything you're going to blend with in the capacity of how is this going to work in a blend? Is it going to dissipate completely or is this so complete that it's just going to fall apart when I start putting things together?

Ashley, how many different, um, Bourbons do you blend a day?

It really depends. So this time last year, and I, because I'm in the middle of it, I don't have a whole number for this year, but this time last year, I had about a two or three week period where I blended 15 different expressions. And I swore I would never do that again. It was a marathon. So I'm not doing that many this year, but in a given day, probably two, three on a really busy day. And I try, if I'm gonna do three, it's gonna be three of the same brand and just different expressions within that brand. But when I'm looking at samples, I can go up, well, pre-Sick Ashley, From a few weeks ago, I could do up to about 60 in a day pretty comfortably in an ALR day. 60 samples.

That's like 60 different whiskies. Wow.

Well, 60 different barrels.

60 barrels. I'll be stumbling at the end of the day, Jim.

There is a way to taste that you're just, you're good.

Yeah.

I learned at Buffalo Trace when I was there, how to take, and they came in to do a random drug test, which meant, you know, breathalyzer and everything. And I was like, well, I just finished tasting both of these big tables. Like, I don't think I'll pass the breathalyzer. Like, I'm not, and I'm like, oh, you're fine. And sure enough, I was very fortunate to have already learned how to taste without consuming too much. And I passed the breathalyzer.

I don't know if I could do this for a living, to be honest with you. Cause then I start nosing these across the board and I'm thinking, man, it's hard to pick out notes like that. One or two whiskeys is not bad for me, but if I had to do 60.

It really, it isn't for everybody. And you really have to have a genetic predisposition to it. And I think you can learn a lot, you can do a lot and study, but there has to be a little more to it. Because you do, you know, that 60th sample, it's a lot harder and it took me a long time. to be able to look at that many samples and be able to treat that 60th sample the same as that first sample.

Now, is that hard to do because that first sample kind of... Do you start with your first sample as your first drink of the day or do you have like a warm up bourbon?

No, it's usually my first sample of the day.

Do you notice that that first sip is... Do you kind of throw it away? We've heard that before. Kind of throw that first sip away and... of the day.

Yeah, I've heard that, but I don't. I really if I have any kind of distillate samples, I will do those first. Or if I'm working on anything lighter, kind of as on a side thing, I don't do it as frequently, but I'll work on some other products like a flavored product or something. Sometimes I'll start with those types of things. And then if I do like a flavor thing, then I will pour a drink of There is a couple of single barrels that as I pick them, I set them aside. I'm like, those are mine. Don't touch them. Um, and so I might try to do one of those as, as a throwaway, you can say. But if I'm just doing whiskey, I just get straight into it. So usually start, which is much later these days, but about eight 30 in the morning after I dropped clay off at school.

Now one of these right here were nose on. So far for me, it has a super beautiful nose on it. I hate to say that, but it's... Is it that one? It's magical. No.

It's a very weedy nose.

Yeah.

I was thinking that, I was like, both of those are pretty weedy. And I was like, you're going to like those. Yeah.

Anything that's got that weed smell to me. Some people might think that's a little off putting, but to me, they smell like a bourbon.

So, so let's go back to the, the, the panel here. We've, we've, we've gone through and we've nosed all five of our starting bourbons here to sort of set the groundwork, right? Sort of set the base for it. not to allow the palate to interfere with our nosing. So we're learning something today, Mike, because we just, we just ran right through it, don't we? Yeah.

There's a process and everybody's process is different, but this is kind of the, the general is to nose first, to allow, allow you to nose it without any interference with the palate.

I didn't know we were going to get a class today, but this is wonderful for us.

So I guess as we start to talk about these bourbons now, we do have the opportunity to influence each other a little bit because we're going to be talking about our individual takes on these bourbons, right? Yeah. But I think we're all grownups here. We know how to make our own mind up. So what do you say we begin with? Cedric's reserve.

Cedric's reserve. What'd you get, Ashley? We'll let you lead us off with each bird first on your notes.

Sure. I got a lot of sweet caramel that comes forward, like freshly made caramel. And what I call a sweet herbal. So it's got the herbal notes, but it's not the earthy herbal. It's more of a sweet, slightly medicinal. and draw an apricot and that oak spice. We'll use it all coming in there. So it's a really nice, balanced nose. I'm looking forward to tasting it, see if that palette can back it up, because it's gonna be a pretty good competitor here if that palette can back up that nose.

Mike? So I got hints of tobacco, some dark chocolate, like a baking chocolate on it, dark cherries. I keep saying dark, dark roses, oak and vanilla on this, which to me, some of those characteristics of a weeded bourbon.

Very rich.

I couldn't, I could be wrong though. Could be wrong.

And I got light sweet fruit. I said maybe cooked, like cooked a little bit. Not so much like fresh, but more cooked. You said apricot. I thought maybe a stone fruit. I don't know. I always have a hard time determining exactly which one. But I did pick up a little bit of leather on the nose. Maybe that's from the oak, right?

When you say cooked fruit, you mean like you took some blackberries and you're reducing them down for jelly? Stewed or compote, right? I don't know why when you say stewed, it just sounds horrible. stewed fruit, stewed fruit.

That's cause you think of stewed prunes.

Yeah. Oh yeah. I don't think rendered down for jelly is bad. They call it, they call it a compote.

I use compote a lot in my notes.

Okay. I think it's stewed tomatoes every time he says that. I'm like, why would you say it's stewed? So next up we got the fat cat. Ashley, what'd you get from that?

Floral, super floral on the nose. Maybe a little Magnolia, soft earthy. This one's a little more of the earthy herbal, a little more raspice coming through and lighter. It's not quite as rich as the first one.

I did get light and airy with fresh fruit, mainly grapes and fresh peaches on this right here. That lightness on there, to me it was a lot lighter. Not a whole lot of oak in there, not any tobacco or anything. I didn't even get the spice on this one. That's what I got on Jim.

Yeah. So I got, I got kind of, kind of a light cherry on it for me. Um, uh, caramel obviously, but, uh, I felt like, uh, it compared to the first one. It was a little bit, uh, a little bit lighter, a little bit fresher.

Maybe next up actually, we've got the roti reserve here. What'd you get?

Soft sweet spice. I think cinnamon sugar, a little clove nutmeg in there. New leather and an oaky coconut.

Oaky coconut.

Oaky coconut.

All right.

Coconut from the oak is a little different than fresh coconut.

Yeah. Yeah. I got light oak. I got apple butter on this for some reason. Apple butter. A little bit of sweet gum on this for some reason, like that you smell that big leachy gum when you open up the pouch. I got that on there.

Yeah, on this one I did get a sweet caramel, but I got kind of a green note to it. It was a little light, but I don't know how to explain it. But maybe, I don't know if it's a grassy note or not, but sort of a fresh earthy note maybe?

Fresh green note. That fresh cut grass, I actually love that smell when it's springtime and you get that first cutting and you get that whiff and the air of that fresh cut grass, it smells pretty beautiful. Some people might not like it. I actually dread that moment that I have to start cutting grass, and then I'm praying for the grass to start not being able to grow anymore.

Amen.

And we're there, we're almost there.

Yeah, thank you, Miss.

So the fourth pour we got here is Buffalo Vegas. What'd you get Ashley?

It's very soft, kind of sweet banana notes coming through, kind of like a bananas foster. Some herbally light oak.

I got canned peaches like my grandma would make when you open that jar and you smell that syrup on there. I don't know how she made that syrup. Probably with a lot of sugar.

Yes.

Either she was making mashed down in the basement or she's making a lot of peaches because she always had like 20 pounds of sugar running around. Oak, vanilla, and some white chocolate on this.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah, for me, it was soft, buttery, sugary. I said a fig, but I think I carried that fig in my brain from your charcuterie board in here. But yeah, it was very soft, I thought. I felt it was very soft. It had kind of a buttery, sugary butter flavor to it. I mean, if you were to take figs and sort of... Mix them with maybe hot butter.

I was waiting for you to say stew some figs.

Stew some figs. But your figs were a little spicy, and I don't think this was too spicy.

Yeah, those are turkey figs is what they're called. Brown turkey figs. I kind of like those. I was actually looking for white figs today is what I was searching for, and you can't find them right now. Super beautiful fig. If you're a fig eater, if you've never had dried figs, you should go out there and check them out. So our fifth bourbon for this first half is questionable intentions. Ashley, what'd you get on that one?

Buttery, toffee, dried gala apples. Very sweet, sweet and buttery.

I got nectarines on this one, like dried nectarines. Little citrus. Yeah. And then I got some fig on this one. Maybe it was because we did eat some figs. I did get like that fig Newton, you know, where that still has that little bread around it, whatever that fig Newton cookie is made out of. And then I got some cereal, which was probably what I was talking about, that cookie around there. And then I got white chocolate again on this. I'm thinking about white chocolate on mine, maybe.

But that's what I got. For me, I got light buttery kind of gingerbread cookies, a little bit. Gingerbread. Yeah, just put light on the ginger. Very light on the ginger. But just a hint of it there.

You know what I like that we're all talking about these notes, right? And there's not a whole lot of notes that either three of us have discussed from a tasting wheel. Our notes are all not spot on with each other, but we've brought up from our own memory senses, right? Where, you know, you go from a tasting wheel, you just stay around that wheel and never break from it.

I've never done that.

Do you find that in some judging, though?

The ones I've been at, no, I think everybody, I mean, there is a tasting wheel usually like to refresh your memory if you need some notes or some of them will actually have refresher courses where we'll sample and smell some spike samples of like flaws. But usually the ones I'm at, the judges are kind of like me and they do this pretty regular and don't stick to a wheel. But I can absolutely see that in tastings I've conducted. where there's a will, then that's where people want to try and say like, okay, I'm just going to stay with these. But there's so many other things that you can do. You know, every day we don't only see a fresh fig, we might see a dried fig, we might see a stewed fig. I remember when I was younger, I made a I was like a croissant type thing that I folded over and braided, but I used fig to make the compote for the middle. And I was like, maybe middle school or something. I entered it in a state fair. But when I think of figs and dried figs and say, like, I remember those smells. So that's not going to be on any tasting wheel.

No. Well, I don't think you're going to find big league chewing gum or a stewed fruits on a tasting wheel.

You should though.

Or a Pop Rocks. Pop Rocks. I could name them. Necco candies. Whorehound candies.

Whorehound is actually a pretty common, that's a good one for whiskeys. Yeah. I did. I was tasting some malt whiskies and I grew up in Casey County and we've got a very large Mennonite community and we always had sorghum molasses. from the community down there. We'd go down there and get them every year and my grandpa would, he mixed it with butter and he would sit there and he would mix and mix and mix until it was like the perfect consistency. And I never knew what it was. Cause after I thought it was mixed, he just kept doing it and then he put it on butter and the smell of it. And I keep it at the house. I make barbecue sauce and stuff with it, but sorghum molasses, I was, you know, this tastes like sorghum. It's even got the little bitter hint at the end. And I was talking to a client in the Pacific Northwest and they're like, what's that? And I'm like, you don't know what sort of glasses are? And they're like, no. So I sent them a bottle, but you know, it's just, it's, everybody's going to have something different and the different geographic locations are going to have their own unique wheel of big, big league true.

And yeah. Well, let's get to tasting these things. We'll taste all five of them and then we'll talk about our tasting and finished notes.

Okay.

Now listeners, we're actually taking and using cucumbers that Ashley told us about to kind of cleanse our palates between, it is light and refreshing and it kind of does, it does clean a palette just like you said.

Yeah, it's kind of, it's unique and some people might not be able to, that flavor of the cucumber might stick with them longer. But what I found, I kind of did a health journey early on this year that I was consuming a lot of crackers and a lot of almonds and that's a lot of extra calories. So I was working with a nutritionist and he was like, we're going to find something else that you can have that you can have an unlimited amount of without, you know, missing with your calories. And these worked really well and they're super hydrating too, which helps when you're tasting a lot of whiskey.

Now, Ashley, do you ever feel like you get a palate fatigue when you're, like you said, drinking 60 different barrels? I can imagine some, some fatigue will set in at the end of that, especially if you're drinking something super spicy.

Oh, absolutely. Or if I'm doing like a bunch of malt, it's really heavy and fusely and oily or fatty. And like you mentioned, I was sick a few weeks ago and just being off for about three weeks, not tasting. I went from about 60 a day to I'm maxing out at 40 until I get built back up. Do you think it's kind of like an athlete, you know, a professional athlete, I'm constantly training and retraining and, and trying to keep my palette in shape to be able to do what I do every day. And I'll take breaks. I'll take palette breaks and do maybe work on some emails or go through some inventories or something, but.

Have a phone call with Big Chief.

Yeah, I've done that too. Yeah, it always helps. Cause then, you know, it gives you a chance to refresh or I'm fortunate to get to work from home a lot.

Now Ashley, you got any bourbons that are coming up that you can tell us about any special blends you're working on?

I'm currently working on the Genesis blend for Davidson Reserve.

Oh yeah.

October 17th is is Pennington Distillery's Whiskey Birthday. So on 10-17, we release 1,017 bottles of Genesis every year. And it started off as the very first barrels that they ever distilled. And it's their Tennessee Whiskey Mash Bill without the Lincoln County process. So it's basically a rye bourbon. And so that's kind of evolved. We're starting to run out of that original lot. So I'm getting to play with some new stuff this year. I'm really excited about it. I've actually got blend sitting. I did a couple more this morning and we'll hopefully pick one of those tomorrow morning.

So that's exciting.

I always love hardest harvest is what they call it and have a big celebration. We're looking forward to last year was our like five year anniversary, I think. And of course we didn't get to have it due to COVID. So I'm really looking forward to hardest harvest this year. That one's going on. What else can I talk about?

We don't want pressure here. Let's get you to talk about this Cedric. What'd you get on the taste and finish on this one?

So Cedric, it let me down. It let me down. It was really disjointed. It had such a bold, beautiful nose, really rich that, you know, the palette just didn't back it up. It's not that it's not nice. It's a nice solid pour. I would have liked to see a little more balance in that palette and finish. I had some soft fruit and spice on the palette, but the palette was really short. It just was not really long lived. Spicy dried berries on the linger with a hint of a sting, which to me is pretty off-putting. If you're blending it, you shouldn't have any kind of a little sting.

Yeah, I got it. I wasn't with you on that. It was a total letdown for me because that palette or the nose on that was just so beautiful. And then I got to the palette and I'm like, wow, something happened here. But I did get a. something bitter in there, sugary bitterness spice. And I was trying to think of there was a bitter candy out there that I had happened for, maybe some unripened green apple fruit that I had on that. The bitterness was just almost overwhelming for me and stuff. So that's what I got. A short finish with just a light Kentucky hug.

What did you think, Jim?

Yeah, so it was kind of dry for me. It had that leather. It did have kind of a, you said a sting. I felt like it was a little bit of a disconnected pepper at the end. I don't know. This didn't flow with the rest of it. I had a medium finish on it, but a light medium finish. Um, I think probably for me, uh, I felt kind of evenly between the nose and the palette, even though they weren't similar, I kind of scored them very similar. But, uh, yeah, I would say that, uh, for the most part, you're looking for that, that story between the nose and the palette that kind of brings the two together and says, what a match. And they just didn't happen in this case.

And I think this is, this is a good time to point out when you're, when you're blending things at home, If you're starting with blends that someone else has already done, you don't know what's in that blend. You don't know if they've blended it to work out some kinks in some of those barrels that by adding that to something else you've got, you've now highlighted that maybe that's what that little sting, that little bitterness you're tasting, you know, you really start playing with fire when you start blending other blends. So one of my biggest suggestions if you wanna start blending at home is to collect single barrels and start playing with those. That way you know what you're working with. Not to say you can't blend with say a Buffalo Trace or a Wild Turkey or Four Roses, but there's a lot more going on there and you get too many chiefs and not enough Indians if you're not careful.

Yeah, we only need one chief. on big teeth.

So what'd you get on the Fat Cat?

So the Fat Cat, I liked it pretty well. It was really floral on the palette. It was short, but it had some fresh mint and some sweet herbal notes I liked. It was very light all the way through, more balanced. So yeah, it was a little more herbal-y and earthy than obviously the first one, but

This is the one that totally shocked me from the nose to this. I got sweet kettle corn, caramel corn on this one. I got that big league chewed gum, you know, when you start chewing on it again. Just to me, it was great. I wrote it had a long buttery finish on it and I wrote, Oh my God. Sometimes you just find a good bourbon that you really like for your palette. Everybody's got a different palette. All three of us have a different palette, right? Absolutely. So we're all going to find something different. What'd you get, Jim?

Well, I got kind of a cherry pear mixture there for me. I thought it was a little bit waxy. Kind of had a little bit of... Oh, and it also came across a little bit like it had a little bit of barley in it. You know, I was almost thinking scotchy when I was tasting it, but hey, that's just me. Um, I did, did get a bit of sassafras. Maybe that's that, uh, so spicing this there. I don't know. And on the finish, I thought it was a medium finish. I got, I put oak and root beer, but they're sassafras, whatever you want to call it, kind of on the end. Um, I liked this one actually.

I thought it was pretty, uh, pretty tasty. I don't know, but I put a star besides this one.

Well, I rated them and this one was actually my number two.

So what about the roadie reserve?

Roadie reserve was very, it's kind of tannic. It was pretty oaky and got dark cherry, um, dark chocolate, bitter, bitter notes on it for me. So it, I wanted to see it a little smoother.

Yeah, I got you. They were that oak, um, oak and heavy, like baking vanilla, you know, the real vanilla like you'd pick up in Mexico and bring home with you. Um, some nutmeg, uh, some cinnamon spice. It was, to me, this was super spicy. Uh, I thought this might have a lot of rye in it. I couldn't be wrong, but, um, I had a medium, um, finish on it and, but I didn't get that hug. So I was wondering if this was some sweet mashes.

Yeah, for me, I was trying to identify that sort of that green note that I picked up on the nose to see if I could kind of zero in on a little bit on the palate. I'm not sure if maybe the cucumber kind of maybe messed my mind up a little bit, because I'd never done that before, right?

Sure.

But I'm sitting here searching for this and trying to figure it out. And the only thing I could come up with was wasabi seaweed, kind of a green but spicy mixture there. I don't know. I had that kind of a seaweed. I don't know. Is it Nagiri seaweed?

They call it Nagiri?

Yeah. I love that.

You know me, Jim.

I love that seaweed. Not in a bad way. For me, this wouldn't be my top pick, but I did think it was a little interesting. It was just a little, I don't know, probably by surprise.

Okay. We got the Buffalo Vegas.

I thought this was, creamy and sweet, very herbal, grassy. You talk about that fresh cut grass, kind of Balfalfa notes, but it also had quite a bit of cinnamon and spice. I had another burn on this one that just, the sting was very off-putting for me.

Yeah, I think some people that would be, you get too much burn or spice on. Some people like that. We talked to somebody last night and she was like, I love Stag Junior because it's so spicy. I was thinking, well, some people don't like that, right? Yeah.

My dad likes that. He's like, if it doesn't burn, I don't like it. I'm like, you're crazy. And you won't like anything I do.

I got almond and I got creamy peanut butter on this. That would be the creaminess maybe. I got a lot of oak in this one and it was kind of corn or caramel for me. It was medium, but it had that deep Kentucky hug that we're always looking for. You know, I would expect that this is a sour mash.

Yeah, for me on this one, this was my number two pick, actually. I liked it. It was a little different. I thought it was buttery. The figs for me did carry over into the palette. But on the finish, it kind of rested as like, I wrote like, Oak and white pepper. But then I put in my nose, I put hot butterscotch, but not temperature hot, like spicy hot butterscotch. So, um, yeah, maybe white pepper and butterscotch kind of mixed together. Yeah.

Our last one, we have questionable intentions.

So this one was actually my, my top pick for this, this round was butter toffee on the nose, but the creamy, sweet white chocolate, almost like a yogurt covered raisin, that vanilla and raisiny. with toasted pecans and caramel on the finish was very silky. It was short, which is abnormal for me. I really usually like that long finish, but I did really like this one.

I got the vanilla with cloves. I had some mintiness on there for some reason. I don't know if that was that spice, you know, sweet spice I was looking at, light oak. The finish though is kind of let down for me. It was medium with just a slight hug on there. I thought it would have more of a finish to it, but it just didn't hold up.

Yeah, this one didn't surprise me too much. It didn't like jut out in one area too much. I felt like it had a hit of bitterness on it, just a little bit. But it was kind of like what you would get from like a walnut shell, maybe. Like, you know, when you get that shell, that piece of that shell's got that little bitterness to it. A little bit of tobacco and leather. But overall, for me, not a bad bourbon, but certainly not my top pick.

Yeah, it's solid. I think that it surprised me because it was solid and it was short on the finish, but I liked it. It's like it added up the nose, the palette, the finish. It was all complete. So looking from a blending perspective.

Sure, sure. And that's what we're doing, right? Yeah.

Yeah.

I was very impressed.

Well, that's the first half. Listeners, stick with us. We know this is going to be a lengthy episode, right? But stick with us. We'll get to the other five bourbons that entered our 2021 bourbon roadies blending challenge. We got Ashley with us here at the Jephthah Bend Farm. Her husband and her Boy, Clay, I think he's tromping through the, tromping, can you say tromping for a boy? Trudging.

Trudging through the- Tromping, trudging, rolling.

Yeah, rolling through the creek. You hope he's probably not, but- I brought extra clothes.

Like I'm prepared.

All right. Well, listen, stay with us. We'll be right back.

Alright listeners, well we are back and this is the Bourbon Road 2021 Blending Challenge. And we've got 10 samples that have been submitted by our roadies. In the first half, we worked our way through the first five samples. And I must say, overall, pretty impressed.

Oh yeah. I'm impressed.

They brought their A game. They did. We got five more in this one. I'm telling you already, I'm seeing at least one pretty darn dark.

There's a dark one. There's definitely a dark one here. Maybe a ringer. Who knows? Listeners, I'll remind you that we did bring in a special judge. She is a master blender. Uh, she's worked at some pretty heavy hitter distilleries and she's putting magic in bottles today. She is the witchy woman of bourbon Ashley Barnes, a Kentucky native woman. Um, Ashley, what'd you think about the first half so far?

Man, I'm impressed. Um, the roadies brought their A game for sure. And there's some really nice blends in there. So I'm, I'm really excited to see, you know, what, what the second half has to offer.

So what were the names of the bourbons in the first half?

So the first half we had Cedric's Reserve with this nice label, The Fat Cat. Roadie Reserve. Somebody went some lengths to figure that one out right there. Buffalo Vegas and Questionable Intentions.

All good names.

All great names, yeah.

Then the second half here, we have five more samples. Yeah. And the first one is called Firehouse Reserve. Yeah. The second one is Weeders Breakfast of Champions. And I'm wondering what's in that one. I'm just wondering if I'm going to like that one or not. The third one is called Dust in the Blend.

I like that name.

That's pretty cool. That's a Kansas song, right?

Dust in the Wind. Can you sing that, Jim? I can. Even if I could, I wouldn't. You wouldn't? Because you sing it, Ashley. You know the words to it?

I know the words, but I can't sing it.

You can't sing it? With that deep twang, that tucky twang?

Yeah, it wouldn't sound right.

Yeah.

The fourth one is just called Nips. N-I-P-S. And the fifth one is the Kings.

The Kings. I don't know what that means. Does that mean he took like three big giant Bourbons, the Kings of Bourbon, and blended them? Could be.

I'm curious. Do you think in those little magic envelopes that none of us have seen, if there's like a little story?

That would be pretty cool.

Like Firehouse Reserve. you know, if that was a collective of, of a firehouse somewhere or something, you know, they all went in and helped create this blend.

Oh, that'd be great. I love the stories.

The story is what makes it, you know.

All right. Well, this is, uh, this is all about these five and we're going to come, uh, we're going to go ahead and nose these and, uh, put our thoughts together and score the nose. And then we'll talk a little bit about them and then we'll go back and taste them. Let's do it. Let's try these things.

No, Ashley, you were, you're married to a bull rider, right?

I retired. I mean, all I've met him retired, but yes, you made him retire.

He, he come to a census.

No, I made him retire. And the week after he officially retired, we found out we were expecting, so if you weren't already retired, you were done then, but he, he rode for 17 years and that is a very long, and a wonderful career. And I was getting too old to be sitting there with the young girlfriends and I felt like a mom to everybody. And you don't bounce as good when you start getting in your 30s.

No, you sure don't.

Yeah, it's always interesting when people meet us and they ask, What he does for a living, what I do for a living. They're like, wait a minute. You're, you're a master blender. You make whiskey and he's a retired bull rider. Wait, we got to know more about this story.

Well, bourbon and bull riding go together, right?

Oh yeah. Yeah. We definitely have had some adventures. I'm thankful to not go to the right. I used to enjoy bull riding. Um, I don't enjoy it quite as much anymore, but. Thankful I'm not going watching him ride anymore. We do now, he does the golf of rodeo as he calls it. He's a team roper. Those are fun. They're really long, but I'm much happier with team roping than bull riding.

I've been known to write a bull back in my day, like a long time ago. That might've been 34 years ago, somewhere in there. But every time me and Jim start drinking bourbon together, I got this hankering to climb on a buffalo and write it.

Well, don't tell James cause he'll make it happen.

Has he got a buffalo?

He, I'm sure knows someone and he's notorious when he starts drinking with anyone. Anyone I bring him around and they start drinking. He's I'll make a phone call. We'll get you on bulls tomorrow.

Out of a bull, it's got to be a buffalo and it's got to be tame. He can't be bucking you off.

Well, he could probably find a buffalo and I don't know if it'd be tame, but he tends to always do it. He can pull stuff out of his tail. I'm like, where did you come up with this?

All right, listeners, we so we're going to go ahead and go through our nose of these are aroma of what each of us got on these these five bourbons. The first one we had was the number six for me was the firehouse reserve.

Yeah, so I got some really rich notes, just super syrupy and cherry sweet spice, bold leather, kind of almost a little malty. On that one.

Yeah, this is had a fantastic nose to me. Good Lord.

It's dark, too. It's super dark.

It is dark. I got you ever had to smell some good rose potpourri back in the day? I think 80s, early 90s. A lot of people would have potpourri in their houses and stuff. I got that hot honey butter, oak, leather and tobacco. This is a rich, dark bourbon. lovely nose on it.

Yeah. So I got a rich, deep, dark, just kind of falling in tune here. Caramel, a little bit of cocoa. Thought it had kind of a little bit of a sweet nose, but at the same time, the oak was definitely present on it. So, yeah.

So the second one we nosed was the Wheater's Breakfast of Champions. What'd you get Ashley?

I got, this was a really nice light nose and morning glory. Kind of a cherry raspberry compote type notes to it. And dark caramel. Not the light stuff, but a super dark caramel.

I got light caramel, a honeysuckle, you know. That springtime honeysuckle is growing really good. You got the little flowers on there. Smells awesome on a road. Light oak and I got warm leather on this like a baseball glove or old pair of boots or maybe an old leather chair you sit in. All right. Well, I thought it was quite floral as well.

Um, got a little bit of a buttery note there, uh, salted caramel, a little bit of a sweet apple. So I kind of, I was thinking of salted caramel apples kind of, but the apple wasn't real strong on it, but it was definitely there for me.

Um, the third one would be dust in the blend. Um, Ashley, what'd you get on this one?

Really sweet and herbal. I got some cardinia on there. It was a really nice floral. Nodes coming through there, light caramel, nutmeg.

I got a sticky rice sweetness. That's what I got. That's what I wrote down. Some citrus and a little bit of mint in there. Okay.

Yeah. I got a light raisin plum kind of that's a little bit spicy, but I put menthol. So light menthol. I don't know menthol is the right word, but it was kind of airy. You know, had that light. freshness. I'm trying to think of like a spearmint gum.

Maybe peppermint peppermint has the cooling effect.

Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, the fourth bourbon we nosed in the second half was nips. What'd you get Ashley?

It's funny. It's called nips because there's that toffee caramel candy called nips and I totally got that on there. Um, I used to eat the tar out of them when I worked at CVS and um, So I got toffee, it's really soft. For this one though, it was super ethanol forward. So much so I had to kind of blow some of it off and it was very off putting.

I got a baked dry bread or maybe even pumpernickel bread on this one. A weird nose to me and maybe it was that ethanol but that pumpernickel to me was sticking out and a little bit of smokiness on there. I don't think that's not campfire, but just a little bit of smokiness.

I had some toasted pecans after I did the blow. I got a real strong toasted pecans.

So I wrote down off earthy. So at first I thought this is a little earthy for me. But then I was like, yeah, but it's not. I mean, it's something else. And I couldn't quite put my finger on it. So I just put off earthy. I got kind of an alcohol vanilla or something there, some kind of a chemical I don't know. I wouldn't know how to identify it, but I did feel like it had a little bit of a buttery note there. That's diacetyl, right?

Yeah, a little bit of that.

If you take a vanilla extract and you open it up and you smell it, you don't just get vanilla, you get that alcohol.

Like a cheap one?

Yeah, the cheap one. You get that alcohol in it too. I'm not saying a bad thing about this.

I'm just saying that's what I got. So that's what it reminded me of. Next up and the last one we have is the Kings. Ashley, what'd you get?

I'm excited about this one. It's sitting in the bar pretty high on the nose. I got milk chocolate, dried apricots, spiced pecans, you know those like the cards with the German pecans that are all spiced and like yummy. I totally got that on this one. So it's really nice.

Nice. I got a corn sweetness with a little bit of caramel in there, vanilla and campfire s'mores. I got that sweet smokiness off there. Like you cooked your s'more with a little chocolate in there, that marshmallow just oozing out, graham crackers. Man.

Yeah, I think that this one's got, you know, how we talk sometimes about how sometimes a younger bourbon will bring something to the table in a blend, right? Or sometimes it'll bring something to the table that disappears later on in the barrel. And I felt like this had that youthful note, but in a good way. Nice. So maybe one of the components here is a younger bourbon. I've got coriander, a little bit of mint, a little bit of banana too. I liked it. It wasn't over the top for me, but I thought it was refreshing. Very enjoyable.

Well, we'll go on and taste these and get a finish off these and we'll score them up. And then what we're going to do is we're going to take our top three out of the three of us and then we'll go back and re-taste those. All right. So we got finished tasting these. So we got a taste and a finish on these. So we'll go ahead and go through all of them. Then we'll take a quick break. We'll pick a top three. We'll retaste those and those and taste them and pick the clear cutware. All right. So for the Firehouse Reserve, what'd you have, Ashley?

This was nice. It had a spicy, silky palette. It had some leathery cherry syrup notes. The leather lingered. but their big, bold nose, I really wanted more fruit on the palette. I wanted more fruit and depth on that to really match that nose. It's a big, beautiful, dark amber pour, and I feel like it should have had a little more substance on the palette, a little more oily, fattiness I was lacking in that. I got it on the nose, but I was missing it on the palette.

I got sizzling campfire s'mores with a little bit of either bitter or drying, maybe a little tannic on the back end with just a little bit of heat. Medium with no hug for me, even though it had all that heat on the tongue, that spiciness, it just didn't come through with a hug for me.

All right, so I got a kind of syrupy and spicy, a little bit of peppercorn, oak and leather. For me, I wanted more fruit, too. This had kind of a little bit of a dried fruit to it, but not enough. I wanted more. But it was very, very pleasant on the palate. The finish was also pleasant, rich and spicy. I don't know if I'd call it lengthy, but it was a medium finish. I like this bourbon.

Next up is the Wheater's Breakfast of Champions.

This one was a nice herbal palate, kind of like a spiced pear, earthy alfalfa notes on the finish, sweet apples and pears. Overall, it was really nice. Kind of a lighter bourbon and delicious, fairly balanced.

Once again, that honey butter showed up. I got honey butter pancakes with rich maple syrup, a little bit of leather and oak in there to finish it off. It had long with a beautiful hug. This scored pretty high for me. I really liked it. No surprise there, right, Jim?

Yeah, for me, it was buttery toast. I still got that salted caramel a little bit on the palate. Maybe think a little bit about apple butter. I kind of thought maybe this is this is kind of apple butter here on the finish. It was nice. It was not too long, but it was enjoyable. But it did have a pretty good hug.

Next up, we had dust in the blend.

I thought this one was beautiful. It was a nice balanced bourbon. It was creamy, dried fruit space on the palate. kind of corny under sassafras and a fresh mint, a nice, nice long linger, a little bit of that dusty huskiness that carries through. Like you said, hey, I got a little bit of age on me, but I really liked the balance, the nose, the palette and the finish really all come together in this one.

On this one, I got sweet red velvet cake with hints of spice and leather. Medium with a slow Kentucky hug, meaning it just kind of lingered down there. It was a nice bourbon. Not my top one out of all these, but it was a nice bourbon. Anything we've drank so far today has been pretty good.

This one scored real high for me. I got kind of raisin toast with a little bit of persimmon jelly on it. Persimmon jam, I guess. Little mint, not too much. Uh, it had a nice medium palette, a little bit of peppermint, very balanced and pleasant. Uh, overall, this was a, this was a good bourbon and it changed for me. I had to come back and revisit this one a couple of times. So it kind of changed for me a little bit. Next up we have nips.

Nips. I'm kind of with Jim kind of on that last one. This one changed for me. As I came back through it and revisited it, it was very ethanol forward on that first nose. But then it kind of came through and that toffee caramel note came through. Caramel coffee, like caramel macchiato, creamer kind of on the palate, silky sweet, butter mint finish, those old table mints. It was overall quite nice.

This was one to me that had the most spice to it. I just wrote spicy, spicy, spicy with those pop rocks, oaky and leather. This is the one I thought Jim would have liked the most. It had a long, long finish with an amazing Kentucky hug on this one. I mean, it sticks with you.

Yeah, this one for me was unique. It definitely stood out. It wasn't my favorite, but it did pretty well. I think one of the things I've tasted in this is it brought back a memory. I don't know. When I was a younger person, probably in my early teens, I used to go hunting in Kentucky with my grandfather and They used to make a Mayapple jelly down there. You had to be very careful making it because typically it's poisonous unless you do it just right. But it has kind of an interesting bite in it, an earthy note and an interesting bite. It kind of reminded me of that. So on this one, I said, yeah, it was a little bit earthy and savory. It still had that chemical note a little bit, but the second time through, most of that disappeared. There was still a little bit, but it was, I said it had a medium finish. It was unique, a little drying, but overall, I think it was pretty good bourbon.

So we got the last one of the Kings. What'd you get, Ashley?

This was a really nice one as well. Kind of a creamy spice on the palate. butter mint, caramel, cinnamon nutmegs and toasted graham crackers, kind of that campfire s'mores thing going on. And it very balanced, the nose, the palate, the finish worked well together. I felt like this was something that, you know, they complimented each other. They weren't identical, but they complimented really well.

I said this is elegant with layers of caramel, sugar, smackin' cereals. This thing, to me, was just so amazing. It just layered and layered. It's so complex. It was long with a rich, deep Kentucky hug. This just hit home for me as the hashtag Weedy King of Kentucky. I'm hopin' it's all Weeders. Because I loved it.

Yeah, for me, this was very spicy. It had a lot of variety to it. So there were a lot of notes there that were difficult for me to pick out, but I could definitely discern the different notes. I just couldn't identify them. I wrote nice on here several times. I did get a little bit of leather and spice, but I basically said this thing brought the whole spice cabinet. Kind of the baking spices all came to the surface on this one for me. And it scored pretty well.

This one had like that, like you said, that spicy there, that nutmeg, all those bacon spices that you want in your cabinet. It's all here in this bourbon right here. Well, we'll come right back. We're going to figure out our scores. We'll taste the top three and then we're going to go ahead and announce the winner. So we got our top three. I'm not going to put them in order or anything. I'm just going to tell you what our top three were. So we got the Fat Cat, we got Dust in the Blend, and then we got the Kings. It was a pretty tight race. Yeah. Amongst these ones. There wasn't really a loser in any of those.

I think they were all good pours. I must say that between us, the three of us, we didn't score them all the same.

No.

So we were all over the board, right? Yeah. OK. So not just with points, but also with tasting notes. So we each brought our own palettes to the table. Actually, I noticed it was a little harder on Berbers than we are.

She's a judge. She's a master blender. We're just kind of two guys just kicking it along down a bourbon road. But we're going to taste these three. We're going to come up with a definite winner. And we'll be right back.

These are all great. I feel like, you know, the roadies pulled through. I've said it before, I think it's great.

I think they all should be proud because I think we got a nice selection of different... techniques and blending, different ideas of blending. And they all had their reasons to choose the components that they did for whatever reason. And maybe as we open the envelopes, we'll learn a little bit more about their thought process.

But for now, Mike, who do we have as our winner? You've got to score now. So our top bourbon here, and I'm not going to give the scores out, but the clear-cut winner, I think, was the Kings. It was pretty close, but maybe because you guys got a weaker in room. You know, I don't know. My score was really high on that. I don't know, I just really, really loved it. You know, something you dig into and you really love. There's been bourbons that Ashley's blended where I'm just like, me and you've sat in a room before down at David's and drank their Weeder and was just like blown away and just. We're like, good lord, this is good. Or her holiday toast, we're just like, oh, this is a magical bottle right here. When somebody asks me, hey, what's a bourbon outside of Kentucky or something that you can get your hands on? I tell people, I'm like, you need to try this. I've never heard of that before. Well, that's because you're not opening your eyes to what's outside of the big boys. Go out there and venture out. Man, did we get something today that was pretty special from our roadies. Now these are probably all big bottles, right? That they took and put together, but we're going to open those envelopes up now and we're going to find out.

We're going to find out what they are. Yeah. And we're also going to start thinking about who's the best name.

Who's got the best name. All right. So without further ado, we're going to start cracking these envelopes open.

So Mike, I think we probably ought to take a minute here and discuss amongst us the different names. You know, I kind of thought for me, there were a couple names that kind of stood out. I liked dust in the blend.

That was my favorite.

Was it? And I think that's my favorite, too. Is it?

Clear cut. I just like it. I think it's catchy. I think it's nice. And it kind of support, you know, the bourbon that's in it. It matches up to it.

Now you're hoping when we open up these envelopes that there's a dusty bourbon inside that blend, right? Could be.

I'm looking at it on the flavor profile. I mean, if there is, that's awesome.

It kind of sounds like it could be. Now, honestly, with a little bit more background, Firehouse Reserve might be a pretty cool name if we just knew a little bit about why they chose it. But we've got to make this choice before we open the envelopes. otherwise we might be influenced by the content.

Well, I think you already said it, Dust in the Blend, a pretty damn good song back in day, Dust in the Wind, right? By Kansas. Absolutely. Now his artwork on his bottle, he could use a little work. Maybe he had his kids draw it, but still a great name. Man, somebody might use that. Kansas might be like, come on, everybody's making bourbons these days. Dust in the Blend. Hit Ashley up if you want to make a bourbon blend call that she'll she'll hook you right up. So without further ado, I ripped up an envelope. The first one I'm going to talk about is Bourbon Vegas. And so this is from our good friend Garrett over at Bourbon Vegas. You might have seen him on Instagram. His deal was Buffalo Vegas. So, he said four parts Buffalo Trace, one part Blanton's, one part Weller 107, and one part Stag Junior, batch 12. Well, it's all out of Buffalo Trace, isn't it? Yeah. So Buffalo Vegas, the guy in Vegas mixing those up. He's crossing, he's crossing the mash bills though, a little bit. Yeah. A little bit of weeder, just a tad bit of weeder in there with a bunch of rye. I don't know. I don't know how he poured that water. I liked it. I thought it was a good burger. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't think we had a bad one out of the bunch. Garrett, thanks for participating with us. We appreciate it, man. You've been a winner on our past shows and stuff. He was actually the winner of our benchmark giveaway where we said, hey, if you could name my football mascots, I'll send you something. So I don't know what the heck's in here. Just a couple of notes. So this next up is the Fat Cat. So this is for Jordan Riley. Jordan's been on the show before. He's a guest on a blind challenge we did. He did pretty good. He brought our bourbon of the year though. We hadn't told anybody that was going to be our bourbon of the year. We were going to announce it that night. That's what he brought, which was Maker's Mark Cast Strength. It had just been released. This is 50% McKenna Tenure, Henry McKenna Tenure, 25% Wilderness Trail High-Ride Bourbon, and 25% blends. Pretty interesting there.

Yeah. All good burdens in the room, right? And that mixture, that blend got him into the top three.

Yeah. I got to say congratulations, Jordan, for even participating. Three excellent burdens that some people probably overthink. They hit pretty hard on Blattons, but that guy was, you know, they knew what they were doing there at Buffalo Trace. Wilbur's Trails obviously got some great things going on out there and Henry McKenna tenure speaks for itself.

Yeah. Wilbur's Trails is, they're coming up there. They've got some delicious juice.

Yeah. Next up I got Rody Reserve. This is from Connor Kirkpatrick out of Dallas, Texas. He put in 1.5 ounces of Remus repeal reserve number three, 100 proof, Maker's Mark 46, 94 proof. And then here we go. Here's the craft distillery right here. Steel Austin, the musician, 98.4 proof. That's pretty awesome. You put a craft distillery in there. I'd like to see that.

Yeah.

People went outside the box here just to pull some stuff that you could buy everywhere. Still Austin. It's got a great name. Next up is Nips. This is an envelope. This thing is full.

There's probably a hundred dollar bill in there.

Pick me.

Oh, it's an envelope in an envelope.

Envelope in an envelope.

I want to make sure we didn't look at that thing.

Maybe there is some money. Me and Jim, we need some sponsors. We need to buy some new equipment, like some big speakers and stuff. This has got a card and everything with it. This is fancy, man. They must not know that I don't know how to spell Jim. They put up ABCs on their little ads and stuff. Aw, aren't it cute? The emojis. Yeah. So this is Nips. This is Nips. This was 104.1 proof, 50% wilderness trail, four year weeded. Man. 20% old Fitzgerald 13 year, 20% weller foolproof, and a 10% wilderness trail weeded store pick six year, eight months. Wow. Wow. A weeder. You put all that together and you get May apples. And this came from our good friend, Adam Boothby. All right. Good job, Adam. He's a weeder lover. So yeah, we do that.

Turned out really nice.

Next up is Questionable Intentions. This is another fat envelope inside an envelope. I'm seeing something going on here.

Yeah this one has pretty high ranks on my sheet here.

This is from Adam Boothby again. Oh, he's trying to, he's trying to get a ringer here. He said, wishing me well on this card. Questionable Intensity is 101.6 proof. He actually put it in here. Sip away higher than actual proof. 73% Buffalo Trace, 15% Elijah Craig, barrel proof C919, and then 12% bullet bourbon single barrel.

Oh, cool.

Use one of our hometowners there, Jim. Yeah. Only one craft of stipplery so far. I'm just hoping to see some more of those. Another envelope, the Wheater's Breakfast of Champions. That envelope, somebody really used an availed envelope here. Recycler. Sent you a mail. Could be a deal inside here. You never can tell if people are sending this. This came from our good friend Drew Allen down in Memphis, Tennessee. Drew sent us a two ounce Willard & Estrell Bottle of Bond Weed, two ounce Makers Mark 46 Cast Strength. You know we love that. Two ounces of Rebel, Rebel 100, two ounces of Weller Special Reserve, and two ounces of Makers 101. So he came out with 100.12 proof. Okay.

We only asked for three curbs minimum and some of them went five.

If you don't know Drew Allen Brew is a Makers Mark freak. He said if there's a chance that we could go with me if we ever get to do Makers Mark he would he would drive up from Memphis just for that. This is the Firehouse Reserve right here. This is the one we were hoping to have a great story to it, right? This came from James Huggins right here in Shelbyville, Kentucky. We saw James last night at our DuckDuck Urban event. I don't remember what kind of bourbon he got last night. Did he get a couple bottles? I don't even remember to be honest with you. That was a hundred and something bottles that we passed out last night.

Sounds like a fun event.

It was. It was a great event. So this is Firehouse Reserve Old Forester 1910, Old Forester 1920 and a Woodford Double Oat. Well, that explains the darkness of the liquid. Remember, that was the darkest one, right? Two of those would be a double oak bourbon then. All brown forming. No kidding. James, hey, congratulations, man. You did a great job on that blend. Like we said, there was no real loser here. Everybody did so good so far. We got Cedric's freezer. This was the first one we tasted right here. First out of the gate.

Yeah, I think it's good to stress. These were all really good. It was a challenging to be critical, but it was a tough job.

This guy right here is out in Peoria, Illinois. Stephen Bishop. He wrote a whole note here. This guy gets some extra effort right here. Dear Mike, please accept the enclosed bottle of a blended bourbon named Cedric Reserve is named long with my basement bar after my dog Cedric. Well, okay, that explains that bottle right there. So he made five and a half ounce of blend. He used one and a half ounces of Eagle Rare, one and a half ounces of very old Barton, one and a half ounces of Woodford Reserve Double Oak and one ounce of Wild Turkey Rear Breed. And he said it should be 97.7 proof. Well, you might be spot on right there.

All right. That was a good one.

Yeah. All right. We'll go open up our dust in the blend, our main winner out here.

So dust in the blend gets surprises shipped out to them. We'll talk a little bit about that in a few minutes. What's that double envelope? I don't know if it's just got something inside there.

Look, he put it on somebody else's tasting notes, so I don't know. This came from... Todd Ritter, our friend over in Frankfurt. He's good friends with Whiskey Lower here on his little tasting note sheet. So Dust in the Blend, he actually wrote a little bit of the song here. I don't know if I'm gonna sing it or not. I close my eyes only for a moment and that moment's gone. All my dreams pass through my lips. A curiosity, Dust in the Blend. All I know is Dust in the Blend. Well, Todd Maynard, quite the poet. or Kansas was. So dust in the blend, right off the bat right there. 1 3rd, 1983 Elijah Craig 12 year bourbon, 94 proof. 1 3rd, new Riff single barrel bourbon, 104.7 proof. And look at this joker right here. He put 1 3rd Makers Mark 46 cast strength in there at 110.3 proof, which brought the blend proof down to 103. I got to say, he did use a little bit of dust in the blend. He used a up and rising new riff as coming up in the ranks, right? Yeah. Nice, beautiful distillery right up on the banks of the Ohio up there. And then our bourbon of the year last year for 2020 was that Maker's Mark Cast Drink that we really enjoyed. When we tell somebody about it, we try to say, hey, check that out. Todd, man, congratulations right at the end of this. After I open this last envelope, Jim is going to tell you what you And without further ado, this is the Kings. Now we think this had more to a name to it too, cause they crossed it off on there, but we're not sure. Now look who won, Jim, Adam Boothby. Adam Boothby put three, now we didn't say how many you could send.

And we didn't know until he opened his envelopes, right?

Vivian's, she packed them all away for me. I didn't have to see anything. I didn't want to see it. I just kept stacking boxes in the room in there. I didn't know who they were from. I just put them in there. I knew they were samples because I know that a full bottle of bourbon weighs about 3.7 pounds. You get enough FedEx deliveries, you'll know that.

I'm very aware of those advice.

This one's on a birthday card. Adam, I don't know if you're recycling it here or what, but the King's, this I think was the highest proof for us. Okay. 104.1 proof, even blend of 13 wheaters. Holy moly. He's got an old Fitzgerald 13, an old Fitzgerald eight year, a welder 107, a maker's cask, a maker's fey, 01, a Weller 12, an old 55 Bottled and Bond, Rebel 100. Ashley, you stopped right.

I just put 13 waders on there.

I think this is a Wilderness Trail four-year, a WTD. I guess that's a Wilderness Trail. It was a dirty pick. A Wilderness Trail six-year. and WTD100 firm. I'm not positive what that one is, Adam. I'm not sure. But 13 different Wheaters, no surprise for me. That was my favorite. You guys, it was a pretty close toss up. Yeah, it was a good one. No doubt.

Well, Adam, congratulations on your win. You definitely put in the time and the effort to get there by submitting three different blends to the challenge. So for your prize, you get a custom bourbon road engraved barrel head. And Michael will be telling people a little bit more about that in the future. You're also going to get a bourbon bullshitter t-shirt. I think you already own one, but you're going to get another. going to get a Bourbon Road t-shirt, a Bourbon Road Glen Caron, a Bourbon Road hat, all of which I think you have, but you know what? You're going to get doubles. And along with samples of both my blend, Old Hoot and Mike's Infinity Bomb.

Yeah, which is like 50 different weeded Bourbons.

It beats 13, right? Yeah. And then Todd Ritter, right? Todd Ritter came up with the best name. Dustin the Blend. And he's going to get a Bourbon Road Glen Caron, a Bourbon Road hat, along with samples of both of our blends.

And Adam and Todd, it was closer than you know. The scores were really tight and stuff. But everybody that submitted stuff, I can't wait for 2022. We'll do this again. Ashley will have you on again if you would.

Can I throw in something for the winners?

Yeah.

I'd like to throw in a bottle of Davidson Reserve Weeded Bourbon.

Awesome. Yeah, I'm sure they will. Bonus. Bonus. Yeah, that's definitely a bonus. I'll tell you, me and Jim really thought a lot about the Davidson Reserve Weeder down there when we were there. We knew you had your magic fingers on that and stuff. So, hey, what a bonus right there for our two guys that won that. It pays to be a roadie. It pays to participate. It pays to be friends of the Bourbon Road.

Absolutely. Congratulations to all the winners. Actually, we'd like to give you a chance. We thank you very much for coming out today and helping us with this. I think Mike and I both learned a little something today, probably quite a bit, actually. But we'd like to thank you and give you an opportunity to let everybody know where they can find you on the internet, on the web, or on social media in case somebody wants to reach out to you and ask you about your company and what you have going on.

Sure. Yeah. So I have to look, this is how horrible I am with social media. I have to look on Instagram what my thing is. So you can find me on Instagram at Ashley Barnes TSG. And then on Facebook, it's just Ashley Barnes. Our website's www.thespiritsgroup.com and reach out to us anytime, follow us. There's always something going on. We got lots of stuff and you know, I just want to say, I'm really impressed with what the bourbon roadies come out here. There's so many aspects of blending that, you know, we haven't even gotten to talk about, about proofing, how long you need to let the blends sit after you proof and allow them to mellow. You know, once you put blends together, those organics have to be able to do their thing. And if you do it all at one time, you know, you're, you're throwing everything in at once and it doesn't always end up well. But if you isolate those out, let, you know, maybe all the, all the barrels or all the stuff that tastes the same, let it mellow and do his thing. And then the others, then they got a little more fighting chance. You get a little more well-rounded bourbon and, and these roadies really knocked it out of the park. I appreciate it. Thanks for, Asking me to be on here and be a part of this and being patient with my sickliness. And yeah, this has been great.

Well, Ashley, we can't thank you enough. And since you came on, we wanted to make sure you rocked a bourbon bullshitter t-shirt. We wanted to make sure that your husband rocked one of those shirts because he's a bourbon drinker too. And we made sure that just in case you had to go somewhere that you did want to rock that, you got a bourbon road shirt.

I really appreciate it. I can always rock those shirts.

All right, Michael, where can people find us? Well, you can find us on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, at The Bourbon Road, where all those spaces. We also have a private Facebook group called The Bourbon Road, as you've talked about this whole episode. To join, all you gotta do is be 21. You gotta like bourbon. Everybody likes bourbon, right? And you gotta be able to play nice with others because we don't tolerate any rudeness, right Jim?

That's right. And it's a requirement to be in the 2022. Blending challenge.

Yeah, we just got to be a roadie. You got to be a roadie. So join that group. We don't do any politics in there. We don't do any religion. We don't do social issues. Kind of that grandfather's rule or grandmother's rule at the bar. Don't talk about those things. So we stick to the whiskey We got great people in there like master blenders like Ashley Barnes in there Monica Wolfson there her partner we have Master distillers in their distillery owners old burner drinkers and new burger drinkers It's a whole lot of really good people. Yeah, come in there and celebrate life with us. We enjoy having you and stuff. We do two episodes a week, Jim.

What are those? So we do a short episode every Monday. We call it our Craft Distillery Monday. It's a short thing, about 15 or 20 minutes long, where Mike and I will dive into a single expression. Usually a craft distillery, but not always. Sometimes it's a big boy. I would say most of the time we spend our time in craft space, right? Yeah. We'd love to have you listen to that show. Every Wednesday we do a longer episode like today's. Not quite as long as today's, I think, but we usually spend about an hour and we'll do a deep dive on a subject, whether we have a guest on, a distillery, a series of expressions we're exploring. Sometimes it's just Mike and I chit-chatting about the Brevin industry in general.

Sometimes there's even some history on there, right? Most certainly.

So we'd love to have you listen to both shows every week. We'd also like to hear from you. We want to know what you like. We want to know what you don't like. And one way to do that is to give us a review, right, Mike?

Yeah.

So the first thing you want to do is go on up so you can hear us.

Hit that check mark on your app. Hit that plus sign. Hit that subscribe. That way you know we got an episode coming out. The next thing you want to do is you want to scroll on down. You want to hit that five star review because you know what happens if you don't the big bad booty daddy old bourbon will come over to your house. I'll bring our two blends old hoop and big cheese blend with us. We're going to drink that for that night. By the end of that night, you're going to leave us a five-star review because you know what I say, I guarantee. So make sure you give us that five-star review. If you want to come out and see me and Jim in public, we actually got a couple of events coming up. On the 21st of October, we will be at the Rippy House in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. You can go to their website. You can buy tickets for that event. Come see us. It's seven to nine. I think there's some hors d'oeuvres. There'll be some bourbon to be a drink. You can hear me and Jim talk about the Bourbon Road podcast, about the bourbon culture, about great folks like Ashley Barnes. Then we're going to be at Bourbon on the Banks on October 23rd. You can come by the Bourbon Road Lounge sponsored by Woodinville Whiskey Company from Washington State. Come by there. We've got some bourbon chairs to set in for you. some rockers, those folks like me that need a more comfortable chair. We got some high top. We got some tables and stuff. We got a big old rug in there. Well, bourbon will be floating. Yeah, we'll have plenty of bourbon. We might even have some of our own personal bottles there so you can sip on those and stuff. Come by. Be part of an episode. We'll get an episode out that week recorded there. Come check us out. Come visit us. If you want to check us out and have us at a tasting or one of your events, reach out to us. We want to make that event a success for you. Come out. Have us out at your house. Have us out at your bar. Have us out wherever. We'll come and help you out.

You can always reach out to us. You can reach us by email. I'm Jim at TheBurbanRoad.com. He's Mike at TheBurbanRoad.com. Probably the best way is to hit our DM on Instagram. I'm jshannon63. I'm One Big Chief. And we'll see you down the bourbon road.