238. Exploring Buffalo Trace Mashbills

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 are at Jeptha Bend Farm. This is a long awaited episode. You've been playing in this one for a while.

Yeah, it's been in my thoughts. You know, it's something that I thought we needed to discuss. A lot of people have some misconceptions about this topic. I'm approached a lot about different bourbons and what the mash bill is or what people think they are. And I was like, man, we got to address this. We got to fix this, Jim. We got to educate some people. So what the topic is, is all the mash bills that Buffalo Trace puts out. in which all those bourbons that are in those match bills, we're going to put all those together, we're going to tie all this together, and we're going to drink that whiskey while we're talking about it. No, we're not going to drink all the whiskey, Jim. I see you over there smiling.

I'm smiling. I'm smiling. But we're not going to drink every whiskey from every match bill. We're just going to do Sampling.

We're going to each drink some different whiskeys though. And just to kind of represent Buffalo Trace, all it is and all the mashbills that make it up. And I think there's going to be some surprises in there for some people, right?

Well, there definitely is because, you know, you and I have had conversations with people and you do hear people say some things. that are not true but in conversations you don't say hey that's not true you're just having conversations you're talking with people you're not you're not calling them out on it but you hear those things you're thinking yeah maybe that's an episode maybe that's something we ought to talk about right well one of the things that got me wanting to talk about this is somebody was like i don't like uh eagle rare because it's a weeded bourbon yeah and i was like

You know, somebody to say that to me, you know, I, I pretty much pride myself on trying to have every weeded bourbon or have tasted either weeded bourbon or have, you know, just talk about it on the show. We, we, we've had a lot of them on here. Um, but Eagle rare is not a weeded bourbon at all. Um, I think that might surprise somebody. It might have some of those sweet overtones to it, soft overtones that we did is going to have, but it's not a weeded bourbon, right?

Well, I'm excited to do it. Buffalo Trace has four mash bills that represent the dozens of whiskeys in their arsenal.

Yeah, four different major mash bills. And I think some people are going to be shocked from this. what they are, but the first one we're going to drink today is mash build number one, or what's known as mash build number one. And it's considered to be a low rye, meaning less than 10% rye content in that mash bill.

Now these mash bills, I mean, it's not like Buffalo Trace has them written on the wall, right? They're not handing out flyers when you go on distillery tours and saying this is our mash bill. Their mash bills are undisclosed.

Yeah, they don't tell anybody what it is, but we do know that these mash bills are the same. There's enough information out there that has been put out about their mash bills and what each kind of family is. So this first one is the mash bill number one. You got a glass of what?

I've got a glass of the E.H. Taylor Small Batch.

That's a bottled Bond, very sought after whiskey, right?

Yeah. It's a whiskey that is available. I mean, if you keep your eyes out, you can run across a bottle every now and then, but you're not going to find it readily on the shelf all the time.

Yeah, it just depends on where you're at. And, um, if you're there on that day to grab it, it's probably worth grabbing. I have actually got a glass of Eagle rare 10 year. Um, now it doesn't say 10 year on the front. We've had this on the show several times. We've talked about this. It's on the back of the bottle now. So it is a 10 year old bourbon. We know that for a fact, right? Is it a single barrel anymore? Um, that's debatable.

And I'm not, I don't know that it was ever truly a single barrel. I think it's a continuous draining line. So they roll a barrel down, that barrel drains, fills bottles. Then they roll the next barrel down, it drains and fill bottles. So a little bit of one barrel might get into one bottle, a little bit of another one. So it's not specifically single barrel. Sure. It's this continuous drain of a single barrel at a time. So I'm not sure that you would even call that a single barrel, but it kind of is.

Well, while we're talking about these and we're sipping on these two whiskeys, we're drinking. So obviously this first mash bill, I'm going to name all these off. And I think you know most of these, right? Buffalo Trace, the bourbon, is this mash bill number one, meaning it's a low rye. Maybe that's why everybody likes it so much.

Yeah. I mean, that's a popular bourbon. It's at every bar in the country, guaranteed.

old charter eight. Yeah. What's the misconception about that? That it's eight years old, eight years old, but it's not. No, it's just that. That's a gimmick, I guess. Yeah. Um, next up we have obviously what you're drinking is the EH Taylor small batch.

And there's a single barrel and there's a barrel proof. So there's different expressions of that.

Yeah, most definitely. And then you got stag and stag junior. A lot of people probably don't realize that there's are in the low right category.

Yeah. Cause there's a little bit of fire in those bottles.

Then you got Eagle rare benchmark.

Now, Benchmark's just recently been rebranded. We did a show on that. They've got, what is it now, four or five bottles.

I think it's actually six different bottles. Is it six now?

Yeah. The one that we're looking at right now is they're bonded, which is they're a hundred proof four year old. but they have a foolproof and some others that make up the benchmark line.

And then they got the white dog. I know you like that white dog.

I do like the white dog.

Yeah. That's a lot of whiskeys in that one mash build it from Buffalo Trace. Yeah. Yeah.

So that bill really represents kind of their core offering of non-weeded bourbons, right?

That's their standard, we're going to make money right here, I think. You know, even Buffalo Trace lately has become an allocated bourbon across the country. Is it a great bourbon? I think it's a great bourbon for its price and should it be allocated? I don't think it should be allocated. Should Benchmark be allocated? Somebody told me today that the big handles of Benchmark are allocated now.

Oh, they are. That's crazy.

Well, he didn't have any of them in there. Now, Stagg Jr., Stagg, George T. Stagg, are those?

Any of the Buffalo Trace antique collection are very, very, very hard. to get your hands on, you have to have some very special relationships to get those bottles.

Eagle rare. Some people say it's allocated. I don't have problems finding bottles of that $35. Um, you know, do I pay 28 for the Buffalo trace or do I pay 35 for the Eagle rare tenure?

And you can usually find a pick of Eagle Rare, too.

Yeah. And those picks usually run about $50. Right. But that's mash build number one. I mean, that's it in a nutshell. So we'll go back through that mash build, Jim. We got Buffalo Trace. We've got old Charter 8, EH Taylor Small Batch and the Single Barrel, that kind of line of those and stuff. Obviously if you got a four greener stuff, that's not in this mash bill. Stag and Stag Jr. I'm talking about the big George T Stag bottle. Firewater and Stag Jr., which somebody said, is it, they taking a Stag Jr. off of that this year?

I think so. I think junior's going away. It's just going to be the stag. Yeah.

Just because other ones, George T. Stag. Yeah. Um, we got benchmark in their Eagle rare and the white dog. I mean, that's, that's an impressive mash bill. One, you know, they're just making one giant cook and they can pour it in the barrels and say, okay, we'll let this put this on this floor, put this on that floor.

And, uh, and that's what makes the difference, right? Where they locate the barrels, how they treat those barrels during maturation. That's what really makes the difference. You taste a buffalo trace side by side with a George T. stag and you think they're two different animals for sure.

Yeah, it's the weirdest thing. Like when you taste a E.H. Taylor single barrel, or even there's a full proof or barrel proof, right? And you taste a benchmark. I can't even imagine or fathom that are the same two whiskeys that came off the steel.

Yeah. So that's that maturation process and the, and you know, how much it just contributes to the, to each profile and. Yeah, they're able to do a lot. And think about how much a distillery like Heaven Hill is able to do with a single mash bill. I mean, it's just amazing, right?

Yeah. I mean, they're making lots of whiskey. I think the reason for that is just because you could imagine cleaning that steel and those fermenters to change mash bills all the time. It would seem impossible.

Yeah, I think it definitely cuts into the profits a little bit having to do that, I would say. Yeah.

Well, that's Mashbill number one.

So you said it was a less than 10% rye in the Mashbill. How much corn? Nobody knows. Nobody knows. So we really don't know. We just know that it's got at least 51% and probably less than 10% rye. And there's a little bit of malted barley thrown in for some enzymes. Yeah. That's about it.

If you want to know about Malts Barley, go back and check that ASW episode out. We got a dissertation on that, didn't we? Yeah. Well, we'll, we'll pause for a second here. Um, but well, before we pause, let's talk about our great friend up in Ohio, seldom seen farms.

Making that sweet, sticky, wonderful maple syrup.

Yeah. Aged in bourbon barrels that we love for six to nine months. You poured on pancakes, poured in a old fashioned. I know you love that.

I do all the time.

You love poured into Manhattan.

Yeah. Yeah, you can use it anywhere you use bar syrup. You can replace that bar syrup with maple syrup to add a little bit of that maple flavor, that bourbon barrel aged maple flavor.

Yeah, I made a Big Chiefs. bourbon cold brew out of that. Um, and you use that maple syrup in there and what a breakfast drink, right?

Yeah. I mean, it was awesome. It was really good. And it's just, it, it surprises me that more people don't do that. It just blows me away because the first time I did do that, It was so good.

Yeah, it just changes the aspect a little bit. Even uses it on pancakes or anything like that. It's just a different taste. I'm out of it right now. I'm going to have to order some. Where do we order that from, Jim?

Well, you go to seldomseenmaple.com. They've got a great online store on their website. Very easy to go through their products. You can buy it by the case. You can buy a single bottle if you like. You can ship them to your friends for presents. They even come in gift sets where they combine them with other things. So, uh, definitely check out seldom seen maple.com. You got to get some. Awesome.

Well, Jim, let's get to this second mass bill. You still got whiskey in your glass. You're letting me down. Look at my glass.

That was good though. You know, it's been a minute since I had a little EH Taylor.

Really?

And I, I like it a lot. Well, I brought it, I actually brought it to one of our challenges and I thought I had, I thought for sure I was the ace in the hole, buddy.

And, and I didn't win, but you just, you gotta thank those ones out.

Well, you know, just because I like it, just because it's a, a special bottle to me doesn't mean it's a special bottle to everybody.

That is true. I mean, we say you're bourbon your way, you're going to like what you like. And that's kind of why we're going through this. So the second one we're going to pour is going to be the mash bill number two. Now this has got some history to it. It's got some unknowns, but you know, you know all those unknowns, right? Well, yeah.

I mean, I spent a little time at age international, I should say. So I'm kind of looking forward to going over this mash bill here.

So getting to mash bill number two, Jim, um, I just poured us a couple of glasses.

Would I pour you Elmer T Lee? Do you like that a little bit? Yeah. And again, you know, I mentioned in, you know, when we're going through mash bill number one that I hadn't had each Taylor in my glass in a minute. It's probably been a few minutes since I had a little bit of Elmer T. Well, I poured some ancient age 80 proof. I like it. I do like ancient age 80. I'm not a big fan of the 90 proof. But I like the 80. Really? I wonder what the difference is. It's 10 proof points, but there's something else going on there. Yeah.

Well, this is only a $10 bottle. I mean, you can't, you can't go wrong with that. And I think we're about to shock some people about what this really is. Yeah. So mash bill number two, what do you, what do you know about it, Jim?

Well, I do know that it's referred to as Buffalo Trace's mash bill number two, but the fact of the matter, it really is Age International's mash bill. Right.

People don't, people don't know that who's age international.

Well, age international is, uh, ancient age. You're drinking some ancient age there, right? The company that. basically sold the Buffalo Trace distillery to Sazerac back in the day, back in the early 90s. So Age International was owned or still is owned by a Japanese company, Takara Shuzo, and they had purchased it for let's say around $30 million. And you know, everybody remembers that the eighties and the early nineties were kind of a rough time for bourbon spirits. So there was a lot of things changing hands during those times. And this Japanese company, Takaro, you know, they purchased that distillery and the ancient age brands and they didn't want the distillery though. They just wanted the whiskey brands. So they turn around and sold that distillery Sazerac. So, you know, that's where Buffalo Trace is now.

Yeah.

But, of course, if you own a bourbon brand, a whiskey brand, you need somebody to make it. So, Ticaro made some special deals with Sazerac and said, but you'll keep continuing to make our product for us. And that product included, it not only included Ancient Age, but it also included Blanton's Single Barrel, as well as some other things we're going to talk about.

Yeah, so this, this mash bill is a high rye bourbon. It is 12 to 15% rye. And that's to really, to us, that's not a high rye, is it? Cause we've had some up in the 20 pluses. Yeah.

I think at that time, I think it was called a high ride. I think things have changed a little bit. You know, it used to be the same thing with wild Turkey, right? High ride. They always said they were a high ride bourbon, but now people are really getting up there in the high scale. So.

Yeah. So the bourbons that are in this lineup right here are obviously what I'm drinking right now. Ancient age. Um, there's nothing fancy about this. It's got a screw top. Uh, what you're drinking, the Elmer T. Lee, uh, there's a couple of different expressions of that. If you can find other expressions, even if you get the Elmer T. Lee, it's a great bottle to get Rockhill farm. I bet a lot of people didn't know that.

And all these, except the ancient age, are pretty tough to put your hands on. Yeah.

Hancock Reserve. Yeah. That's a tough bottle to find. I know personally, because that was one of the bottles that I didn't have kind of on my shelf and I wanted really bad. And then obviously the big boy in the room is the Blanton's lineup, right? Everything from just the regular original single barrel all the way up to straight from the barrel is from this Mash Bill number two. Yeah. That's pretty crazy, right?

It is pretty crazy. It is pretty crazy. So this is, I mean, in a nutshell, and this is probably the best way to explain this, Buffalo Trace has the rights to distribute all of those products inside the US. That was part of the deal. Um, at the time in the early nineties, people were kind of feeling like the whiskey market in the U S was kind of in a serious decline and any future growth in the whiskey market is probably going to come from overseas sales. You know, and that's why a Japanese company come in and bought it up and then turn around and sold the distillery off. You know, I think that was a time when there were. There was a lot of excess of whiskey in barrels and storage because the whiskey industry thought it was going to come back, but it just kept declining and declining and declining. And, you know, there was just a glut of whiskey and you couldn't get anything for it. They were having to make decanters and all kinds of fancy stuff to try and get rid of whiskey back then.

They don't do that anymore. You could almost stick it in a sack and if it would hold a whiskey and people buy it.

But those kind of deals, I mean, it's still around today. So, you know, they continue to make a Buffalo Trace or Sazerac continues to make ancient age products today with that special deal that they get to distribute it stateside and international distribution is handled by Age International.

So it's pretty cool. Well, that's some stuff I didn't know before today. You, me and you were discussing before the show and talking about it and read a couple different articles about it. And I was kind of shocked by that. You know, I call this the squatty bottle line. You know, there are little, all the bottles are a little bitty except for the ancient age bottle. Um, it's, it's just a regular old, I don't even know what you'd call that bottle. Standard whiskey bottle, probably the cheapest on the line was crew top, but every one of those other bottles, have their own characteristics to it. You know, Rock Hill Farms and Rockfield Hill Farms actually has a Canadian, uh, brother or sister.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, it's, it's just a neat mash bill. It's a neat, I think lineup and then the history that goes with that. And two famous guys, whiskey's named after him. Um, Elmer T. Lee in blends two legends and, Right. And Bourbon, right?

Absolutely. Albert Blanton and Elmer T. Lee.

Yeah. Pretty amazing. I think that's a. pretty amazing first half right there with probably 10 whiskeys that people want to get their hands on.

We're going to get a lot of emails. We're going to get a lot of texts and a lot of hate mail on Instagram and everything about you're wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong. Those are Buffalo Trace products. Cause everybody feels like they're Buffalo Trace products, right? Cause they're distributed by Buffalo Trace.

Well, what I'd say people, if you, before you email us, before you send me a text message, Or a DM on Instagram or Facebook. Make sure you do your education first. Look it up. There's plenty of literature out there about it. Another thing about this Nashville right here that a lot of people don't know There's another little lineup mash bill that a lot of people don't know of. It is a distilled recipe of the number one and two mash bills that shipped to Virginia. And that is the Bowman bourbon, which a lot of people love. And if you go into Bowman's, yes, they got to steal there, but they only do their experimental stuff on that thing. All their other stuff comes from right down the road here at Frankfurt.

Yeah. Pretty amazing.

So I didn't know that there was a blend between those two mash bills, which is something that's interesting.

Cause yeah, I'd always, I'd always thought like, I'd always thought that number two was a hundred percent reserved, uh, for age international products, but I guess maybe there's a little bit of leeway there.

Maybe that. I mean, they're cooking it.

I guess I can, I guess they can do whatever the heck they want. Anyway, as long as both parties agree, they can do whatever they like, right?

Yeah. Well, in the second half, we're going to drink some stuff that we both really love. We're going to drink some wheat and then we're going to drink some rye.

Yeah.

All right.

Two more mashbills to go, Mike.

Well, it's a tough job. Somebody's got to do it though. We'll stay with us listeners. We'll be right back. Jim, as you're sipping on that whiskey over there, what's something you like to make cocktails with?

I love old fashions and I'm going to keep hammering this home until every one of our listeners makes themselves a maple syrup old fashion. Wow. So it's real, it's real simple folks. Two ounces of your favorite bourbon or rye, a half an ounce of seldom seen farms, maple syrup, aged in bourbon barrels. You only need a half an ounce. It's very concentrated. Half an ounce, then about a half dozen shakes of bitters, more or less depending on your taste over ice stirred. There's your old fashioned really good. You can always garnish it with a cherry or an orange peel. I kind of skipped the cherries. That's not my thing. I like orange peel. I'm starting to get into the candied orange peels. Nice. You know why? Because you want to keep fresh oranges around.

Well, seldom seen farms. They're our sponsor up in Ohio. It is harvest season for them. They've got 2,500 trees up there right now. They've got tubes run to them. They are extracting that sap out of those trees. He'll boil it down. He'll put it in bourbon barrels at age 69 months. You can use it in an old fashioned like Jim said, or you can use it on pancakes. You can use it on a chicken and biscuit, chicken and waffles. Just regular a waffle. That's what you want.

That's right.

But we like making cocktails out of it. Visit our friends over at seldom seen farms. Jim, how do you get to their website?

So you go to seldom seen maple.com. They've got a great store there. Easy to navigate, easy to look at their products. You can buy it by the bottle. You can buy it by the case. You can ship it to somebody for a gift. They've even got gift packs and gift sets. So get on there, check it out, get you some. Awesome. Alright, so we are back. Today is like the culmination of the four Buffalo Trace mashbills. We're working our way through them. Yeah. We did, in the first half, we did Buffalo Trace's number one and number two mashbills. Yep. Kind of talked about all the expressions that are in each mashbill. We drank a little bit from each mashbill. This is actually turning out to be a pretty big show for drinking whiskey.

Well, I mean, if you're going to drink it, you better drink it right.

I guess so, because you have been pouring real pours of every one. So when we're done with the segment and we're ready to move on to the next Mash Bill, we got to get rid of what's left in the glass, right? Yeah.

Well, especially the stuff we're drinking.

So this is the we'll go ahead Mike.

Tell us what this is Well, I poured the weed mash bill and I know listeners are gonna beat us up about this But I don't have a bottle of Pappy's in my house. Um, I'm just not that lucky So if you're a fan out there, you can get me a bottle of Pappy at cost I love you to death, but I just don't have a bottle, Jim.

You'll pay 10% over.

Yeah, probably. I just, I'm not going to chase it. I'm just, I got too many other things to do besides chasing whiskey. I got to take photos of whiskey. But we do have in our glass, the weed and mash bill. You got a pour of the Weller Antique. I do. I got a pour of the Weller foolproof. All right. This is actually a pic that you did a couple of years ago at the store.

So this is the, Oh, so this is the, um, Oh, what was the name of that? Kraken. This was the Kraken pick. Oh my goodness. I remember that day. That was a great day. We really enjoyed that. And, uh, it turned out to be a really good bottle at the end. So you're a lucky man.

Well, talking about Weller, Weller is Pappy, right?

Weller is the same match bill as Pappy. Yeah.

Well, from my understanding, Pappy actually worked for WL Weller. Yeah. So he probably learned how to make whiskey from who?

From the king. Yeah. Well, I don't know. You're kind of the king, but that's, you know, go back in time a little bit. That's in dispute. I think there was a king before you.

Well, he was the king of his whiskey brand. Uh, the weed, he's the guy that created the weeded mash bill is what everybody says.

And he introduced weller whiskey to the West, right? Yeah.

Yeah. With his green thumb print. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but in this mash bill gym, there's obviously all the wellers that have come out and there's a plethora of them now, right? Uh, you start out with a special reserve, the green bottle. It is a coveted bottle for people. A lot of people hate on a little bit. Hey, you're whiskey your way. You're bourbon your way drinking how you want it. Um, but I, that's my go-to bourbon. Um, I got, Several bottles of it. We were just talking about me going to Texas and I'm going to bring back some bottles and make sure you get a bottle of it. Cause you always need a bottle of that on your shelf.

Yeah. I liked, I liked the good old special reserve. It's a, it's a great bottle to have. No doubt about it. Uh, now the special reserve is a what? Six to eight year bourbon. Yeah. Yeah. And the 107, the antique, which I have in my glass, is also around a seven-year-old bourbon.

Yeah, it's a little more proof, though. A little more proof. And then you got the weller 12-year, the black bottle, as everybody calls it. It's obviously 12 years old. And then you got the CYPB, which And people beat up on that and say, it's not a good bourbon, but me and you, we proved them wrong.

It's a good bourbon. Yeah.

I don't, don't think it's not a good. It's a $500 bourbon. It's not a $500. Yeah.

And you can hate on a bourbon because you can't get it. You can hate. I mean, I think it's the wrong reason to hate on a bourbon. I don't think you should hate on a bourbon just because you can't get your hands on it or in order to get your hands on it. Um, You have to pay a lot of money for it. That's not a reason to say it's not any good. It's a reason to say, I won't be drinking that, right? That's too rich for my blood. I'm not going to chase it. I say those things all the time, but I don't say it's not good whiskey.

Um, the other one in here is the William Little Rue Weller. Um, which everybody knows that's a hard bottle to get. That's part of the antique series.

That's kind of top of the heap, right? That is the top of the heap.

Well, they got the single barrel now and, um, they're always doing something different. Um, and then there's a white dog week. I haven't ever seen that before.

I haven't either.

Oh, that's kind of a special bottle.

Well, you know what? If we're going to age some white dog, our own little thing, that'd be the one for you. I'll get the one from Mashbill number one. You get the one from the weeded Bashbill. We'll come back in two years and see who wins.

That's a good idea. I shouldn't mind having Texas let it age.

You will win, right?

No, I just, uh, that's us. Um, and then there's the van Winkle or Pappy van Winkle, whatever you want to call it Pappy. Um, there's the Pappy van Winkle 15 year, the van Winkle lot B12 van Winkle 10 year. And then I'm a surprise to people here. There's the EH Taylor season wood. Um, the supposedly a weeded mash bill.

It is.

I didn't know that. Yeah. That's something I didn't know. Um, that's something nice to know and stuff as I need to grab my whiskey glass or taste on this.

So we're always telling our listeners, you're going to learn something new when you listen to the show. Actually, sometimes you learn something new when you're recording the show.

Yeah.

I had no clue. Most definitely.

The other part of those match bills, and I kind of wanted to go back to match bill number one and match bill number two. Last year, the year before last, they had a kosher Buffalo Trace series come out. I remember that. And there's a weeded in that too. I haven't seen it. I've tried to get my hands on it. I got offered a bottle and it was like $350. And I just kind of smiled and walked out.

Didn't say nothing to the shop owner. I was like, thanks. So you don't have to have every week of bourbon. You just have to have almost every week.

I want to try to have them all. I mean, I like to. I like to be able to put bourbon out for people to taste. I like to be able to try to blow people's minds. We had actually just did an episode with ASW and they sent us a bottle of their Fiddler Georgia Heartwood, which is a weeded bourbon that they finished. Which was fantastic. Oh yeah. Really good. It's out of MGP and I've had MGP's weeded bourbons before.

But it's been fiddled with. It has been fiddled with.

That's what made it pretty special. Would I put that at the top of my heap? I don't know. I mean, we've tasted some really, really good whiskeys. I'd have to go back and kind of compare it to that Feo II and maybe the 46 castrate, because those were kind of fiddled with too, right? Yeah, they were. So I want to go back and check those out, but kind of a double-oaked, weeded bourbon, but still, man, it is amazing. But hey, what I got on my glass right here, if somebody pours me a weller of anything, I'm going to be a happy man.

Now Weller is what's made Buffalo Trace the man of the hour, right? It's the Weller brands and the weeded mash bill has put Buffalo Trace on the map. It's made everything that they produce hard to get.

It is, you know, I think we're going to get to a point where you get to benchmark and it's going to be hard to get ancient age. People will just start grabbing these things off the shelf just to get them. You know, you rare all these mash bills, but the, the, the weeded bash bill is the stuff people want. They, they want to get their hands on plans. It, yeah, it is hard to get, you know, that beautiful little bottle. Everybody loves to hate on my son loves it though. I know other guys that just, They love it to death.

Yeah. Well, Mike, this 107 Weller is true to form. It's got that spicy kick to it. Definitely got that cherry note and that little bit of cinnamon kick. I love it. I have to say, I probably should have picked something other than 107 because we're drinking a lot of bourbons during the show. So, 107 was probably not the wisest choice. Maybe I should have picked the green bottle. I don't know.

Well, we only got one more to go. That green bottle I have up there, actually, that's not regular well or special reserve. I actually took that and put it into a little oak bottle that we'd gotten. Somebody wanted us to do a giveaway or do something with it. I've stuck at my garage thinking it says do not do that though, but I stuck at my garage and let it sit out there for like two weeks. Uh, and I did a whole bottle of that and it was my Weller special reserve double-oaked. Um, it's, it is double for sure. It's got, it's, you could stick an Oak log in your mouth and chew on it all day long and not get that. Well, great mass bill. We're fixing to come up to our fourth mass bill, which is rye.

Yeah, man.

We got two different ryes over there. We do.

And I'm not sure that they're representing all the ryes that have been made available, but we needed two. And I think that's a good choice.

We're going to talk about those risers. Actually, I think they're all together. There's five rise altogether. Um, actually six. So we'll talk about it. I'm going to drink a regular ride and you're going to drink a high ride. rye bourbon or rye whiskey. I mean, so it'll be two different ryes and we'll talk about that.

Kind of been waiting for this mashbill. Now I've enjoyed my walk through Buffalo Trace here, Mike. This has been well planned out by you. This is like a tour. We had mashbill number one, we had mashbill number two, we had the weeded mashbill. I've got to taste a little bit of everything except the ryes. So now we're, we're, we're venturing into the Buffalo Trace. Right.

I know when you walked in the door, you're probably thinking, what the hell's this guy going to do? He's, we got all this whiskey on a pub table just laid out for us. I had ventured through my cabinets, ventured through my shelves. pulled out almost everything Buffalo Trace I had in my house. I was kind of surprised that I had as much as I had. The only thing I had to go out and grab was that ancient age. That was it. Everything else we've had in the house, either you had or I had, we didn't touch it all. Just four different pours, but really eight different pours of whiskey.

We were reaching for Pappy's, but they weren't there.

Yeah, there's none there. I wish there was. Like we said, if you want to reach out to us, we're available.

We're always available.

But we're going to drink this rye whiskey. And we got two of them on the table here with us. Jim, what are you drinking?

So I've got the Colonel E.H. Taylor straight rye. And it's also a bottled in bond. Everything Mr. Taylor did was a bottle and bond, right? Yeah. So it's a hundred proof rye. It's, uh, it's got a nice, I would say medium to dark amber color to it. A hundred proof it's at least four years old. We know that. And, uh, yeah, probably I would say a little hard to get this bottle, probably quite a bit hard to get this.

It was pretty difficult for me to acquire stuff. And I just kind of stumbled on it. I saw it and I was like, I'm grabbing a thing.

Um, I don't think it commands a huge price on the secondary, but it's just hard to find.

Yeah. And you can see, I, I think I. pour some out for a photo, really great photo. One of my favorites, favorite photos of I've taken for a long time. And it's with Woodrow sitting there in the whiskey sitting on a stump. And I just like it cause I had Woodrow in it really. And I haven't drank it. You can see it's not very much out of that bottle is there?

There's not. So I'm drinking from the neck still.

Pretty much. Yeah.

Pretty much. Well, what I'm drinking is the Sazerac, right? So this is the baby brother. to, to SAS, right? To the Sazerac 18. Now some people call this baby SAS. I mean, that's, that's another endearing, what do they call it? Term of endearment.

Yeah.

It's a term that some people call this baby SAS. The reason they call it baby SAS is because like Stagg Jr has the, has the daddy, George T. Stagg, baby SAS has.

Yeah. They got the size of that guy, I guess.

I mean, which is the 18 year old, right?

Yeah. I would call this, uh, the cocktail whiskey. Whenever I see somebody drinking, usually in a cocktail, it's not a proof. Um, I can't ever say that I've had a pour of this before. I don't think so.

Yeah. So I've gone through a few bottles of it. It's, um, for me, it's not like, uh, It's not as good as it is difficult to find. I should say it's probably the best way to say it. Um, you know, a Sazerac is a cocktail that you and I haven't had together before. We probably ought to do one, one, one show.

I've had a Sazerac, I guess, cocktail down in New Orleans that, you know, if you go to the house of Sazerac down in New Orleans, which they got a wall of this stuff. Um, that's a great place to drink cocktail at.

Now, Sazerac, they put a little something in the glass, a little bit of an absinthe, right? And then they shake it around in the glass and they pour it out. They just want that film on the inside of the glass. And then they pour the rye whiskey in.

whatever they did to it, whatever magic they did, it tasted good to me. Cause me and Vivian walked like two miles and I was in cowboy boots and I was like, man, this is a long walk down a cobblestone street in a pair of cowboy boots.

So the people are listening right now. What would you say to them if they end up in New Orleans? Should they go do, should they go have a Sazerac?

Most certainly go, go do it.

Yeah.

No, don't, don't say I wish I would have in life. Go out there and do it. Do life is best. Um, if you ever get to hang out with me and Jim, we will do life to its fullest every time. Uh, we're going to have fun no matter what we're doing. We take, get on the road and stuff. Uh, I don't think there's a second wasted in our day from the time we get up when we're on the road with our wives until the time we hit our pillows.

Right? That's right. And we have actually talked about maybe trying to make it to New Orleans. Yeah. Yeah. Like during jazz festival or jazz festival.

Yeah. great, great city to go to. Um, if you haven't been there, give it a try. It's worth the plane tickets to fly in there. You stay down in the French quarter, pretty dang cheap.

And it's the home of the New Orleans bourbon festival.

Yeah. Yeah.

It's a, it's a place to go to. Kentucky used to ship a lot of bourbon down the river to New Orleans.

Well, I think they're shipping it in semis now.

Yeah. It used to go down on barges, right? Not barges, but river boats, river boats, flat boats. Yeah. Flat boats.

You know, Abe Lincoln, I think he might've taken a little bit of whiskey down there. What they would do is they would ship that whiskey from here and they would ship it down the river, Ohio river to Mississippi. And the wood that's made those boats up flat boats, cause it was just logs tied together. Right. And then a little house built on it. they put all kinds of goods on their stuff and they would sell that stuff as they were going down the river. But once they got down there, they would take that wood and they would build houses down there of it, out of it. Um, and there's still some of them houses left today.

That is so cool. Yeah. Cause once the boat makes a trip, it has no use, right?

Firewood or build a house out of it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it was a different time back then.

Yeah. That's, that's some hard work. I agree with you. I can't even imagine. Well, let's get back to this, uh, back to this final Mashbill gym, the Rye Mashbill from Buffalo Trace. So what we talked about, we got Sazerac, Rye, we got Thomas Handy. Right. Great deal. They got a White Dog Rye, a Van Winkle Rye that most people don't know about.

Yeah. And you know, it's, uh, it's a unicorn. There's no doubt. It's a tough one to get your hands on.

And then the big daddy out of that Rob mash bill is the size rack 18, which I mean, rise are amazing as they get extra aged.

And I haven't had the pleasure to drink a Saz 18 yet. No, I haven't. Now I could have, I just haven't. I haven't ordered a pour.

I think I've seen it on a menu. I just bought it. That's a lot of money.

Yeah. I mean, I think I'll do it at some point or maybe I'll get lucky and get a bottle some at some point.

But now if you had to pick between a like $60 stake in a pour of that, which one are you going to pick?

Well, I'd probably take the steak. Yeah, I'm with you. Not that I wouldn't want to try it. I do want to try it, but I'm figuring my time will come. I'll be at a bar. The time will be right. And I'll look up in that bottle. I'll be there. I'll say, let's do it.

Yeah, but if there's a nice juicy steak, I'd be like, let's just wait, get home, Jim. We'll just drink some, let's get home. Um, now what you're drinking is a different mass bill from what's been told out there. Uh, it is actually a high ride and it doesn't say what the difference in the ride is. You know, is it a real high ride? Does it?

You know, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm going to give you a few taste of notes here just because I've, I've had the, the actual Sazerac rye recently. So I'm going to try this one out. Yeah, this is actually a, um, kind of a sweet candy rye feels like it's a higher right. Is it percentage like 95 five or something?

Do you think that could be a 95?

Um, it could be, but you know, I'm not good enough to tell you exactly what the percentage of the grains are, but, uh, this definitely tastes like a super high rye rye, like something like, uh, 80, 90, 95, whatever. It's, uh, it's pretty good. It's got a little bit of that candied orange to it. A little bit of, uh, kind of a menthol-y, spearmint-y kind of flavor. Not a whole lot of clove, but it's fresh on the nose. I like, I like the EH Taylor straight rye. I think it's a good rye.

Well, I think we got mixed up in our rye here. I think you should drink this says right, right? Cause this thing has a one powerful Kentucky hug. Yeah. I'm going to have to do a policy.

It's kind of meant to be in a cocktail, Mike. I'm just going to tell you that's not, that's not like, uh, it's not my sipping rye.

Yeah. Cause every sip goes straight down and to your chest and starts burning, but it shines through in a rye cocktail.

So I would say reserve, reserve the baby says for your cocktail making. I know it's hard to find it's on the shelf every now and then, but for me, it's not a starter. It's not my choice sipping, right?

Well, Jim, I think we've went through all the mash bills. Both of us learned a little bit here. Hopefully, listeners out there, you did learn about something. It'll help you in making your selections. You go and approach me in the store and try to tell me that Eagle Rare is a weeded bourbon. I guarantee you somebody will try to say that to me, though.

And remember this, the Blanton's brand does not belong to Buffalo Trace. It's not their whiskey. Now they may make it, but a lot of companies make whiskey for other companies.

They surely do. We know that for a fact.

So, um, you know, when you're, when you're drinking a bottle of, uh, Blanton's understand there's a company behind it called age international also located in Frankfurt, Kentucky, but they don't actually make the whiskey. Buffalo Trace makes it, distributes it in the US, and then Age International handles everything else.

Well, Jim, we've gotten a lot of great giveaways over the past couple episodes, right? And I went and cleaned out my whiskey cabinets. And I think I have a little over 100 unopened bottles. in my whiskey cabinets right now. I kind of felt ashamed. I was like, man, I didn't realize that things were just piled up under there. Wow. And some of the bottles are given to us and some I'll catch my eye. I'll see a great sale. And not too long ago, I ran across a Buffalo Trace single barrel pick. And it was only $30. Okay. That's a pretty good, sure. That's not bad.

And some of those Buffalo Trace barrel picks are phenomenal. They're really good.

So I've actually got three Buffalo Trace single barrel picks under my cabinet that are unopened. Cause I got a bottle of Buffalo Trace open. I'm only going to have that bottle open and stuff. Um, but I want to give one of those away to our listeners today. Um, it's kind of a thank you for listening to us, but you're going to have to work for this one.

All right. What do they got to do?

Well, I would say at noon on this release at noon.

So this is going to release on Wednesday. So on the day of release, can't listen to it the following Wednesday. It's gotta be the Wednesday of release. Yup. We gotta make all these rules clear too. Yeah. So it has to be, you have to look at the date of release on this episode and it has to be the day that you're trying to give us the answer.

That day right there.

Yeah, man.

So on the day of that release at noon, if you can tell me, What the name of the company that owns Age International is. It's got to be that exact company, that Japanese name.

And you got to spell it right.

You got to spell it right. You got to do your homework. If you can tell me that, you'll win this bottle of Single Barrel Buffalo Trace from old Big Chief from the Bourbon Road. I think we'll even throw in a Bourbon Road t-shirt.

There you go. There you go. And we're pretty particular about this. So you've got to get it exactly right. And we know that the name of this Japanese company is at least two words.

Yeah. You can't give us one of them. Do that. We'll do the giveaway. Make sure you give us a follow. Make sure you follow our sponsor, seldom seen farms and cruise customs flags. Follow us both on obviously Facebook, right? Yep. Follow us on Instagram and on TikTok. If you could, we could use some followers on there. That's a bonus for us.

We're starting to get some TikTok followers.

We're over a hundred right now. We would appreciate that. Um, but Jim, where else can, listeners find us on the social media.

Well, you sort of mentioned them, but Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, you can find us on YouTube. We do release audio files to YouTube every time we release an episode. There's no video there. I know it's kind of disappointing when you go onto YouTube and it's just audio only, but that's us. That's what we do. Mike and I, we say too many times, we have a face for radio. We do. So you'll find us on those. We'd love to have you visit our website, TheBurbanRoad.com. On TheBurbanRoad.com website, you'll find our swag. You can listen to the episodes if you like. It's a great place to listen to episodes if you're on a desktop computer or even on a phone. You can also read our articles that come out every single week. And Mike, I bet there's going to be a jam an article about the Buffalo Tray Smash Bills.

Yeah. I think I'm going to try to put together a nice article about this and write about it. What I would like to point out to our listeners is you had mentioned going back and listen to episodes. The great guy, Wes Henderson, just retired from Angel envy and stuff. Um, one of the funnest episodes I've got to do was sitting down with him and talking to him. So make sure you go back and check out those episodes. I think it's episode 43 with Wes Henderson. Uh, I wrote an article about it. I tagged it. Um, just if you could please go back and listen to those old episodes. Uh, some great times we've had over the years. Yeah.

And we had actually limited our past episodes to 100 for a long time. We only let you go back 100 episodes, but about a month ago, maybe two months ago, we opened it up so you can go all the way back to episode one now. Awesome. So they're all out there. Enjoy yourself. If you want to go back 240 episodes and listen to the first one, you can do it. If you'd like to start at the beginning and go forward or start now and go back, Works either way. But you know, we definitely want to know what you think about the show, Mike.

What can they do? Well, first they need to subscribe to the show. Hit that plus sign, that check sign. Subscribe or whatever you got to do so that your app will tell you these two jokers just released a show. It'll get you to working back sometimes. Great way to reach out to us on there on those apps. We need you to scroll down on that app though. hit that five star review also add comments add those comments on them in review pages it really helps us out but you know it'll happen if you don't i'm gonna grab every one of these bottles from buffalo trace i'm gonna fill them up in my wagon I'm going to get the old big bad booty daddy to drag that wagon to your house. We'll drink this whiskey all night long. By the end of the night, you're going to give us that five star review, I guarantee. No, seriously, those reviews, those comments open up distilleries to us. They make us make contact with great people that want to get whiskey in our hands. We seriously love it. So the booty daddy wagon, is it?

I want to know more about this wagon. Is it pulled by a Buffalo?

That would be pretty awesome, wouldn't it? The big, bad booty daddy of Bourbon's wagon pulled by a Buffalo, a big chief riding that Buffalo. What a great time. But seriously, we really do appreciate you listening to our show. Jim, how many episodes we do a week?

So we do two episodes a week. We do every Monday, we do a craft distillery episode. We'll pick a single bottle from a craft distillery. You know, they might make two or three or four different expressions, but we'll pick one. We'll kind of drink it. Well, we'll definitely drink it. We'll analyze it. We'll tell you whether or not it's something you need to add to your bar or not. We try to shine some light on new guys doing good work. You know, if we got a new distillery, if you got one in your town, actually, and you think that they're making some good whiskey, we'd love to know about it. Mike and I will drink the whiskey, guarantee it. Yeah. We'll let you know if we like it or not. We'll reach out to the distillery. We'll interview them. We'll talk to them. And if we think it's something that should be put out to our listeners, we'll definitely do it. We do that episode on Mondays. On every Wednesday, we do a full-length episode like today's episode. We give you a full hour. We'll get you to work. We'll get you home. Sometimes we have a guest on. Sometimes like today, we just explore a topic. And today was Buffalo Trays match bills. How awesome. I'm glad we finally did this, Mike. It was a great show. We did drink just a little bit of bourbon though.

Yeah, we did. Listeners next week, next week is a special week for us. You want to pay attention. Not very often this happens, Jim, but we're going to have three episodes next week. One very special episode is going to be on a Thursday. If you want to pay attention to that episode, you're really, really, really going to want to listen to it. It's a great episode. We and Jim did. But we're going to give you a bonus episode on Wednesday.

It'll be a little bit shorter.

It'll be a little bit shorter, but we're going to be talking about getting scammed or bourbon scammers out there getting ripped off by people trying to sell you bourbon. And they're really not, they're just looking to get your money. So you want to pay attention to that episode too.

So next, next week, you're listening to the show now next week, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Yeah.

Awesome. And Mike, you're going on a big trip.

I am, I'm going to Texas. We're going to have some episodes in there. We're going to kind of do some different stuff. You'll hear those episodes throughout the next couple of months, but you'll hear Jim talking about bourbon news on the front end of those shows. We're trying to change up our format just a little bit, give you some bourbon news, give you bourbon releases, bourbon stuff that's happening. And then you'll hear me talking about pairing Texas whiskeys, Texas bourbon with barbecue.

And that'll be Texas barbecue. Oh, of course. Texas bourbons and Texas barbecue. We're not going to be pairing with Carolina barbecue.

No, not Carolina, Memphis, not St. Louis, not Kansas city. It'll definitely be some brisket meat eating some, uh, some kielbasa smoked sausage. That's a big Texas thing down there. Some mutton. No mutton.

That's Jim. That's Owensboro, Kentucky. Oh, is it? That's, that's, that's this next week.

That's where we're going to be at next week.

All right. Well, we definitely want to hear from you folks. If you've got some ideas for a good show, if you've got a bottle you'd like to see reviewed, if you have a person you think would make a great guest on the show, reach out to Mike and I. We're pretty easy to get a hold of. We're very approachable. We're out and about all the time. We see people, we talk to them, but, uh, if you don't see us out and about, definitely reach out to us either by email. I'm Jim at the bourbon road.com. He's Mike at the bourbon road.com. You hit us up on the website. We got to contact us page. Pretty easy to use. You can also probably the preferred 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.