235. Duke Spirits Founders Reserve Double Barrel Rye Review

Welcome to another trip down the Bourbon Road with your hosts Jim and Mike. So grab a glass of your favorite bourbon and kick back.

Hello, everybody. I'm Jim Shannon. And I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is The Burman Road. And today, Mike, we're setting ourselves down, getting ready to watch a movie. Gonna watch an old John Wayne flick, right? Yeah.

There's some great ones to watch out there. You got True Grit, The Cowboys, McClintock. He's got a whole bunch of World War II movies he played in. I think he's played in the Midway, just a classic actor, a man that, you know, if you said I walk like John Wayne and I talk like John Wayne, people probably didn't leave you alone.

Well, you always say the man, the myth, the legend. Well, it's absolutely true this time, right? Yeah.

And actually today from Duke Spirits, we got his whiskey in our hands. Not John Wayne's whiskey. Come on now. He's been passed away for a couple of years now, but there is a company out there called Duke Spirits with his family that has helped out with, and we were lucky enough to get a bottle of their Double Barrel Founders Reserve. This is a rye whiskey finished in Grand Cru French Oak barrels out of California.

So this is a five-year-old rye and we both know that ryes that are five years old are well-aged, right? Yeah. Rye ages much faster. It ages a heck of a lot faster than that weed at Bourbon.

Oh, come on now. Come on now. This is a 95% rye, 5% malted barley. It is distilled down in Owensboro, Kentucky. If you pay attention, you might even know where this distillery is, what its name is. But you just got to keep listening to us two jokers though. Right, Jim?

That's right. Listen in. You're going to hear it all.

So you can pick this bottle up Jim anywhere across the nation pretty much online. $107 for this bottle. You know, is that a lot? Yeah, that's a chunk of change. That is a chunk of change, but as we've talked about in the past, I think a couple weeks ago we had old crossroads on. If you're a movie nut like we are, we'd love those old movies, classic movies. If you're a John Wayne fan, and I think most whiskey drinkers are, this would be a great bottle to have on a shelf.

A lot of times I think, and I feel this way sometimes, when I see a bottle that is tied to a movie character or it's tied to a film or it's tied to somebody famous, you kind of wonder, is the whiskey going to really be good or not? I mean, a lot of times you see those bottles, you kind of want to grab it. You want to find out on your own, but $107, boy, it'd be nice if somebody else would tell you if it's any good or not. Well, that's what we're going to do today. Right. Exactly.

Just listen to the bourbon road. Yeah. Just listen to us two jokers. I wouldn't tell you, Jim, I'm the same way. I look at those bottles like this bottle right here. And is this whiskey going to live up to John Wayne's legend? You know, to me, that's important. I've talked about that several times before, like Sam Houston, the bourbon from Sam Houston. I wanted to live up to the Texas legend and I was disappointed that it's not Texas. whiskey in there or even not even Tennessee whiskey. It was Indiana whiskey.

That wasn't that the stuff we had tasted had two chances to get that right. Cause Sam Houston was from Tennessee, but he was a famous for his work in Texas. Yeah. Whiskey ended up being from somewhere else.

Yeah. I just, I, I'd like to get it right. I'd, I'd almost want to see probably some California whiskey in this. Um, Um, but it's not, I mean, it is Kentucky whiskey. We know the distillery well, um, down at Owensboro, a big whiskey town. If people don't know about it, uh, just, uh, just a great distillery, but I'm excited to taste this, Jim.

All right, Mike. Well, let's, let's do what we haven't done in a while. Let's get straight to that whiskey. Yeah, let's do it. Oh, wow. Man, there's a lot of butterscotch on that.

It's got that 95 five ride right there. That's that butterscotch, those sweet tones of like candy, a little bit of citrus, a little bit of, yeah, you're right. That orange sister, orange zest, I would call it.

Yeah, but it doesn't burn the nose at all. Now what was the proof on this? There's only 98 proofed you. Okay. All right. Five-year-old right. It has a good dark color to it.

Yeah. Now Vivian's upstairs cooking stuffed peppers with poblano peppers. And I, I don't know if that whiff of the peppers is coming down here. So I do get a little spice that can be playing with my nose just a tad bit.

You getting a little poblano pepper in this, right? Yeah. I'm getting a little sizzle in the glass. Let's taste it. Cheers. Cheers. Not super sweet, but boy, it's creamy, isn't it?

Super creamy. I get a little bit of citrus and sweetness to that. But like you said, not a whole lot. A little bit of pepper on that. Maybe from that rye. That French oak, I think probably metals this out just a tad bit, I would think.

Yeah, I'm getting a little bit of that Necco candy on it too. I feel like it's got a little bit of a butterscotch. It's got a little bit of a spice drop to it. That those sugar spice drops, a little bit of that Necco candy, that powdered, uh, what is that cornstarch on the outside of those?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, Jim, you know, I think an Oak, I'm thinking this French Oak, you know, what's made out of American Oak, Jim. you're going to tell me. Well, bourbon barrels. But what happens that bourbon barrel after they're done with it, after the distilleries are pouring the whiskey out, that bourbon barrel doesn't make the grade to get shipped overseas to be used as something else to wineries. Our good friend at Cruz Customs Flags is turning that barrel into American art. Something that you can be proud to hang on your shelf. You got one, Jim. I got one.

Yeah, I mean, he's a patriot at heart, right? I mean, he makes these wonderful American flags out of bourbon barrels that are repurposed, an absolute centerpiece for your bar. And if you've got a conference room, if you're a company and you want to show off your love for bourbon, your love for bourbon barrels, what would be better than a patriotic bourbon barrel flag in your conference room over the conference table? That would be awesome.

Yes, what you want to do is go on over to CruzCustomsFlags.com, check him out on social media. He's at Cruz Customs Flags on Instagram, on Facebook. He's got all kinds of stuff. He even has a USA wood magnet key holder for your keys. pretty nice. He sells easels to display those on these American flags on me and Jim have each of those. He also has for those beer drinkers out there. He has the bottle breacher, a 50 caliber bullet bottle opener. Pretty neat. Right, Jim?

Absolutely. Yeah.

I got one of those myself.

You can't go wrong with Chris and Cruz custom flags. Uh, you know, he's repurposing these bourbon barrels into something that we can all can appreciate. The other thing he's doing is he's using combat vets to do the work. I mean, he's putting these guys to work. He's giving them a job. You know, they're creating these wonderful pieces of artwork. What an amazing guy.

Yeah. Veteran owned and operated true to the word. Go check them out today. Well, back to this, uh, legendary Duke whiskey right here, Jim. Um, it's very soft on the palate. I think it's not aggressive.

It is. I'm surprised at, uh, yeah, I'm surprised at how soft it is on the palate for being a rye. It is more butterscotch. It's got a little less of that sizzle on it a little bit more of that creaminess. that the citrus on it is kind of just, it's just a tad though. It's just a little bit, not too much.

Yeah. I'm getting a lot of what I know is this again, I'm getting a little bit of graham cracker in there for some reason, and I'm not even sure what a graham cracker is made up of. Um, but I'm getting a little bit of that graham cracker on this. Um, that, you know, the honey graham crackers I'm talking about.

Honey and ginger, right? I think it's honey and ginger and beautiful.

$107 might be a stretch for some people. If you're truly a movie nut, like a sons of Katie elder, that's a great classic movie about four brothers and their mother dying. And they're having to go back and barrier and, um, people trying to steal her land. Um, I could see those four brothers sitting around drinking this whiskey right here.

What was the name of that, that fellow John Wayne played in the movie? There was an old coot and he had that eye patch. He was helping that younger girl. Rooster Cogburn. Rooster Cogburn. I feel like he's sitting next to me here in the chair. You know, we're sitting on this whiskey together.

Yeah. He might slap you with his pistol if he knew this was finished in a wine barrel though. That was the kind of guy that Rooster Cogburn was, but he had a cat too though. I don't know if you remember that from the movie and stuff. He drank a little much. He did. Yeah. He drank a little bit of whiskey, matter of fact. But a classic movie, maybe one of the best Westerns of all time. I've heard people say that new Trugrits better than that. I don't know. I'm a kind of a John Wayne nut myself. One of my favorite movies of all time is The Cowboys about him, where he takes and everybody's fighting in the civil war. So he doesn't have enough men to drive his cattle to market. So he takes boys. um, from school and he gets them to help him drive his cattle. And, uh, one of the few movies that he actually died in, um, as a character, but it just showed a great adventure about these boys and some really famous actors in that movie. You would have to go back and watch it. Um, one of my favorites of all time. Maybe you ride up there with my favorite series of all time. Lonesome Dove, Jim.

Yeah. Lonesome Dove was a great movie. Now, Yeah, I was trying to remember, uh, some of the earlier movies and there was a female actress that was with John Wayne and a lot of the movies and, uh, like, uh, McClintock and I remember he picked her up out of that. She fell down the, the, the wash into the water and he picked her up. He smacked her on the rear end. Oh yeah. Yeah. Great movie. Yeah. Um, Maureen O'Hara, right? Yeah.

Great actors from Ireland that immigrated over to America and stuff. He was always in on great movies with her. The Quiet Man was another one, right? Yeah, yeah. Just some amazing movies and the McClintock, it was just a strange wife and she'd kind of come back with her daughter from college and they got back together at the end of the movie, but a classic movie about a husband and wife pretty much fighting and stuff is all the movie was about. Well, back to our whiskey, Jim. I know that's what our listeners want to listen to, right? Us talk about whiskey, not movies that we love. I think this thing has a medium finish on it. not a big Kentucky hug on this whiskey.

Yeah, it's kind of light on the hug. The finish is, it's not short, but it's not long. It's medium. You're probably right. It's a little more butterscotch-y. It's not an, for 95.5, it's not an over the top rye. I think it's well-aged, I think it's good, but it's more of a easy drinking rye, right? It's easy on the palate.

Yeah. This would be easy to drink before dinner, I think, and not get that heartburn from it or anything like that. I'll tell everybody this is a sour mash whiskey. We know that for a fact because we've been to the distillery ourselves, checked it out. I really like this. To me, Jim, for $107, probably still buy this. I like that big tall whiskey bottle like this. It's kind of a throwback bottle to me. Yeah, it's a great whiskey.

I mean, I like a bottle with a story. I like a brand with a story and this definitely has a story behind it. I've always been a big fan of John Wayne. Uh, I love the distillery that produces this whiskey. I think they're doing everything right. And, uh, if, if I were to start a whiskey company today, sourcing whiskey, I know who I would go to right away.

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. You just have to, listeners, you have to pay attention to our episodes. We're going to have this distillery owner in a couple of weeks, a special episode for us. I hope you want to check it out. Man, what a great whiskey here, Jim. It's a buy for me. It sounds like it's a buy for you. But we have a little bit deeper pockets. We're a little bit longer in the tooth than most people are. Got a little bit more great beard going on these days.

Paid off a little more of our house, right?

Yeah, yeah. So if you're that whiskey drinker that can't afford it, I would say go out there and buy it. This brand's got beaten up a little bit, but I think people would be shocked that it's the same whiskey as other people have that had gotten high praise, Jim, which is, eh.

So Mike, where can people find us on the internet?

So you can find us on Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. We're all over the place Jim, but the main place listeners can find us is at the Bourbon Roadies Facebook group. You're about 2500 strong in there. You got to answer three questions. Get in. Are you 21? Do you like bourbon? And do you agree to play nice? Because we don't tolerate any rudeness in there, meaning that you can drink from the very bottom of the shelf to the very top, whatever is in your price range. That's what we want you to drink. We don't want you to stretch it. Nobody's going to come in there and beat you up for it. Nobody's going to dog run you. Nobody's going to be a troll in our group because we just don't tolerate that. We got three great moderators, Jason Drew and the famous Adam Boothby from Chattanooga, Tennessee. They're going to help us out. Make sure that you have a great time in there. Ain't that right, Jim?

That's right. We, uh, we really take a lot of pride in our, in our private Facebook group and the, and the, and the group of friends that we've gathered over the past couple of years. I think they're all true friends. They all have a great time in there. They share great whiskey stories. It's a wonderful place to get to know some fellow whiskey people. We do two shows a week. Every week we do a Monday episode, a short episode like today's where we highlight a single craft whiskey, a single distillery. We talk about an expression, we taste it. We chit chat back and forth. We decide whether or not it's something you ought to purchase. So we give you a recommendation today. We're saying it's expensive. And if you want to make that one time purchase, you know, that once a year purchase where you spend a little bit extra money, this might not be a bad one because when you have somebody over to your house, you get to pull out a bottle of the Duke. You get to talk about that great history of John Wayne and the movies. You're like a story always accompanies a whiskey. It makes it so much better. We also do a long episode every Wednesday where we have a guest on. Usually we'll maybe drink a few different expressions. We'll have a couple of whiskeys on the show. We'll take a full hour. We'll get you to work and we'll get you back. We hope you listen to both episodes every week. Mike, how can they be sure not to miss a single episode of the Bourbon Road?

What you want to do is scroll on up to the top of your app, hit that check sign, that plus sign, that subscribe sign, whatever you got to do to let that app know you that these two jokers has recorded a show and they want you to listen. And I want you to scroll on down, hit that five star review, leave us some comments because you know what will happen if you don't. I'm going to bring the big bad booty daddy of bourbon some of this dukes. whiskey with me by the end of the night, you're going to be saying, is that you, John Wayne? Is this me? You know what? You know what movie that's from, Jim? No, what movie is that? I know some of our listeners are going to know that by the end of the night, you're seriously, uh, we're going to drink all this whiskey and give us that five star view. Um, but really we hope you do give us some review, uh, Whatever you give us we appreciate it leave us some comments that opens up doors gets great whiskey like this Duke in our hands We can give you a great content to drive back and forth the word. We'd appreciate it

So you all know, we review craft distilleries and we're always looking for the next great find. If you've got a distillery in your hometown and you think is doing the right thing and you think needs a little bit of light shined on them, make sure you reach out to Mike and I, we'd love to taste their whiskey and tell the world about them. You can reach out to us. You can reach out to us on our website, the bourbon road.com. We've got a contact us page along with. Uh, our swag articles and you can listen to the podcast episodes from the website as well. The bourbon road.com. You can also write us an email. I'm Jim at the bourbon road.com. He's Mike at the bourbon road.com. But like we always say, probably the best way is to hit up our DMS on Instagram. I'm Jay Shannon 63. I'm big bourbon chief and we'll see you down the bourbon road.