225. Key West Trading Smuggler's Choice Bourbon Whiskey

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 this is the Bourbon Road and today Mike is not with us. I've got another guest on the show but we'll get to that in just a minute. Just want to let you know that We are in Key West, Florida. We're sitting in a Tiki hut. We've got a local bottle of bourbon here. We spent a little time down here. We did a little fishing and we'll talk about that as well. But it wasn't easy to find a bottle of bourbon, but we did find one. First, let me introduce who I found on the show today. I've got Chris Shannon, my son, who came to Florida with me. Do a little fishing, do a little bourbon drinking. Chris, welcome to the show. Hey, everybody. All right. Glad to have you here. So, Chris, how hard was it for us to find this bottle?

Well, we started off by going to the location where we thought there was going to be the distillers or the tasting room. And they ended up, as it turns out, they ended up selling the location to another retail space. And they ended up still keeping a few bottles in there just for whenever people would randomly come by and looking for the bourbon so that they would have some there.

But you can find this on the shelves. Now, first, let me tell you what we're talking about. We're talking about Key West Trading Company's Smuggler's Choice Bourbon Whiskey. Now, Key West Trading Company, we went there today and we did find bottles on the shelf and they did let us do a tasting, but it's not a huge operation. It's certainly not a distillery. It's more a little bit of a tourist spot, I guess. Yeah, but they wouldn't sell us a bottle there probably because they didn't have the license, but they did point us to where to get one. And we did follow that up by going and picking up a bottle. And that's what we're reviewing here in the Tiki Hut today. So it's QS Trading Company's Smuggler's Choice Bourbon Whiskey. It's 90 proof. It's in a great looking bottle. It's got a little bit of a sort of a pirate looking label on it. They say notoriously good for not getting caught. So kind of a smuggler's thing. As we read the label a little bit more, we find out that this is It is a true bourbon. It is finished in oak barrels. It's a little over a year old, maybe two, but it's undergone or been refined by the terrapere process. And we're going to get into the terrapere process too here in just a few minutes. But we're drinking on this whiskey here. We're going to tell you what we think about it. And the next time you're in the Florida Keys, you'll know whether to pick up a bottle of this or not. But first, let me talk a little bit about our sponsor, Cruise's Custom Flags. What a great sponsor we have. Chris over there at Cruise's Custom Flags, he's really dedicated to the veteran cause. They produce bourbon barrel flags and other artifacts out of bourbon barrel wood and other items out of bourbon barrels. They have their chard tasting cup. which is very wonderful. And you can you can actually pour your bourbon in there into the char of the cup. It's really nice. It's made out of wood, of course. They've got some key holders and some other things. Their flags come in all sizes. Definitely go to the website. Cruise custom flags dot com. Check them out. They have sizes as big as the general that you can put in your boardroom. They've got smaller versions all the way down to the size of the lieutenant that you can put on your bar at home. Really a great organization. Repurposing bourbon barrels, and they use combat veterans to produce these things. So these guys are getting a chance to really put their hands to work on a craft and produce some fine objects. It's Christmas time. It's a good time to go out and get a few things. I highly recommend you check out Gru's Customs. He's a great friend of the show. Wonderful bourbon drinker. Loves his bourbon. And he'll appreciate your business, I'm sure. So Chris, let's get back to the whiskey here. What do you think about the color of this? I think it's a little bit lighter, a little bit lighter color bourbon. It is in a narrow bottle, so it's kind of maybe giving way a little bit to that lighter color, but it is in the Gluten Caron glass as it's poured. It's also a bit light. I did notice... Amber. Yeah, like a light, light amber, right? Right. Like almost a yellowish amber. Another thing I've noticed on the bottle was that it says it's bottled and produced by the Mango Bottling Company in Cocoa, Florida. But I know for a fact that this has come out of Kentucky. This stuff has come. So I think they're just bottling in cocoa.

Right. And that's what the gentleman at the tasting venue had told us also, is that it was in Kentucky. Right.

So the fact that it's undergone the terapeer process sort of points fingers towards Owensboro, Kentucky. Most people have heard of OZ Tyler. which last year in 2020 was rebranded as Green River Distilling. Part of their portfolio was working with a terapeur process from Terracentia and using ultrasonic waves to manipulate the bourbon to try and give it a better mouth feel and to maybe improve the age a little bit. So this bourbon specifically says that it's undergone terapeur. So that kind of points fingers only to one place, and that's Owensboro, Kentucky. What do you say we check this out? Let's try it. Right. Now the nose is real light on it. Kind of sweet. Yeah, very sweet. The ethanol is not overpowering. 90 proof. Not getting too much ethanol on the nose. Light caramel. I'm not getting any spice on the nose. Very little. Let's taste it. Cheers.

Again, what do you think about that? Well, um, maybe my vocabulary isn't as expanded, but I would say it's I mean, it feels very smooth and the sweetness that you smell, you can definitely taste that. Not much burn. Yeah.

I mean, I agree with you. It is sweet up front. Yeah. It does transfer from the nose to the palate. It's pretty similar. It's not overwhelming in any way. It's kind of smooth when it crosses the tongue. It's got a nice texture to it though. I think it does have a little bit of viscosity to it. For what appears to be a lighter whiskey, it does leave some pretty decent legs on the glass. But the spice is coming through a little bit. I'm getting a little bit of, on the backside, I'm getting a little bit of that, for me, a little bit of pepper. What about you? I was feeling the cinnamon is what's... A little bit of cinnamon? Yeah, I agree with that. I'm also got a tinge of like licorice or anise in there. So I'm gonna say there's a little bit of rye in this whiskey. I have been wrong before, but I think there's a little bit of rye in this whiskey. But overall, it's underwhelming. I mean, it's nothing special. We've had some pretty good whiskey otherwise while we were here. Correct, yes. So it doesn't have a real youthful nose to it though. It seems like it's, I mean, it drinks like it's over two years old. I know it's not, but it drinks like it's over two years old.

And the bottle there said one year.

One year. One year. So I think we're dealing with a one year to two year old Kentucky bourbon whiskey here, something that's been custom produced and provided to Key West Trading Company to be put in this bottle. A lot of people doing that nowadays. Really surprised to find a bourbon whiskey down here that's got basically the Florida Keys as its home. This is not, this is realm country.

It's definitely a bourbon that I could drink regularly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's kind of, like I said, underwhelming. It's nothing that's going to blow you away, but it's not going to offend you in any way either. You can easily sit on the patio and sip on this all day. As we are. Yep. Absolutely.

Well, Chris, what do you think about the Florida Keys in general? I love them. Yeah. I love them. Ready to come back again. Probably won't be two months before I'm back down here. Well, it's the middle of December.

We left very cold weather. You left Colorado Springs, Colorado. I left Louisville, Kentucky area and we both came down here to 80 degree weather. long days of fishing.

Oh yeah. Two, two six hour days out on the boat, fishing in the flats. Um, just, was that just east or north of Key Largo?

Yeah. So we have been on every single, well, every single key that the road touches, right? There are more keys here. There are thousands of them, I think, but as it seems, yes. Yeah. But we probably literally driven across 20 of them or 30 of them. It's been a good trip.

Yeah, definitely a good trip. Yeah.

All right. So what do you think about, uh, Smuggler's bourbon. Do you think this is something you would buy another bottle of if you're down here? I'd buy another bottle. Yeah for sure Yeah, I think it's worth it $35 plus tax. I think it was okay. Fair price. Yeah, great looking bottle great label. I Mean, it's sourced whiskey. They're not making it here. But you know what? They're presenting it to tourists who are here in Key West and I think it's um serves its purpose and

Yeah, I'd say with my daily or my go-to being the Evan Williams Bottled and Bond is the one that I drink every week. This I would say is a step up from that. Oh really? Yeah, I'd say it's a step up from that. So I'd probably prefer to get this one. Now you think it's because of the sweetness? I think it is. I do find that I like the sweeter The sweeter bourbons. Um, yeah.

Wow. That's saying something there. It really is. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Awesome. Well, I'd say this is a good drinking whiskey. It's easy to sip on. And if you're down here, why not pick up a bottle? Uh, you can find it just about anywhere in the keys and the liquor stores here. You cannot buy it at Key West Trading Company, however, in Key West because they can't sell you a bottle, but they got it on the shelf. Kind of an interesting situation.

They'll let you taste it if you go in there, but I guess they don't have the license to sell it to you by the bottle or by the drink.

But they give you this wonderful card with like 25 liquor stores on it that you can go to to buy it. Alright, well you can find The Bourbon Road on all social medias. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. You can find us on YouTube. You can find us on TikTok. You won't find us on Discord. You will not find us on Twitch. We just don't have enough time in our day to do all of them. We do have a website however called TheBourbonRoad.com and on there you will find our swag. You will find our blog articles. You'll find our podcast episodes as well. We really encourage you to take the time to stop by our website, check out some of our latest posts, definitely take a look at some of our products we have for sale on there. We have our Glencairns and our glasses, our hats, our t-shirts. So we've got our Bourbon Bullshitter t-shirt. We've got decanters, all kinds of great stuff for your home bar. When you buy from the Bourbon Road website, you help out the podcast and you help us get on down the road to visit somebody else. We do two shows a week. Every Monday we do a craft distillery episode where we sort of talk about a single expression like we are today with Key West Trading Company, Smuggler's Bourbon. We do a short segment, about 20 minutes long, where we just sort of dive into one bottle and we tell you what we think about it, whether you ought to pick it up. In this case, if you're in the Keys, if you're down here and you want to try some local bourbon, we know it's made in Kentucky, but hey, it's got the Florida Keys name on it. So give it a shot. Every Wednesday, we do a longer episode, a full hour where we deep dive a subject. We have a guest on, we have several bottles on. We sort of take you through a story that lasts about an hour, usually about 30 minutes in each half so we can get you to work and get you home. We hope you listen to both shows every week. We're easy to reach. You can reach out to Mike and I. You can get us on email. I'm Jim at TheBurbanRoad.com. He's Mike at TheBurbanRoad.com. But like we always say, hit up our DM on Instagram. I'm jshannon63. He's Big Bourbon Chief. And Chris, thank you so much for sitting down with me here in Key West today. Oh, well, thanks for having me. Grateful for you coming down here and spending a couple of days fishing with me. We ate some good food. We enjoyed the Keys. 80 degree weather when everybody up north is cold. Kind of nice to get away. We have had a few drinks while we were down here, too, haven't we? Just a few. Thanks for hanging out with me down here in Key West. We had a great time fishing, enjoying the warm weather. It's about time for us to head back north. I'm going to take the rest of this bottle back up and have Mike try it and see what he thinks. But until the next time, we will see you down the Bourbon Road.