210. Chris Thomas - Made South - Birthday Bourbon

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. Once again, Mike, we are in Tennessee at Leapers Fork Distillery in the beautiful town of Leapers Fork slash Franklin, right?

Yeah, I think the address here is Franklin, Tennessee. But, heck, we just went down the road, went to Puckett's. Listeners, if you haven't been to Leapers Fork, it is like a throwback to the 50s, I'd say. They got Like, I would say, a Mayberry car out there.

Yeah.

Barney Five's police car's out there. Yeah, he's sitting out there waiting for you. But we went to Puckett's. You had a fried bologna sandwich. Slab of damn bologna on that. I had a fried bologna sandwich and a BLT. I was a bit hungry today, but that slab of bologna, I think, was two inches thick. Now, I know our northerner listeners, they might not know about fried bologna, but if you haven't had some before, That's a pure south thing, right? That's about as south as it gets, right? Yeah.

We got an expert here on the south.

We do. So, yeah, we are here, Leapers Fork. We got two special bottles of whiskey we're going to taste today and sip on. But, you know, our guest today here in the Steel House Sessions is Chris Thomas from Maid South. Chris, welcome to the show.

Guys. I appreciate you having me. And, uh, I know you're both veterans and not to be like all weird or anything, but I want to thank you for your service to the country. Like I'm a Patriot. I know you guys are Patriots and I appreciate what you've done for the country. It's always nice to hear that.

I listen humbly when I get told that, and I am proud of my service and I know Mike's proud of his service.

Both of you.

He, uh, he's a retired coastie and he put a lot of years in for us. It's like a prison sentence.

Mama, when am I getting out of jail? How'd you get these scars right here? Tell me about that.

Oh, good Lord. Here we go. I got a couple of stories about the truth. The truth is a bear. Really? Yeah, a boy.

That would be the coolest story ever. If you said that was a big bear claw, we'd be rocking and rolling pretty quickly.

I can't wait. I was four years old in Texas and a dog attacked me. And, uh, back then we're such a small town, 400 people, the closest hospitals, 50 miles away. And still that hospital is a little country doctors back in, it was probably 77. That's the year I was born. So I come walking up the house, not crying or nothing with me and my little brother just covered in blood. They take me to the doctor and he sews me up and you know, he wasn't, he's just a country doctor. He didn't know anything about, I'm pretty sure about being a plastic surgeon or anything. And for most of my life, I had scars, you know, as I've gotten older, my big old melons grown like a pumpkin. Um, they've gotten smaller, but they used to cover my whole face. But I always said those scars kind of defined me as a man. Um, and you know, we talk so much about bullying and stuff into today's society that, um, I'm not condoning bullying, but I would say this to people that have kids are getting bullied. It will make your kids sometimes tougher. Um, it makes them ready for the world. It made me ready for the world. And I'm not saying it makes me honor or nothing, but sometimes I can tune stuff out when others can't just kind of, Hey, whatever. Um, I've had a lot worse said to me. That's my, that's my scar story.

That's a good one.

That's a good one, man.

I usually tell kids that Gorilla jumped out of the jungle. That's a way cooler story. Well, we are at Leapers Fork distillery and we have been drinking a little bit of Leapers Fork whiskey today. A little bit. But for this show, we're going to drink something

Little bit nice. Well, you know, I thought it was fitting. It was just my birthday and we understand.

What day is your October 6th?

I'm the first, the first October babies. That's right. Yeah. So rightly so. So, uh, we brought some 2021 old Forester birthday bourbon who comes in at 104 proof.

12 years old. That's gotta be the highest proof for a birthday bourbon release. I would think. I feel like they're typically in that 90 to 95 proof range.

Yeah. I honestly don't know what last year's was. I can't remember.

I do remember having it early, but I remember having a giant glass of it. But as you can see, Chris, I've been sipping on this just a little bit.

Yeah. I mean, it didn't come out too long ago, chief. And then that bottle is, uh, I would say more than halfway gone. Well, yeah, I, You know, when is George Garvin Brown's birthday real quick? September. Cause they released it. All right. So this bottle is a little bit more than a month old. You couldn't have had it more than a month. Yeah. Real close. And it's about halfway gone.

It's pretty tasty thought process on whiskey or bourbon. is you should share it. Absolutely. Right. It's not to sit on a shelf and be a collector's edition or have you told Grease this by the way, I need to get onto him. Cause that's all he does is put them on a shelf and I tell him all day long, me and his favorite bourbon is the same thing too. I know he's a well or special reserve guy. I am too. I'm a weed, weeded nut. Um, this ain't weeded though. This is their ride bourbon. Um, matter of fact, they don't even have a weeded bourbon over at old Forester. Shame on them.

Well, happy birthday, Mr. Brown. Happy birthday, big chief. Happy birthday, Chris.

Hey, I appreciate it.

It's a great week and it's a great bottle and it's a good reason to share it.

Boy, that's fantastic.

I say cheers. Yeah. Cheers. Clink at it. Oh, you sure? Yeah. Golly, I don't want to wear out my welcome over here before. You're all right. But it is absolutely delicious. We are going to go ahead and taste this and talk about it just a little bit, because there's I think there's quite a few folks out there that are probably only going to be able to get this in a bar. They weren't able to get a bottle when it released. Sure. And and even then they might not get their hands on it. So I'd love to hear what we think about it. So we say, Mike, cheers.

Oh, and it smells fantastic. The nose on this is just.

Yeah, it's definitely brown sugar and leather. Yeah.

You nailed it. You nailed it. Very rich.

Yes.

Rich Corinthian leather, leather bound books. Where's that from? Ron Burgundy, Ron Burgundy, the weatherman leather bound books.

Well, I just think that I had sprayed some leather cleaner on my boots. Uh, the other day for this trip and I was, Oh, I said, Hey, can you clean my boots? And said, yeah, I clean them. And it's a conditioner, but it smells like, you know, you were walking a boot store leather store and you get that smell. That's what this has right here.

Absolutely. Well, this is kind of Jackie's icons gift to, to Campbell Brown, isn't it? Oh yeah. Wouldn't you say?

I don't even know who Jackie's icon is.

So Jackie's icon is the Master Taster. I didn't know that. Old Forester. And Campbell Brown gets to choose

the bottle every year, right?

The blend or the, what, you know, the, the mixture that goes into the bottle. And I guess she sends him a few to pick from and he picks it.

But yeah, he picked it. She selected some good ones for him to pick from and he picked a dynamite bar. He did pick a good bourbon.

Absolutely. Yeah. I don't think she's doing anything wrong there for sure. She, uh, she definitely has kicked the bourbon doors down in the world with this right here and that nobody said anything bad about this that I've seen. Usually people won't though.

Yeah. Usually you hear more about like the 2015 bottle or something like that, but, um, yeah, I think the last few have been really good. I'm not sure when Jackie started blending these, but, uh, I would say since she's been blending them, they've been all big hits, right? Yeah.

I was just kinda, I was gonna Google here and go, let's see. This has gotta be one of the, you said this one's 104 proof, right? Man, I just I was wanting to see if I could quickly figure out. So it's the 21st edition of birthday bourbon. They've ranged from 90 to 105, so there was one that was 105 proof. And now that I read that, I feel like that's been a recent one. I feel like that's been maybe in the last couple of years, but man, 104, that's, that's up there.

Probably has been recent because that was something that they, she had talked about Jackie had talked about as people were hollering from the rooftops. Hey, let's get some higher. Let's taste what it tastes like going on the barrel. You know, let's just get that sweetness out of it.

I don't think that's ever a bad idea.

No. Nobody's ever going to say that. Well, Chris, let's talk about, you also have a podcast too called Southerner, where you talk about things from the South and then made South is also about the South.

Well, you're very kind to talk about Southerner in its present tense, since I don't think I've done an episode in and I don't know. I don't know when the last time was. I did one. They still live out there. They live out there for sure. Yeah. And I would say I get a handful of emails every week. People going, hey, I just listened to, you know, you and Ed Lee or you and Sean Dietrich or somebody. And we love it. But I noticed there are no new episodes. I'd love to see it come back. And I think at some point we want to definitely do that. Um, I mean, as you guys know, 2020 was a weird, weird, just a bizarre time.

It would have been difficult to continue that through that time.

And the thing is, and my guess is, um, you know, you guys are just being around you just for a few minutes. Like you seem like very personable guys. My guess is you prefer face to face over this. Zoom crap, you know, and that's the way I am. I don't want to do zoom interviews and or zoom con conversations. We won't call them interviews, but I like being face to face with people. And, um, you know, understandably people got a little bit nervous, a little bit freaked out. And I had a, you know, I had a bunch of people lined up for 2020 that, Hey, we're, we, we're going to put that on hold and all that good stuff. And, uh, candidly, it's just been something that, that I'm also just kind of, um, uh, a serial entrepreneur, small business guy. I love doing lots of things. And so as I have found more to do, there are definitely, I mean, I've talked to some people this week like, hey, I'm going to be in Birmingham or I'm going to be coming here. I'm going to be doing this. I'd love to connect and record a podcast. I think we're going to start doing more of it at some point. I just can't put my finger on exactly where that point is.

Well, I would be very happy to see it come back personally because I was an avid listener and I never missed a show. Well, I appreciate that. Kind of a closet.

So you were the one. I was the guy.

You were the guy who was out there downloading that thing. He actually got me to listen to it every episode. It's been a year. It's almost a year now. November 16, 2020.

Sarah, I think, was my last guest, right? Yeah.

You had old Carrie Bringle on for my favorite humans.

I'll tell you what that dude is just, he is a, he's physically an imposing guy. If you've ever been around him, like in person, you know, the leg and the store, but just, he's just a big guy. He takes over a room, just one of the most gregarious kind of friendly outspoken dudes. And, uh, man, I just love that dude.

No, he's on his podcast.

I haven't. So he, they call it, uh, can we, can you curse on this? So he calls it bullshit corner. Right. And, uh, he said, man, you're gonna have to come on bullshit corner. And I was like, I'd love to do that. Uh, and we just, we've not made it work yet, but I hope to be on there. So I'll weasel my way on there.

We went on there. Right. Yeah. Right before COVID actually. Right before. Yeah. I mean, it was, we talked about COVID and we were like, you know, is this a thing?

Yeah.

It's coming through the vents and all kinds of stuff. Oh man. If you listen to it now, he'd look back and be like, man, we really said all that stuff.

It was kind of nuts. How little we knew back then, you know?

Yeah. They actually get you rolling pretty good on that show. I would imagine, man.

Imagine there's some whiskey involved. He probably pulls out some of them peg leg porker releases and

Y'all get to going on it and show up plates of barbecue in front of our faces. I'd met him up at the Kentucky bourbon festival in 2019. I said, man, we got to get you on our podcast. He's like, well, I got a podcast. You come down there and see me first. And so we came down there and did it. We talked and he's like, I got a whiskey. I'd like to bring on your show. And Hey, we'll do anything with anybody anytime. Like you said, we want to be in front of somebody because when you get to look at another man or woman straight in the face and eyes and you can kind of communicate with them. Absolutely.

And kind of see what they're feeling over that stream yard is what we use. It's hard. A little disconnected. Yeah, for sure. It's a show for your listeners, but it's, it's, it's not the same for us as hosts.

And just, I, I don't know, man, there's not to get too deep or philosophical or anything, but like, I just believe we as humans, like we're supposed to be. in conversation physically in front of each other. Like you and I are going to have a different conversation here face to face than we would if it were some laptop and you're in Louisville and I'm in Franklin. You know, it's just going to be different. And I don't know. I just it's a personal preference. I don't it's not wrong. I just I won't do them. So we're we're hopefully getting some lined up, you know, for the next year.

How did how did you come up with a concept and the idea for made south?

So I spent I spent 12 years kind of in corporate, I would say corporate America, not I mean, maybe not too corporatey. But, you know, I worked for a larger company. I had a desk job. I had to ask permission to. You know, I had a certain amount of paid time off every year. If I needed to leave 15 minutes early, go to my son's baseball game. I had to run that by somebody and fill out, you know, some paperwork and make sure all that worked for everybody. And nothing's wrong with that. But it just it got to a point where I'd done it for so long. I'd done it for 12 years and I knew that. I wanted to try to go do something that I could try to grow for myself and my family. And I just didn't know what that was. And kind of simultaneously around the same time. 2013 was kind of a weird year for me where I I made the commitment in 2013 not to buy anything that wasn't American made. So that was a thing that I was just can't tell you the rhyme or reason why I did it. But I was like, this is on January 1st. OK, if I need a toothbrush. I'm going to go try to find an American made toothbrush. And that's pretty hard, by the way. It's gotten easier now. It was harder back in 2013. If I want a pair of jeans or a pair of boots or whatever, I want to go try to do some research, use the Internet, find an American made pair of boots, pair of blue jeans, something like that. And so there was this kind of renewed sense of I was getting more and more interested in where are the things that I'm consuming coming from. And then You know, a few years before that, my mom passed away unexpectedly in 2011. That kind of spurred me to go digging into my heritage, like where my family comes from. And because I knew that I knew that I was born in Nashville, I knew that my mom had been born in Nashville, but I wasn't sure past that. I didn't know where my grandparents came from or my grand great grandparents. And so when she died, I started looking into that a little bit and I found out that my great, great grandfather, and that's as far back as I could find, but that he had been born in Tennessee. So I knew that Man, that made me a fifth generation Tennessee, and that makes my kids sixth generation Tennesseans. And it could be deeper than that. I just haven't been able to locate it yet. But so there was kind of this thing where I've always loved being from the south. I say about Tennessee, there's no place I want to be like I love the state of Tennessee. I'm a sucker for anything made here, anything produced here. I'm a diehard red, white and blue Tennessean. I'm Tristar all day every day. And then this thing in 2013, like becoming more conscious about where these things are being made. I started thinking, OK, well, maybe the thing I can do for a living is somehow connect these dots. You know, are there people who are making things here in Nashville or Tennessee or North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, this region that I love? And is there some way for me to help tell their stories, promote them, shine a light on them? And so we just came up with this idea of a subscription box is how we started. And so I would find these makers from all over the South and I, you know, they're making letterpress stationary or they're making leather wallets or they're making, you know, fill in the blank candles with chocolates, whatever. And if I thought they were making something really cool, I'd buy their product. So it's one thing I'm extremely proud of. We've never gone to anybody and said, hey, can you give us that for free? We want to promote you. I go buy, spend money with them. I buy their product at a wholesale rate. I repackage it. You know, our boxes normally were three different products in each shipment. And then we had a graphic designer and we designed a really neat little print piece. It would tell the story. So Jim makes this in Louisville, Kentucky. And here's why we think it's awesome. Here's why you think you should think it's awesome. And we want to connect you directly with Jim. So here's his Twitter feed and his Instagram feed. Here's his website. So that when you might say what? man, you know, I'm looking for a leather wallet. Well, we want you to go to Jim's website and check out his wallets because we think he's awesome and we think what he's making is awesome. And spreading that love across the state of Tennessee. That's exactly right. And it just started as a subscription box where we were like, we're going to find makers and artisans who we feel like are making really good things. And we want to try to put these really cool things in the hands of people who also care about this region and about people who are making things here.

So it's not it's not just food. I mean, it's it's it's hard goods.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I remember 2013 was was this year where I went, OK, I'm going to I want to start writing more handwritten notes. Well, you can go to American stationery dot com. It's probably still a website or you can go Google stationery, custom stationery. You can find some website that's going to mass produce. They're going to print your name on it, you know, and ship it to you. But you don't know anything about that person who's making it, where it's being made. You don't know anything about that. And so I found a lady. I still remember her name. We still exchanging. We've never met face to face, but her name is Lydia Derek Wary. And she's from a little town in South Carolina and Lydia's Lydia's great grandparents. owned a letterpress, a printing press that used to print the town newspaper. And she still owns that printing press. She's got a company called Ancestry, A-N-C-E-S-S-E-R-I-E, Ancestry. And if you go to Ancestry.com, I mean, my guess is you'll find her website. She will custom make this beautiful cotton embossed stationery and you shall design it. And it's made on this old printing. Like, that's a story I fell in love with. I went, well, I want Lydia to make my stationery and I needed a wallet. And if I want, you know, the theory that I have on buying things is that I'm a Tennessean first, I'm a Southerner second. And if I can find something that's made in Nashville or Franklin, that's what I'll do. If I can't find it here, but it's in Memphis or in Oxford, then I'll do that. If I can't find it there, then I'll go to Louisville or wherever, you know. And so I found a guy, Amal Cogden, has a company called Amal Irwin. I'm pretty sure Amal's still in business. And he makes leather goods here in Nashville. dialed him up on the internet and said, hey man, can you make me a wallet? Yeah, I can make you a wallet. Great. One of my sons carries that wallet to today, you know, today. When he gets pop of money or he gets, you know, sells an RC car or whatever, he puts money in that little wallet. It's got my initial stamped on it, but it's something that I moved on to a different wallet, actually made in Louisville. And I gave one of my sons that wallet and he'll probably pass it down to his kids one day, you know? But like, I love that kind of stuff.

That's a great story. So we've got a little bit of background noise folks, but Hey, it's, I love it.

It's called ambiance. It is.

It's part of where we are. We are at Leapers Fork.

I'll remind everyone.

This is the Steelhouse Sessions. No doubt. This is a working distillery. I'm watching their cook over there. He's cooking mash. We got a good friend. April, we'll just walk by. We got a listener in here. One of our listeners drove up from Chattanooga. Oh, fantastic.

Hey, I'll tell you this, by the way, if you, and you guys already know this, I mean, Lee's great, but April's the star of the show. And Lindley, have y'all met Lindley? I haven't. Lee's wife? Oh, I have. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Lindley and April are the true stars of this show. Everybody knows that. If you meet them.

I always say Matt King over there, the Forrest Gump of whiskey.

Well, he doesn't have, he doesn't have that big beard anymore.

His wife made him shave it off.

Oh, well that's probably smart. If your wife wants you to shave it off, you should do it. He's growing it back. Well, what are your, what's your final thoughts on this?

Uh, I think it's a winner for sure.

It's a, it's a massive winner. That is a delicious whiskey.

Yeah. Listeners, I'm going to tell you, if you don't know your whiskey, if you don't know about birthday bourbon in your liquor store says, I got a birthday bourbon for you and it's going to cost you $129.

You run, you don't walk.

You better go to run. And I don't, I was, I don't remember where I was. I think I was halfway across town and I got a text and I got a bottle of this over here for you if you want it. called the appointment I was going to, and I said, I got canceled.

I'll be 15 minutes late. You go right then. I'll see you.

I'll see you in a little bit. You made the right decision. I definitely think you made the right decision.

You nailed, uh, Jim said brown sugar. Like I get caramelized brown sugar. It's almost like a slightly toasted brown sugar. You know, if you've been making something in the pan, it's got a little bit of that glaze. It's, that's a little bit crusty, man. That is, that is a delightful whiskey. That's delicious.

And the sweetness doesn't carry that much to the back end, but it doesn't get real drying. I think it's got a nice bite to it. Um, but you get that, you get that overwhelming envelope of caramel and oak and leather and maybe a hint of tobacco in there. It's a, it's definitely a well-aged bourbon.

I'm almost shameful that we're sitting in here in the steel house and we're not in some leather chairs smoking on cigars. Wear like velour robes. Yeah. I saw somebody last night in the bar wearing blue suede shoes.

Hey, I admire people who can pull that kind of thing off.

I can't pull it off.

Man. If you can wear something like that, like just the fact that somebody was wearing it tells me they have the confidence to try it.

You know, well, first thing they don't make blue suede shoes in size 14.

I don't think you can find them with your custom ordered hat. You can get your custom ordered blue suede shoes. Yeah.

Well, that'd be have to be a thing. I guess.

I appreciate you share that with us because that is, I mean, you know, there are not many of those bottles out there.

Like I said, it's that's what whiskey's for sharing with, with great people, great friends, open it up. Don't let it sit on that shelf. Don't let it collect dust. Crazy. Listen to him, man.

Yeah. He's a big guy. I've never met him personally. Big guy. No, physically. I mean, you, you guys have been with your finger and you guys have been on,

You've had, you went on that contest with him with dads.

Yeah.

Like stream yard, but he didn't seem like that bigger.

His forehead's getting a little bit bigger. Cause you know, he's doing Botox now, right? Did you not know this? I did not know that. Yeah. So he wanted me to call him Botox grease. And I was just like, no, I'm just going to call you grease.

I think the only time I've seen him besides that was him shoving a biscuit in his mouth. Yeah.

He can do that. I mean, there are, there are two things that he's good at. And, uh, they both have to do with the eating biscuits.

Biscuit eater. Yeah. But I wonder if he goes to biscuit love.

I think he's more of a Hardee's guy.

See, I don't like Hardee's biscuits.

Oh, I mean you're bigger than I am, but I'd try to fight you over that. I'm pretty sure Hardee's is...

They're greasy. Hardee's biscuit with duck fried duck on it.

Oh yeah.

What about that? What about that? So you were at that one. Okay.

Yeah, that was a mind blowing little thing that, uh, that Owen did. Man, that was delightful. I would be a Popeye's biscuit guy. Yeah. I don't, I don't disagree. Popeyes makes a good biscuit. Deep south right there. What do you think about Chick-fil-A biscuit?

Um, it's, yeah, it's kind of dry.

What about Cracker Barrel?

Nah, I, I'm not a big Cracker Barrel fan because I, here's the reason about Cracker Barrel. This is kind of going away from biscuits, but, um, I like to see what my cooks are cooking to me and I'm pretty, I came up poor. So I'd go over to the waffle house and sit at the bar. Amen. And I'm a big enough tall guy. I could see over, Plus I could see if the cook is going to spit my food or not. And I can also always go into Waffle House and ask for a pancake and see how bad I mess up people because they're like, we can't make pancakes in here. And I'm like, well, you got a griddle and you got that waffle. Just pour it.

They don't have pancakes on the menu. I don't think I've ever known this.

I'm like, pour me a flat waffle in.

Yeah.

They got a real system there. I mean, you have to, I guess you have to learn that a ketchup pack at one o'clock on the plate and a salt packet at six o'clock on the plate means this dish, you know? They've got it down.

I think it's every Southerner's birthright to go to Waffle House at some point. And it's one of my most shameful uh, moments. The first time I took our family to Waffle House, my kids and my, my oldest who's 16 now, but she, she didn't like Waffle House. And I'm like, I, I'm pretty sure she's my kid, but that is, it's a difficult thing to reckon with.

Now Cracker Barrel is a whole different experience because I always got to sit by that fireplace, right? Yeah. And I, I've been known to drop a pitcher on that mantle every once in a while. Oh, what a pitcher. You take a pitcher and put up on the mantle of yourself.

I didn't know. I didn't know anything about a picture, a picture. Oh, well, he's, he's saying picture the Southern way. Yeah. Yeah.

Jim's from Ohio.

Yeah.

But it is funny. Like y'all know who Sean Dietrich is. I mean, I listened to the show. I forgot. I forgot. Okay. But listening to y'all talk, it's like, if you mix the two of you, I would hear Sean Dietrich. Yeah. Yeah. And I swear, if you put Sean and the two of you in a room together, y'all could probably talk me into doing anything. Well, so I got this idea about riding a Buffalo after drinking bourbon.

And so we're trying to find one that's tame enough because, you know, I'm getting up in the age and I mean, they're all off.

It's going to hurt. There's some about 15 minutes from here. Guy has a songwriter. They're right off I-65.

There's been several people that have said they can make it happen and he hasn't like jumped on it yet. Let's get her done.

I think if you, if you really said, Hey, I want to try to ride a Buffalo while I'm here. I think we could probably make that happen. Oh Lord. See, I think we can make it happen.

I think I still do it. I get enough bourbon in me. I'll be limber.

The problem is I'm leaving. I'm leaving the state about 8 a.m. in the morning. So I don't know if I don't know if we can make it done in time, make it happen in time. But next trip around. Next trip.

I haven't been on a actual horse in years. Oh man. Probably 10 years. I got thrown off a horse and you ever had one of those life flashing before your eyes? Well, I was down in Texas on leave and my mom said, Hey, we got this big white Rome out there in a barn. Hasn't been rode in two years. Would you ride him?

I was like, yeah,

I ride him. So out there I went, I got that sucker, saddled him up. I walked him around for 30 minutes, 40 minutes and I got on him and he was all right. He's like, yeah, this feels pretty good. At least that's what I was thinking. He was thinking, but he was thinking I'm about to murder this big old boy. I'm about to murder him. So I kind of got in a gallop and went around the field. I was in and then I got him all the other in the field and I was like, I think he was starting to work up that lather.

Yeah.

And then I gave him a little kick and maybe it was my boots. I had on at the time that he'll dug into him just a little bit too much, but. He come unglued and this field is about 150, 200 yards long in a wheat field. And he just goes to bucking across that field and he was a bronc rider more than a minute. It seemed like it was probably only like five seconds. But he was full out like bucking. And at the end of that field, wheat field, my stepdad had a hay rake park down there and that fan up in there. He threw me off right near that thing. I'm up in the air and I'm watching that hay rake and I'm thinking, I'm about to die. Yeah, this might be the end. This is it. But I hit the ground and I, back then I was 275, all hundred, 275 pounds hits that ground and it was like pure rock. It seemed like it hurt real bad. Uh, it ruined the rest of my vacation.

Yeah, I would imagine so, but I didn't die. But you got your first taste of rodeo right there.

No, that was, that was my last taste.

Was it also your first taste or you had a taste of rodeo?

No, I grew up on a ranch in Texas, in the hill country of Texas. I'd have plenty of experiences with my stepbrothers throwing me on bulls at like eight or nine years old. Just doing all kinds of farm and ranch work, you get to have all kinds of great experiences like that. But that was my last horse riding experience because I told myself, I said, I'm never going to get another horse.

So you haven't been on a horse in 10 years. Probably not. Wow.

I don't think I'd probably miss a step, but you still in that back of your mind. Number one, I'm 10 years older, so it's going to hurt 10 times more, right? Yeah.

I mean, we can make the horse thing happen too. About five minutes from here, my daughter rides horses and they got some beautiful horses over there.

I mean, I watched a rototiller drag Jim across his yard one day. Yeah. Let's talk about that.

I mean, I've got horses. I got a big 16, 16 hand Tennessee Walker, but he's never offered it.

I've thought about it and they both were like, Hey, you should come ride him. And then we'll get in a truck and my wife would be like, listen, don't do it. Just don't do it. I'm like, ah, it's all right.

I love the language of horses. Like Jim says 16 hand. I love that. When people describe horses to me, Oh, he's a, he's 14 hander. He does have beautiful horse over there.

He's also got these pig me goats.

I've seen those.

They're annoying as hell. Do you do yoga with them?

No, no, no. Don't get good. Have you seen the goat yoga? Yeah, I've seen it where you get down on all fours and they jump up on you. They're a little pig and I think they're picking me up. What happens when they poop on you?

They always are doing that. So it's bound to happen. That's gross.

Yeah. I've been trying to get him to get a llama. Why? Just because you want them to get spit on. No, I just like to even have a llama.

You got 11 acres. Go get your llama. Get you an alpaca. We moved out to the country. I thought I wanted a not a flamingo, a peacock. No, you don't want those. Well, one of my good friends has a peacock and he had. sent me pictures of it. You know, I'll find out standing on tractors and stuff like that. And I thought that thing's amazing. But then I hear they're kind of mad, like they can go at people, jump up on cars and scratch cars and stuff.

They're like a giant turkey.

Yeah.

Which I love turkey. Well, to eat though, right?

Yeah. Well, I like to hunt them. I like to look at them. Yeah.

It's all right to kill them.

Yeah.

I'm thinking the whole peacock thing or guinea fowl or whatever they call it.

It's probably, yeah, it's probably our neighbors have guineans and man, they're loud as crap.

Yeah. Well, listeners, we're probably up against that first half. Um, some great whiskey here. I gotta say, man, I love this bottle and I probably will drop a tear when it's all gone, but you know what? Another bottle show up probably. So we'll, we'll get her done. Stay with us. We'll get Chris to tell us about the future of Main South and his big festival that's coming up that everybody's gonna want to go to. Awesome. Hello listeners and welcome back.

We have Chris Thomas in the house from Made South, and we drank a pretty good whiskey in the first half, I have to say. That was tasty. That's gonna be hard to beat. I was just gonna say, I don't know how you're gonna top that.

Well, we're gonna step down and prove from that, though. 103. I wish I wish Woodford would do something. They got some pretty high proofers now, but this was only 90.4. That's that standard proof.

That's a signature proof from those guys.

Yeah. And this is going to be the Woodford Reserve chocolate malt whisper. It's Kentucky straight bourbon. This is the Woodford Reserve bourbon produced immediately after the Woodford Reserve Masters Collection chocolate malted rye. Some of the flavor notes carried over in the distillate and influenced the flavor profile, giving it roasted chocolate notes.

Yeah. So this is basically a beautiful mistake. And I guess they didn't clean the lines and the equipment good enough between batches. And I don't know, Chris, did you have the chocolate malted rice? No, Woodford never did. So it was a pretty, uh, it was a chocolate bomb, no doubt about it. I mean, very, very chocolatey and, and not because there was any chocolate in it. It was just the malt had a chocolate toast to it. And, uh, it really imparted a tremendous chocolatey flavor on it. But so. A couple of years ago, we were doing an episode at Woodford Reserve and we were interviewing Elizabeth McCall, the assistant master distiller there under Chris Morris. She took us on a little personal tour climbing through the Rick House. She goes, I got something I really want you to try here. And she had the drill and the, you know, plug in the barrels. It's the best. So she drilled that barrel and, uh, and I caught it in the glass and she plugged it. And we went back and sat down and did a proper tasting of it. And it was this, it was what's in this bottle today, but she got it early. And there's like 60 barrels that got contaminated, but she'd draw us a sample off early when the contamination was pretty, I guess, I don't know. I don't know how it worked, but however they do that. But anyhow, pretty, I think a pretty fortunate mistake.

Yeah, a lot of people confuse that first whiskey is a rye whiskey and not a bourbon, but it smells. I was going to say this smells like a ride to me, but this is a Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey.

What they did was they malted the chocolate, malted the rye itself. So the rye was toasted.

It smells like a really funky ride to me. Yeah. Do you like the nose? To me, it's not off-putting and stuff.

And I always got to remind myself when we're nose in a whiskey first, that the nose might not be the same as the palate. Sure. And this is a, it is a little strange to me.

Yeah, it's a strange nose to me. And I could get where you get that, just a rye whiskey. And I love ryes, but this one smells just like a, it smells like a funky rye to me. It's not off-putting. But I don't love it. I don't love the way it smells. No, I can get into some seventies.

It's got a little bit of cocoa puffs in it though. A little cocoa puffs. I don't know.

See, I don't feel like I smell chocolate on the nose. Maybe like when I take the glass away, that kind of after smell, I'm getting more chocolate.

Then I'm thinking pomegranate for some reason in my mind.

What's a pomegranate? The one you pull apart. It's got a bunch of little seeds. You eat the seeds.

That's what I'm paying to eat it. Yeah. Yeah.

That's good though. It's tasty.

Well, you know, I think that's why they called it chocolate whisper because it's just a hint, right? It's just a, just the smallest amount of influence there. Let's taste it. Cheers. Cheers.

It doesn't taste anything like the nose in my opinion. We don't taste something like that birthday bourbon. Man. That and you know, the first to me, the first three or four seconds, I was like, I'm not getting any chocolate on this. But then the back end. Yeah, there's chocolate for sure. Like cacao nibs and stuff like that.

Well, you know that. Whenever you do have cocoa crisps, you have a whole big old bowl of milk, cocoa puffs, cocoa puffs, cocoa crisps, whatever.

Right. We're talking about cereal.

Coco pebbles, but you eat all the cereal. Then you got that chocolate milk. That's the best part. That's what I'm getting right here. And you've got to slurp that too. You just slurp away. I like to do it from a wife. So she gets mad at me.

She's like, Hey, there's an ice cream shop here locally. They make a ice cream called cereal milk. And they change up the flavors. So sometimes they'll do, um, Uh, cinnamon toast crunch. Sometimes they'll do lucky charms. Sometimes they'll do cocoa pebbles or whatever, but they, they, they soaked the cereal in the milk and then they make an ice cream out of that milk and they, they filter the syrup or they just leave it in there. You know, I, that's a good question. I think the one time I had it, it had the one time I had it was cinnamon toast crunch. Yeah. And I think it had a little chunks of cinnamon toast crunch. I know. I bet it's pretty amazing. It's fantastic. It is delightful. Yeah. I really like this. I didn't think I was going to like it on the nose.

Silky smooth, light on the palate. We did step it way down in proof. So, you know, I'm not, it's not super viscous, but it's silky smooth though.

Yeah. We had another bourbon during the break too, which was kind of fantastic. We had a special staff barrel here at Leapers Fork and it was pretty amazing too. So I guess our palates have had to recover a little bit from that. onslaught of flavor.

Yeah, I'm not going to forget that barrel number, by the way. It's stuck in my head. I texted Lee like, hey, dude, if you won't let that barrel go, you let me know because that was pretty fantastic. And if there ain't that much left. Like, come on, let's bottle it up. Get it out there.

You're going to get old Forrest Gump in trouble. No, he'll be fine. He'll be fine.

Well, I have to say that, um, I'm, I'm pleasantly surprised to have this again. I have, and it's, it's not the same as it was when we tasted it on the tour. Uh, we were drinking a cast drink there and this is proofed down a little bit. So it is a little bit more of a whisper.

So this one, the whisper would be different, Jim. The whisper would be the after effects of that chocolate malted rye. And then they still have some leftover carry over. And that's just the, I guess the, the whisper that's hard to say. I've never had a malted malt whisper before.

there's been a number of mistakes out there and you know where they they dumped the wrong tank in the wrong tank and they you think those are real or are they marketing gimmicks you know as far as i know this one was real because i heard the whole story while it was still in the barrels and had two more years to age so i don't know do you remember the wild turkey unforgiven yes that's kind of the one that

When I think back to these mistake barrels, that's one that pops to mind early on was one of those first little like, Oh, we made a mistake, but we just decided to barrel it up. Cause it was so good. And I mean, it was pretty good. I liked wild turkey unforgiven.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's pretty, there was another one, Mike, that we had was a rum dumped into a bourbon thing. Wasn't it?

Yeah. That was from national barrel company. I think. Was it? Yeah.

That was another mistake.

Pretty. Yeah.

No, no. Was that that one? Or is it the one we had at the Tiki hut there? Heck, I don't know. Oh my gosh. They're running together.

So 50 bucks for this bottle right here. Right, Jim?

Yep. 375. Yeah.

A lot of people beat that up, right? They'll, they'll be like, that's a lot of money for whiskeys and stuff. And a lot of craft distilleries have 375 that price and there'll be a cast drink for $50 for 375. But That's not cast strength. That's 90.4 proof for $50. So if you're going to buy Woodford for $50 for 375, why wouldn't you buy a craft distillery same price?

Yeah. I mean, if you look at it this way, if you're, if you're Woodford reserve and you've got 60 contaminated barrels, I mean, they cannot go, into your mainstream liquor. So they got to be, they got to be set aside and to be able to turn them into something that's profitable like this. That's a pretty swift move on Chris's part.

I would have to say, you know, who would be griping and moaning like crazy about this price.

Do y'all know Joe bourbon, Joe Roddy? He's on the show. He's on the show.

Whenever we've done bar nights in the past, he'll do that. Um, but he is the biggest hard tail on three 75s that are pricey. He hates it. Don't buy it then. I know.

Hey, that's why I tell him every, every man, every woman has a different, you have a choice.

Yep. That's exactly right.

I'm going to make with her money. Don't spend your money on it. Leave it on the shelf for me.

And I, I'll pick it up at this point in my life bottle from wild Turkey, right? Kind of expensive for three 75. Oh, that's right.

Yeah, that's right.

But it's a very, very taste.

Yeah, it is. Absolutely. It is. That's a good one too, man. That surprises me. I did not like the nose. But man, I'm like, even right now it is it's that cocoa pebble cereal milk aftertaste. Yeah, I like it a lot. That's unique.

Well, Chris, you got a festival coming up pretty soon here, right? We do. Yeah. Well, tell us about that.

So we call it made south holiday market. We've been doing it. Man, our first one was 2015. So I don't know how many years that is. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. We didn't do 20. This will be the sixth year that we've done it. And we bring in 60 makers from around the south. I mean, they come from Virginia, Texas, everywhere in between. Uh, we have some fun chef tastings. We're doing some really neat cocktails this year with Jack Daniels. And then, uh, well actually Brown Foreman, uh, who owns Jack Daniels, we've partnered with Brown Foreman on our cocktails. So we're doing, uh, um, a spiced old fashioned with Jack Daniel's rye whiskey, which I'm a big fan of. And then we're also doing a blood orange margarita, uh, using their El Himador tequila, the Reposado tequila. So that'll be fun. We're partnering with Brown Forman on that, but we do some fun chef tasting, some cocktails. We've got some live music. You know, we've been talking about Forrest Gump of Lepros Fort Distillery over here. Yeah. We actually have, if you come to our event, there's a really good chance you're going to meet the Forrest Gump. Oh really? Yeah. There's a guy we know who is a Forrest Gump impersonator and we have him come to almost all of our events. And dude, I'm going to tell you. He's awesome.

Now he had to be having the haircut and not shaved.

He looks just like Forrest Gump. He talks just like Forrest Gump. He's got the brief or the suitcase. He's got the red Nikes. We rent a park bench and we sit him on this park bench and guests can come just sit down and talk with him and get the picture. It's one of the greatest things you've ever seen. And I swear to you, you're not gonna be able to tell the difference. He's that good. He's that good. But I just think that's fun. We met him early on and he came to our very first event. And I don't even think we knew him. He showed up and he was walking around with an umbrella and a suitcase and he was giving out chocolates. I mean, he's talking to people. And I was like, this dude is awesome. And so now we've stayed friends. I'm like, hey man, we got an event coming up. Why don't you come on out? And it's a blast. It's a lot of fun. So it's makers. It's a good place. We're all about shopping small, supporting small business. These are all makers and artisans who are making their living selling these products. We want to get a bunch of people to come spend money with them. It's November 19th and 20th, so it's coming up month and a half, not too far down the road. But our whole deal is like, come do all of your holiday shopping, buy all your Christmas gifts, and spend your money with these people. rather than going to, you know, the big box store or buying from Amazon or whatever. And that's going to be right here in Franklin, right here in Franklin.

It's at the factory.

So it's a kind of old stove works factory. It's a neat story about that place. It was condemned at one point. And the way the way it was told to me, a Hollywood production company called up the city, who I think owned it at the time and said, hey, we'll give you X amount of money to blow this thing up for a movie. It was condemned. And the city said, yeah, I mean, we'll do that. I mean, we want to we want to knock it down anyway. And some people heard about it and kind of banded together and brought a guy who's got a lot of money, who cares about preservation to the table. They bought the building, did a few renovations, like made it inhabitable for people, tentable, tentable. I don't know. That might not be the right word. Made it inhabitable for people, got some retail in there. And then it recently got or a few years ago, another guy bought it, a guy who's actually from Kentucky, spends a lot of its time, I think Bowling Green, Lexington, but owns a lot of land. Then it recently got sold again, but it's a neat spot. And that's where we do all of our events. It's called the factory.

Yeah, it's a pretty good place. Yeah, you've been there. That's right. Yeah, it's pretty nice. Well, that's great. Well, where can people find it? We'll give you a chance at the end of the show again, but we'll find out about it.

You can go to made south dot com, made south dot com. A lot of people go, made, made and we're like, no, we know that's a different business. You could probably do something with that, but we don't do that. Made south, made south dot com. And you can buy tickets there. Perfect. Perfect.

Now you brought something else here today as kind of a gift for us having you on the show. And I appreciate that. Yeah. Uh, but we're big fans of, uh, old fashions as well.

You should be.

Oh man. I like a good old fashion. Sometimes in the moment you don't get it quite right. Like when you're trying to make it from scratch.

I mean, that's been my experience.

Yes. Yeah. And, and you've got something here that'll just make it. snappy and easy.

Well, so this is one, you know, I said I'm kind of just an addicted small business guy. I love getting involved in a lot of little things. So this was a brand that I didn't start it, but the guy who did start it, I think he started it maybe 2014. I, you know, being a native Tennessean, I saw it on a shelf. I saw it on Red Dog, on Red Dog's shelf for the very first time. Y'all been over there. Yeah. And in probably early 2015, I saw it there on the shelf at Red Dog. And, you know, it says Made in Nashville, Tennessee. OK, check, check that box. Old-fashioned love old-fashioned check that box and then my wife had kind of trained me to start looking at labels I don't know if y'all look at labels, but you know, I got four kids at home She's like, hey, we don't want anything with you know red dye number 83 or high fructose corn any of that stuff so I looked at the label and it's like Oh, these are like all natural ingredients. So I picked up a bottle. I took it home. I made a cocktail for me and my wife that night and I loved it. But most importantly, my wife loved it. And it was the first whiskey cocktail she ever loved. Yeah. And I was like, dang, this is kind of a home run. So I reached out to him when we did our first event in September of 2015. and said, hey, I love what you're doing. Why don't you come be a part of our event, set up, serve cocktails, sell your product? And so the guy who started it, Luke Duncan, came and did it. We hit it off, became friends, and he was a part of a lot of our events. And then. For a lot of reasons, a lot of personal life issues that were going on with him, he decided to sell the business in 2017. I'm grateful he came to me just thinking I might know somebody who might be interested in it. And the more we talked about it, I was like, dang, I kind of think I might be interested in it. And it fits with what we do. We put on events. We like to throw. We feel like we get to throw parties for a living. I mean, you've been to Southern Whiskey Society. It feels like a party with a bunch of friends. And that's what I get to do for a living. I'm very grateful for that. But it fit in that way. You know, I love to serve cocktails to people. So we were able to work out a deal and we've been trying to grow it ever since. And and it's it's a lot of fun.

So You have more than just the old fashion.

We do. I'll say that bottle right there is our number one bestseller, our old fashioned mixer. So we make it with real cane sugar and then we have our own blend of bitters that we've come up with. And that's our old fashioned mixer. So you just mix that with your favorite bourbon or rye. And then you come up with a delicious old fashioned and you can make it fast. You can make it easy and it's consistent every single time.

Is it about a one to one?

No, it would be really, really sweet if you did a one to one. We recommend that people start out two to one. So two parts whiskey, one part Eli. Perfect. Now my ratio is three to one. Okay. And then like my wife prefers a two and a half to one. So even two to one is a little bit sweet for her. We go two and a half to one for her and I do a three to one. So I'll typically take three ounces of bourbon, one ounce of Eli. At that rate, the bottle goes a pretty long way. It does. Absolutely. And that's a 10 ounce bottle. We also sell it in a 750 milliliters, which got about 25 ounces. And so if you wanted to make just a standard one and a half ounce of whiskey, half ounce, I mean, there's, there's 20 old fashions in that bottle.

Wow.

It's pretty interesting. Yeah, we have a lot of fun with it. What whiskey do you use? My house bourbon is Eagle Rare. So it's our we were talking about earlier. Dixon Deadman, Dixon, by the way, is is one of the owners of Eli. So he came in on that with me a few years ago. We've got two other business partners that are part of it. So it's us four guys. We like to play golf together. We like to sell a bunch of Eli. And he talked me into using Eli with Eagle Rare. I'd never done that before. And I tried it and I was like, Man, just that extra age and oakiness from Eagle Rare just sends it over the top. And so that's what we use as our house bourbon, Eagle Rare. Awesome. We love it.

That's, that's what we say. You're bourbon your way, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. It used to be before that, it was probably Heaven Hill, Bottling Bond when you could get it cheaply in Kentucky. the old white label, you know, six year old, uh, it was, that was fantastic. But then that kind of dried up and now I'm on the Eagle rare.

A few bottles left. How much you got stocked away. Not me. Jim has some stock. It's getting down there. I, I, as of about six months ago, I still had two cases, but I mean, I've been giving them away.

I think I have a bottle left, but Jim, as gracious as he is to share his whiskey with me. He said, Mike, take a bottle right now. You, I said, well, if I need a bottle, you know, I'll get a bottle, but it's not like we're whiskey poor. We're not whiskey.

Did they still make the green label?

Oh, they do.

They do.

I just brought a bottle of the six year to one of our listeners.

And I'll tell you, that's a really good cocktail whiskey. I mean, it's lower proof obviously, but I mean, I think it's really delicious for the money.

Six year old whiskey. If you're in Kentucky and you see that. Is that 80 proof or 90? I think that's 90 proof. If you see it on the shelf, you better grab it.

And you're going to buy it for $15?

Yeah.

No, that is Kentucky only, right?

Kentucky only. Yeah, I thought so. Okay. But we used to buy the plastic handles. I mean, we'd roll through Kentucky on a barrel pick or something and stop off at a man. I used to love stopping at mammoth liquors right there off that exit. That's a good little shot. Yeah. Yeah. And pick up just as many handles of that as I get my hands on.

So, Chris, I mean, we've talked a few times about this southern whiskey society meeting that you put on and the last one was in 2020. Yes, sir. You've had to kind of cut back on that because of obvious reasons. Oh, yeah. But we're all akin to here. what might happen in the future.

Yeah. And we're aching to figure it out. I'll say, it's been a little bit of an evolution. When I decided to sell or get rid of my bourbon collection at the beginning of this year, I kind of mentally swore off that event and there were, you know, we were talking about it and I do believe, man, I've met some amazing people through the bourbon community. And I will also say I've had some really horrible experiences with the bourbon community that kind of soured me a little bit and mostly through that event side. Like, I'll never forget. I could still pull up the email. The you mentioned the purple top will it's that specific event. You know, there was a guy who just dog cussed me up one side and down the other because he wasn't able to buy as many of those as he wanted. And, you know, I'm like, well, we got other people come into the event. And by the way, he got four of them. He wanted more. And I was like, man, I, I gotta, I gotta let other people have some. He called me every name in the book. And so it, there've been some moments like that, that were kind of souring me on that event. But then I've met people like, you know, you guys, Joshua Steely, uh, Will and Grease from podcast. Um, you know, I've met a lot of really good people through that event, people that I still called dear friends. And so I've been very conflicted about it. Uh, it's one of those things though, that w we've launched a separate project that we're calling Franklin food and wine festival. I don't know if you know about that. So Manit Shohan, who was a guest of mine on Southern, I think she may have been, I don't know if she was my first guest, but she was close. Somewhere in the middle, I think. Yeah. And I'll tell you, her story kind of inspired Southerner for me to want to do that, to hear her talk in her Indian accent, which she was born in Punjab, India. She came here. I can't remember what year she came. I mean, she's lived here for a long, long time, but from Indian descent and has made her way in America and now lives here in Franklin and operates restaurants in Nashville. And for her to say in her Indian accent, I consider myself a Southerner. Like that was, man, OK, that's a that's a different thing than me just being born and raised here. That's somebody who chooses to be in this area. And probably candidly has a lot of reasons to not choose to be in this area. She could be in Chicago, New York, Boston, anywhere she wanted to be. She chooses to be here. And so I fell in love with her story. And as we became friends, I was like, I want to hear from more people like that.

Yeah.

And so that was kind of why I even wanted to start that podcast. But Monique and I have become friends. We have decided to co-found a Franklin Food and Wine Festival. So we're working on creating a food and wine festival for the city of Franklin. And we're excited about that. We both live here. We both raise our families here. And I think Southern Whiskey will come back next year, my guess, as part of a series of events that we're creating for Franklin Food and Wine Festival, if that makes sense. You know, like those we're trying to figure out right now. If we have a maker event, that field's made south to us. That needs to stay there. But if it's a largely food or beverage focused event, I think we want that to kind of help push the Franklin Food and Wine Festival forward.

And the Southern Whiskey Society event was about a pretty good balance of spirits and food. Sure. And it might even been a little food heavy. I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, our kind of model was 10 to 12 chefs. from around the South, people who we believe are making awesome things. And we would try to partner them with local or regional ingredient partners, farms, things like that, because that's important to us. And then we always invited 30 of our favorite distilleries and maybe we got, you know, 32, 33, but it was always around that 30 number.

Yeah. Yeah. Great event. Look forward to it coming back. Look forward to hearing more about your Franklin event. Yeah.

I think right now, that event, we're doing something we call Sunday Supper. We do it once a month at the Harpeth Hotel in downtown Franklin. Manit cooks this multi-course menu for 100 guests. and we bring in a guest chef every time. So we've had, man, I know you guys are from Kentucky, but we had, do y'all know David Bancroft at all? From Acre in Auburn, Alabama. We've had, golly, we had Chidi Kumar from Raleigh-Durham, who's a dear friend of Manit's. Coming up October 24th, we do have Kelsey Bernard-Clark. She was the season 16 top chef winner. She's from Dothan, Alabama, and she's awesome. So those two ladies are gonna cook this, unbelievable dinner for like a hundred people. Wow. So that's something we've started for the Food and Wine Festival. Pretty amazing stuff.

All right. So we have something new in our glass here. And I have to say that we don't know what it is. This is no, you don't. It's a blind bottle that you brought. And we've each got a pour of it now. And I wouldn't know what's the task at hand here. Identify the distillery.

So this was something I just thought I'd never like to show up anywhere I've been invited. I don't want to show up empty handed. And so I thought I'd bring a little something. I've already told you, I don't have many bottles left, but I thought, well, this might be fun to share with y'all. So I wanted to see if you, I know Jim, you're more of like the, I feel like you're a good guesser at things. You got a good nose, good palette. I don't know. He's, he's thrown down the glove, right?

He did. I'm not, I'm not the guesser.

It's things. I just drink it. I would, this is some old juice. I would think I might be wrong with some dusting.

I'm shrugging my shoulders right now. I'll let y'all tell me. Cause he said he got rid of all of his, uh, all his bottles except for sentimental ones.

So this must've been a sentimental one.

This is older. This is definitely, uh, it's got a, definitely a preponderance of oak on the back end. Yeah.

A little bit of, uh, it's got like a waxy nose to it.

Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't. It's soft though. It's, it's not real aggressive on the nose. Where do you think the privilege?

I'd say that 90, that 90 range.

Yeah. I would, I'd be surprised for top to a hundred. Yeah.

Maybe even lower than that in the eighties somewhere. 88.

There's not a lot of ethanol on the nose. You don't get a lot of blowback on the pallet. I think it's kind of, it's very soft upfront. But it's got a, it's got a good amount of oak. This is a well-aged Spurman. You call this feathery? Feathery? Feathery. Light and feathery.

Tell me what feathery means.

I don't know. It is light as a feather. Light as a feather. It's super light on the palate. It's got that medium to long finish though. I like it. That texture to it, but it's not like super viscous. Yeah.

I think it's a little bit older. It's really soft upfront, which makes me think it's a wheat. Is this some pappy? No, it's not pappy.

Oh, no. No, it is. This is my, I told you it was my birthday last Friday, October 1st. So, you know, birthday bourbons weren't out in the seventies, but this is my first, I'm kind of into birth year items. You ever collect things from your birth year? Like I really want a 77 for Bronco.

Man, 63 seems like such a long time ago.

But this is a, a 1977 Wild Turkey 8101.

Oh my goodness.

So eight years old. If I told you the proof, it'd probably, you'd probably lead down the trail to Wild Turkey. How old was it? It's from 1977. And what was the proof on it? A hundred and one proof. A hundred and one proof.

I am so surprised. It doesn't drink like a hundred. No, it doesn't. I would have really did think in the eighties, uh, high eighties. Um, super smooth. Like I said, it light as a feather, you know, which the feather fit in perfect with a Turkey.

Oh, you know what? It sure did. Look at what you did there. Look at that subconsciously.

You didn't even know you were picking it, but you were, I feel, I feel a little ashamed that I wasn't able to pick it out as a Turkey, but that's all right.

Now, Chris, did you know that Jim's favorite bourbon is wild Turkey? I didn't know that. That's my daily. This is daily. Yeah. And my first bourbon was a 81 101. Yeah. He did tell me the other day, he's we're over at his house. He's like, I'm mad. They changed the dang bottle and label on that bottle.

Now, hold on. If I'm doing my math right, you said you were born in 63. Yeah. When were you drinking this 1981 8101? I was 18. Well, that ain't drinking age, Jim.

In Ohio and in that time, 18 was the drinking age. Now I have to be honest, there were two drinking ages. 18 got you into bars and you could drink beer and wine, but you couldn't have spirits until you were 21. But once you got in, they didn't care.

They didn't mess around with it. I think, I think 101 is probably, the best all around middle to low shelf whiskey out there. I really believe that it's extremely versatile. You know, it's high. Right. It's like, man, it's a if I can't find Eagle Rare. I'm going to, I'm going to buy one-on-one. And in fact, I'm a little bit ashamed that I don't just keep one-on-one at the house because that higher proof, sometimes you want that. Yeah, absolutely. It does.

You know, another thing and listeners could take this home too. And another reason I like it is because if you go out to a place and they hand you the bourbon list and then they're all $500, $400, $300, you know, good and well that you can get a poor wild turkey for eight. Oh yeah.

That happened to me the other night. I went into a repeal steak house in downtown Louisville and. I almost was blown away. I was like, there's a $500 bourbon on this.

Not a secret list. This is just a list. The one they hand you.

I didn't ask for this. I don't need $500 pour for some of the stuff that I have at my house.

And you're, if you get wild turkey one on one, you're going to be happy about it every single time. It never disappoints. One of the most consistent whiskeys out there, whiskeys out there. Um, and I, man, I went on a tear there for a little while. I got wild turkey obsessed for a few years of my life. It was all about antique wild turkeys for me. And this is the only one I kept. This was my first one that I ever got. It's a nineteen seventy seven birth year bottle for me. And do you know Paul Steele at all? You know, I don't know. So Paul Steele is a guy in Nashville music guy, but he also has one of the most extensive collections of antique whiskeys I've ever seen in my life. He's on Instagram at Steel Speakeasy. He's got like a little basement bar. Unbelievable. And he had found this just a treasure trove of antique whiskies that he found. He like somebody told him about a guy who told him about a guy who was just getting rid of a bunch of stuff. And it was like from an old liquor store in, I want to say, like Maryland or Connecticut, someplace weird. And this dude flies up. and goes and meets the guy, rents a car, buys all he can, and drives back. And I said, hey, if there's any 1977 wild turkey in there, I'd love one. And he found one for me. That's awesome. And sold it to me for, I think I bought it for 75 bucks. And it's I still got about half a bottle of it. Well, that's a that's an amazing story. And thank you so much for sharing your birthday bourbon with us.

That is a true birthday bourbon. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Chris, thanks for coming on the show, man.

Thank you guys for having me. I genuinely appreciate it. The support that you give to your local community, but also to the makers of America. Right. The people that make it possible that make great goods in America still. that still make that American dream. We appreciate you for doing that and supporting a whiskey community too, the way you do. I know a lot of great people that have benefited from what you do. So hats off to you.

Well, I'm a big fan of what you guys do and this has been an absolute pleasure and I appreciate you having me.

It's a lot of fun. We would like to give you one more chance to sort of let our listeners know where they can find out more about Made South, more about the events you have coming up. Anything else you'd like to tell us about Where's your Instagram? What's your Instagram account?

So we got, we got lucky on Instagram at made South, M A D E S O U T H. Uh, the website made South.com. I mean, uh, drink Eli Mason. I don't know if you wanted to check out our, our mixers that we got at drink Eli Mason or Eli Mason.com. And, uh, I just really appreciate you guys having me on. Well, thanks again, Mike.

Where can people find us? You could find us on Instagram, Tik TOK, Facebook. Twitter, YouTube.

Y'all do TikTok dances?

No, not yet. I'm too big to dance.

We're trying to still trying to figure out how we approach that.

People don't want to see that. I put some barbecue, some stuff put on there. Maybe Jim was whiskey or something.

I would say people would like to see y'all do a TikTok dance.

Yeah. Um, yeah, you can find us on all those. The best place to find us is in our Facebook group, the bourbon roadies 2300 people strong. We actually got one of our moderators in here today. Answer three questions. Are you a 21? Do you like bourbon? Hell yes. Everybody loves some bourbon. And do you agree to play nice? Cause we don't tolerate any of that rudeness. Right, Jim?

We just want good people, good times in the group. If your, if your goal is to come in and chop somebody off at the knees for drinking something off the bottom shelf, you go find yourself another group.

There's plenty of other groups out there for that. We're not that group. We're like-minded people, celebrate life, celebrate births, celebrate retirements, birthdays, whatever you want to celebrate, come on in there with us. We don't do politics, religion, or social issues. We don't sell any bourbon. We don't sell no bourbon. But we do give it away. We give it away and we share our bourbon. We share the hell out of it. I think last year, Jim, We gave away about $1,500 in bottles and are probably another three to $4,000 in giveaway items such as glasses, bags, candles, staves, you name it. We were giving it away.

And it's good to stay on the show and listen to the very end. Cause that's when you find out about that.

You never can tell what we're going to have. We might even find some of this Eli Mason to give away.

Listen here. I don't want to interject myself, but if y'all wanted to give away some Eli, yeah. You could like, we had bar kits that come with everything in there. Yeah. You know, a little ice mold and, uh, the jigger and the bottles, like we'd be tickled to give away something with y'all. All right.

Well, let's make it happen. Look for that giveaway. Look for it. Yeah, we'll do that. So James, we do two shows a week, but the people to find out and be to know about those shows, what you need to do is you need to scroll on top of your app. You need to hit that check mark, that subscribe, that plus sign, whatever you got to hit to remind you. hey these two jokers have just come out with a new show and then you know what i gotta say jim they gotta screw on down hit that five star review because they don't they don't i'm gonna tell you uh the big bad booty daddy of bourbon is gonna come over to your house i'm gonna bring some birthday bourbon i'm bringing some woodford reserve that big bad booty daddy of bourbon. You're going to drink it with him all night long. By the end of the night, we are going to get a five star review. You're going to have a smile on your face. I'm going to have a smile on my face. We're going to have some stories to tell from that one night right there. So give us that five star review. It allows us to bring great guests like Chris Thomas from made south on our show. It gets us down here to Tennessee for these still house sessions. It helps us out.

in addition to the five-star review and letting us know how you feel. If you've got a suggestion for the show, if you've got a local distillery that you want us to shine a little light on, some small distillery in your hometown that's just trying to break out and get people to notice them, we'd love to shine a light on them a little bit. Let us know who they are. You don't have to send us a bottle. We'll reach out to them. We'll get a bottle. and we'll have them on a Monday episode. Every Monday we do a short episode called Craft Distillery Monday. On Wednesdays we do a deeper dive like we did today with Chris. We do two shows a week like Mike said. You can always reach out to us. You can reach me on email at jim at the bourbon road. He's mike at the bourbonroad.com. But probably the best way is to hit up our DM on Instagram and I'm jshannon63. I'm One Big Chief and we'll see you down the bourbon road.

I'll be waiting for you