257. At Castle and Key Distillery

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.

Hey, this is Big Chief and you're listening to The Bourbon Road. You know what I love to pour in my old fashions? Is a little maple syrup. Can't be just any maple syrup. It has to be from seldom seen farms up in Ohio. He takes bourbon barrels, pours his syrup in there, and ages it for six to nine months making for some delicious just some delicious syrup that you could pour on pancakes you could pour it on waffles chicken waffles like this fat guy likes but seriously you want to make a delicious cocktail with some maple syrup and not that old simple syrup check out seldomseenmaple.com pick up some stuff from there today we'd appreciate it

Hello, everybody. I'm Jim Shannon. And I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is the Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, we actually are on the road.

Yeah, right down the road from us, about 20 minutes. We had to take a detour to get here, but that was all right. The red chariot knew where the bourbon was. It knew where the whiskey was. It went by its nose, right? Yeah. But we're at Castle Key, a very historical site. This is a E.H. Taylor distillery, right? Just amazing. And we got a pretty special guest today, Jim.

Yeah, we do. And he brought just a few bottle of whiskeys.

It is lined up in front of us. There's gin on the table. There's whiskey on the table. I don't see no rum, but we're going to drink some whiskey today. I think we will. So we got the Whiskey Wizard. He has just like rode in from Chicago off a whiskey tour up there. We got Brett Connors with us. He's the man here at Castle & Key and he's gonna tell us about our first whiskey in the glass. Brett, welcome to the Bourbon Road.

It's a pleasure to be on with you guys. We're happy to have you down from Shelbyville in the local area anyway. So we're gonna drink some whiskey and have a good time I think.

It's not far from us and we want to hear all about your story but we like to kind of get to the whiskey first and we know you've got a pretty special one for the first pour of this half.

Yeah, with these first two batches of bourbon, you know, first and foremost, we're a bourbon distillery and this is the first kind of two batches of inaugural bourbon that our distilleries released in over 50 years. So, you know, previously you had the chance to review batch one, so we thought the perfect follow-up for that would be batch two.

Yeah, we were talking about batch two. I mean, when we reviewed batch one, we were wondering how batch two would be and we're kind of excited to get to try it today.

Yeah, I think for us, it was exciting when we were working in the initial blends. We kind of like to do them as pairs, because that way you get to build two really unique dynamic profiles. And I guess either of these could have been batch one, technically, and either one could be batch two. But we made some decisions around which would be what. And I think batch two is going to be a really pleasant follow-up for everybody. All right. Let's check it out. What do you say?

So, Brett, this is the same mash bill as batch one.

Yeah, so these barrels come from an identical inventory as batch one. We started with about 430 barrels overall to work with. They're all grainbills, 73% white corn, 10% rye, 17% malted barley. Minimum age, four years, always on bourbon. If not older, if we can get it older. Average age is probably closer to about four years, six, seven months on this. There's some five year, three month barrels in here. There's some four year old barrels in here. All Char 3 and Char 4, all toasted. Every single one of these was aged on site in warehouse B at the end of this property. Awesome.

Wow, this one has a little bit more of an airy kind of aromatic note to it, like almost a whisper of pine.

Yeah, maybe pine nuts. Yeah, I would say on this right there. You know that pine has that maybe acidity to it, but pine nuts have that roasted or toasted pine nuts. I would get on this.

Now, if I remember correctly on the first one, I was getting a little bit of a little sweetness, but more of a little bit of tartness on it too. Now this one has a hint of that, but it's also got that light airy, you know, what do you call it? Right. Cedar note maybe. I'm not going to say frosted flakes on this one.

I don't take frosted flakes as a knock. I'm fine with that, too. I do think this one expresses not necessarily the first batch. I get a lot of that kind of honeycomb, more of like an apricot tonality. I think it's a little bit more forward on the nose, where I think batch two is going to be a little bit more subtle on the nose. And I think it has a more nuanced and layered palette on it. Where I think you're totally right with the pine nut, you know, with that higher barley percentage and toasting those barrels, I think you have a really easy accessibility to flavors like cashew, almond, you know, pine nut is something I love. Honey roasted peanuts, my overall goal, but that the whiskey needs to get a little bit older to generally produce that.

Now I did say persimmon on, on the, uh, That's one and I still get that persimmon on this that that's that not bitterness but tartness I think I'm getting out of the nose.

I just it's I always view it like an orange peel with a little bit more acid Yeah, so it's gonna have a little bit more of a high tonal quality to it. Totally, right? Well, it's a beautiful nose.

Well, let's let's taste it. Let's taste this thing. Cheers Cheers Wow, that's really good. A little bit more buttery than batch one. Batch one had that coolness of not watery, but it was more light where this is super creamy. And then as you always say, pop rocks right on the back, right? Yeah. Super nice, Brett.

Yeah, and this one kind of, this one starts that dripping a little bit in the jawline. I didn't notice it so much in the first batch. I was getting that along the sides of my tongue, but it wasn't quite dripping to the jawline. This one does. It's very creamy and buttery, like you say. I like it. They're very different.

Yeah, so much different. Now, how do you, was that your intentions when you were blending in this?

Yeah, I think with all of our blends, you know, I always think on the blending side, I work with our head of quality and R&D and John Brown. And when we're approaching these, we have a tendency to have a pretty light hand. You know, I think our distillery team does such a great job on distilling this whiskey. It's going into amazing barrels that are produced by Speyside. We have some of the best aging warehouses in the industry. Our job is really just not to mess it up, right? Like we want our barrels to showcase the way they want to show. So we do a lot of work on our part. We look through 400 and some barrels, figuring out what they're giving us, what are the probabilities they're going in a direction. And then we start building these batches to be dynamic. We want our consistency to be quality and not the other way around where we're not releasing a million cases that we want to taste the same. The idea is to showcase how unique and bright and vibrant, especially even younger, I would consider this a younger whiskey at a four to five-year-old age range. So the goal is to make two totally dynamic batches that get a show off our range of blending ability, where I think batch one is so approachable. You know, batch one was batch one because it's a crowd pleaser. It's big, it's sweet, it's obvious. You know, if you're just getting into bourbon, if you've been in it a while, you're still going to appreciate it for being a hell of a pour. And I could drink a lot of batch one pretty quickly, where batch two is going to be a little bit more layered, nuanced. I think it's more of a like if you really know about bourbon and whiskey, you're going to drink this. And I think really appreciate it. You know, some we were doing a bunch of media stuff last week, and I can't take credit for this quote. Otherwise, I feel bad to the guy. But a friend came out, Rob, and we were talking about this. And he's a big music guy. And he said, batch one is Coltrane. It's obvious. It's brash. It's easy to understand. Batch two is Miles Davis. It's a little bit you got to listen to a little bit longer. You got to get down in it. And when you see, it's just a whole different experience.

I, so this is 99 proof. 99 proof. I think it drinks like 109 myself.

It feels a little bit bolder.

Yeah. That is saying a lot. We're early in 2022. We're really, really early, Jim. And I said this the other day that we drink a bourbon and I said, man, this could be the bourbon of the year. This can compete with that. Yeah. And that was 120 proofer. Right.

It is hard to take a look at bourbons that are that far apart on the proof spectrum and be able to compare them one-to-one. It's hard that you have to take them for what they are in the glass. That brings up a question, by the way. When you're looking at 400 barrels and you've got to taste through those 400 barrels or more to come up with two batches, I mean, is it a real simple decision? Is it a simple decision to say, yeah, this is batch one, this is batch two, this has this profile, this has that, or is it a lot tougher than that?

That's a great question. I think one, we're working with a lot of friends. We have an amazing sensor and organoleptic team. I always say I do the art of the industry. I write all my notes by hand. I only use the zodiac symbol, so I look like I'm a sociopath. It's great. But we work with a lot of data, too. So our sensory team, we compile that so we're able to hunt through things a little bit more efficiently. But you're not working with individual barrels necessarily. You start folding them into little smaller subsets. You know, we use the term pods, you know, five barrel groups, 10 barrel groups that are giving you kind of a flavor dominant direction. And what I write my notes about is not necessarily like, am I getting this? Am I getting that? It's more how do I think these are going to collaborate or work together? You know, hey, this batch is going to be really spice driven and I'm worried that it's not going to do well with this. It's going to overshadow this or it's going to play well with this. And then me and John Brown just, we just keep going through them, keep writing notes, keep writing notes, just really understanding the components we're working with. Frankly, the crazy part about it is you're normally right on your first go. You know, we'll put together, you know, paired options, you know, in option A and option B, there can't be any overlap. And with those options, we'll do sets of them, you know, we'll do five, six sets each. 99% of the time when I blended for our team or even clients that we've worked with, when you've gone through that many samples and you've had so much time with them and you've thought about them, they tell you what they wanna do. So your first guess is normally really close.

Yeah, so that first impression you get, that first feeling you get after you drink a whiskey for the first time, you can pretty much guarantee that that's gonna be your best take on it, right?

Yeah, I totally agree. I think you can get in your own head. In baseball, they call it the yips, right? When you're throwing balls and you're not throwing strikes, you can get really in your head about it. And I think even when you're blending, that can occur. If you're trying to over process it or find notes that aren't present or try to make the whiskey go a direction it doesn't necessarily want to be taken, it can be really tough. I mean, we've had it with other blends. When you're on option 10, You need to step back. You just need to take some time off. You need to stop what you're doing. Take a week off. Come back to it and really see if that's where it wanted to go. But I love the vintage model and the blending approach that we have because I think it allows us to do really fun stuff. and just make my job more exciting. If everything had to taste like batch one bourbon and we're trying to get older and we're sourcing barrels from different locations, I think you lose what I love about bourbon is that it can be anything it wants to be or ages to be.

We're going back to this, Jim and Brett. The finish on this is maybe one of the longest finishes for a four-year-old. And it's like sticking there. That spice is still sticking. It's like I ate a good salsa, right? It's with me still. And it's like, man, you should have some more of this, Mike. Is that good? I mean, I'm already empty. This is some good part. So Brett, what's your, what's your background? You just didn't show up at Castle Key is like, you know, I'm a, I'm the man here, right?

Not at all. I mean, I think, I guess my background for being able to get into this is I just listen to people when they talk and try to learn what I can. But I actually went to school up at George Mason for conflict analysis, resolution, art history. That's where I pursued my masters as well. Worked for the National Rifle Association doing youth programs development. I shot for George Mason on the Trapinski team. And then I followed a brunette here to Kentucky because I thought that made sense. We're married now. We have a kid. So it's like, cool. That's a good story. Um, if that didn't shake out, I'd be like, well, I got a hell of a job out of it now, but she's the best too. So, um, moved to Kentucky, didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. You know, figured she'd finish up her undergrad and we'd go back to DC. That's where my jobs are. You know, that's where my network was. And I just started bartending again. You know, got back in there, started serving, working for Bluegrass Hospitality, which is a big company in central Kentucky. You know, big restaurant group with the Malone's and Drake's and all those restaurants. And then I got tapped to open up a whiskey bar for them in Lexington called Old Bourbon County or OBC.

So you opened OBC?

Yeah, so myself, Jake Sulek and Christian Smith were really like kind of the first three like primary hitters they brought in to like run that place. Because that was really their first like cocktail whiskey bar, you know, they've always done food well. And I think they've always done sports bars well, or, you know, like that casual kind of sports bar environment. Um, and for them to get their head around, like, Hey, like it's okay to run out of stuff. No, they were the old guard. Like they're like, you know, don't put a whiskey on the shelf if you're going to sell out of it. So they were taking like the, you know, two, 300 bottle van Winkle allocations golfing every year. Um, which is good for them. And frankly, they deserve to. Bruce and Brian, the owners, are really great guys. It's an awesome company to work for. And it just got me more access. I've been collecting really since 2010, back when you could find whiskey. And you could trade for it. And all the people were on forums and stuff. And it's definitely transitioned the way those things have gone. But the first year with OBC, we picked, I think, like 40 or 50 single barrels. And even in the modern era, I still pick probably 15 single barrels a year just for buddies or groups or different stuff. And I just loved it. And then I met Will and Wes, the initial founding partners, Will Arvin and Wes Murray through a mutual friend. He said, hey, my buddy, he's going to buy this piece of property. It's in Millville. It's in Frankfurt. You got to meet him. I was like, oh, cool. What's he what he wants to open up a distiller. He's like, yeah. I'm like, what's his experience? He's like, none. Like, oh, cool, man. Let's talk. So I met Will and he told me we're going to grow a ponytail, blast a grateful dad and make a barrel of whiskey a day. And I'm like, cool, I'll quit my job right now. Let's go. Yeah. But I went on a day one. I mean, I was in automatic. Well, I did have to finish like opening OBC and I worked there for a year to like keep everybody happy. Yes, I started full time in 2016 here. It was just a dream job. I like the owners. You know, I always like to I always say you don't want to work for somebody you don't like. I also will never work for somebody who won't do my job. And I think that's always what was exciting about Will and Wes in the beginning of the project. Will was down here with a machete, just like all of us were. I mean, this place had no water, no sewage, no electrical. We got bathrooms, I think, my second year I was here. That was cool. Previously, I had to go up to Cracker Barrel. I saw those ladies a lot. They're super lovely. Nice place to use the restroom. You get your biscuits on the way out. It's a good situation. Yeah, it just was a dream project. Initially, I started working on the historical side, doing our kind of narrative evaluation and diving in and really figuring out what Taylor did here and kind of the history of this facility and the history of our interaction in the industry and where we were meant to exist. Um, then told them I would build out the hospitality program. I had no idea what I was doing. I was trying to figure it out. Um, my favorite joke about that is you knew I didn't know what I was doing when we had a big sign that said cast on key to celery coming spring, 2016, then it said fall 2016. Then Alex Botnick, our, um, you know, marketing manager, she put black construction tape over and it said. 2017 and then it just said coming. We opened up to the public in fall of September 2018. I was close. Two and a half years was close. But this was no small feat. Oh, man. Well, just I think you could have done it other ways that would have been faster and more efficient. But for us, it was about doing it the right way, you know, not trying to rush it, you know, taking our time and making sure we're making the right decisions. And I think I could have probably gotten this place open and it would have been real rough in 2016. No one would have had a good time. But to be able to get this still installed, start making like, well, making whiskey, bottling Jennebaka, getting some product on the market. It's just been a blast. And then being in a startup, I was employee number four. So you did whatever anybody needs to do. And so I got more involved on the R&D side, like working with Mary Ann on the initial, like, grain bill developments and like the initial gin developments. Started blending for some clients. We had some clients that said, hey, we want help blending this whiskey. And we said, we could probably figure out how to do that. Again, I didn't know what I was doing. I thought I had a pretty good palette and I could figure it out. I guess I was right, thankfully. If I was wrong, I wouldn't be working here. It'd be a weird situation.

Well, at that point, you had already been actively collecting and tasting bourbons for five or six years.

Oh, yeah. At least. Yeah, if not longer. I mean, I just got the bug early. You know, I think working in restaurants in your early 20s like teaches you a lot because, you know, I like to party just like everybody at that age. But at the same time, you know, I made just enough money to buy like a slightly better bottle of bourbon. You know, my buddies are going out and like, I'm going to buy a liter of KT. I'm like, I don't think I want that. Like I do actually if it's vintage KT I'm right back in. You know it's but I was like man what if I bought like something a little bit nicer and then you get kind of the bug where you're like wow this is really good like wonder what else is out there. So and I also I always recommend organoleptic or pallet work like if you're into it go home and do triangle blinds do five set blinds like you know write your notes out. If you're at home and you want to make sure you're dialed in, write your notes out. Go to Trader Joe's and raid the whole, you know, the raw food section. You know, there's a difference in apricot, dried apricot, peach. Those are all different flavors. And if you haven't had one, how do you know what it tastes like in a whiskey?

Exactly. Um, man, I know a couple of guys that drink whiskey like that. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah. So,

You started here. Where did you become the Whiskey Wizard?

Man, that was probably back under OBC. I was always joking that was my title because I think titles, especially in the whiskey space, not always consistent, right? You have a lot of corporations that are, this is a master bourbon expert specialist, and they're like, oh, they're credentialed? Like, what's that look like? And in the bar space, it was the same. You have a lot of whiskey bars, especially in Kentucky, and you have people, you know, slinging whiskey, and the knowledge base was always really different. You know, you go in and somebody's like, this is a weeded bourbon. You're like, well, it's not actually weeded. So, you know, and we were always kind of surprised going into other whiskey bars when, like, I shouldn't know more than the bartender. Um, and I think now we're seeing a big rise in education. So that stuff's getting awesome, man. There's some really, really gifted bartenders around there. Most of the burden bars in Kentucky are absolutely killing it.

And OBC's got a couple too.

Are you referencing Iverson? Iverson. Yeah. So me and Iverson are like best buddies. So we worked at, uh, Malone's Palomar together and then I convinced him to come over to OBC and he's like, I don't know, man, it's a big jump because he, Iverson's like a, a verse to change. I was like, I will hand train you. I'll teach you how to make cocktails. We'll do whatever you want to do. And the way I learned Iris and Overs, I used to buy a lot of whiskey. And back then, you could still get it. So anything I picked up, I sold Ivy at cost. Retrospectively, Ivy, if you're listening to this, I want that SAS 18 from 2012 back. That would be. Cool. Or the unicorn rye, like single barrel picks from Smooth Ambler. I gave Iverson like a six pack. I also might want those back if Ivy you have any of them. But for me, it was about sharing with the staff and sharing whiskey and getting people to try stuff that I thought was cool.

Yeah.

But Iverson has a really good palette. He does. He's a good dude.

Well, a shout out from us for Malone's, Drake's, Harry's, pretty important to us as veterans. If you're one of our listeners out there, you're a veteran, you're coming to Kentucky, make sure you visit one of those restaurants. They give 25% off to veterans and service members.

It'll really shock you when your bill comes back with that 25% taken off. It will.

You're totally shocked. And how they treat veterans there is just, It's just amazing about those restaurants. It says a lot to the owners.

Well, it's deserved. I think that's always Bruce and Brian always try to do the right thing, and that's a big deal. On our side, we just hire them. So if you know anybody, I love our military guys. Man, they show up to work on time. They work their ass off. It's an awesome job. It's a great career transition if you're winding down your post. We have a lot of Army Reserves on staff. Somebody taught them how to work. If without that background, if you haven't worked in a warehouse, it's not like the funnest thing ever, but it definitely beats clearing out. I like IEDs in the middle of the desert. So, you know, you know how to, you know how to do a good job or the second whiskey we got in front of us.

What would you pour for the second one?

So we just pulled some fun ones. These are gone. You know, we sold these out. These are some of the earliest restoration rise, single barrel rise that we did on site in our gift shop or retail space last year. So our marketing manager had them. These were ones that we thought were fun. So I just pulled them. I think they're pretty cool range too. So this first one I think is around 119 improved. Oh, that's a jump. That's a jump. That's a big jump from the bourbon. One thing about the bourbon that I love that's my only Instagram pet peeve so far with the bourbon release is people like, should have been cash strength. This was barrel strength at 100.5 proof. it lost 6.5 proof in maturation. So at 99 proof, it is 1.5 proof points lower than barrel strength.

Wow. I would tell people, I think I disagree with all those people. Like I said, 99 proof, drinks is 109. That's just my opinion.

That's the best proof we thought it tasted. We tried it all the way in the mid 90s, all the way up to 100.5 and we loved it at 99.

I think you're spot on. And filling those barrels with, I'm guessing, doing the math here, 107 proof distillate, proof down distillate, high water concentration in there, really extracts those flavors from that barrel.

It gets you access to wood sugars. And when you're looking at historic whiskeys, you know, especially what Taylor historically did on site, everybody was entering somewhere between 100 and 110. So it just breaks down wood sugar so much more effectively where you get that big kind of posh vibrancy. It's also less water cut on the back. You know, nothing bumps me out more than you have this beautiful 130 proof whiskey and they drop it down to like 90. I'm not naming any names there, but you know, like, and then you're wondering why it's thin or you're wondering why it's not full in body or it has a great viscosity. It's because water, if it lives in a barrel its whole life, it's held in stasis. It's in a really good molecular situation. If you're adding on the back end, that just saves your account money. And that's just not. So it does cost you more barrels. Oh, yeah. More barrels, less profitable on the back end. Our account, she's phenomenal. Andrea, she was previously with Angel's Envy. So they're used to dropping from like, you know, 120, 130 all the way down in the 90s for a lot of their products, which is that's free money. When you're out in water to whiskey on dump, that's that's cash.

Yeah.

For us, we didn't necessarily have that luxury. That's like with batch one. Everyone's like, I sold out so quick. It's selling out so quick. I'm like, I mean, we didn't have the ability to pick up 20% of our case volume through dilution. We picked up a couple cases by adding 2% water to that product. Wow.

All right, so 118 point something here. I didn't catch that exactly. I think it's around 119 point something. And what is the match bill on this, Ray?

Yeah, so the ride, it's it's kind of a hybrid a little bit. You know, you see your 95 fives or, you know, you're kind of like classic Mahonga Hila and then you see your Maryland style ride. My family is from a historic Maryland area in Baltimore. That's where Mount Vernon and a lot of other historic Maryland plants were. Um, that's at 51% rye profile. So this is actually kind of between those more of a Kentucky or Western style rise, the slang term for it, but it's 63% rye, 17% yellow corn, and then 20% multi-barley, which is a ton of barley. It's a ton of barley.

I'm telling you, I've been nosing this while we're talking here and this might sound strange to some of the listeners out there. I might even get an eye curl from Brett over here, but I get like earthy carrots like pulled fresh out of the ground on this.

You absolutely do. That's not, that's not a wild thing. I think that, This mattress was from the third floor in the warehouse. And I think why I like this barrel is it showed this like earthy mineral tone, you know, growing up around a lot of gardens and around kind of a rural area. This is carrots out of the garden and has that kind of it's like that zesty slight citrus tone, but has that really nice earthy roundness on the nose.

It's. To me, it kind of takes me back to my childhood of harvesting carrots and pulling them out of the garden. You wash one off and you bite right into it. It's not a fall day, but it's that September, maybe early October, and they're ready to harvest. You pull one out and you wash it off and you get that first crisp bite. That's how that nose on this, Jim.

Yeah, so it would sound a lot better if you had said something like braised root vegetables.

That's, they are marketing teams like, Hey, what it was braised. They're like writing that down.

Maybe it's cause Vivian was cutting up carrots as I was leaving for a chuck roast. And I had that smell and I grabbed one and ate it. Uh, but they were big giant carrots cause I don't like the little bitty, um, you know, the bag carrots, whatever they are. Uh, I want the biggest carrot she can possibly find in my chuck roast.

Well, I think the thing that's most offensive about that carrot conversation is the small carrots are actually big carrots. They just cut them down to size. And that makes me furious. If you don't know how to use a peeler and a knife, man, baby carrots don't exist, bro. Well, heck, let's taste this thing.

Cheers. Cheers.

It's really good, Mike.

That's pretty yummy. That's, that's got so many candy notes to it, right?

It does. It does have, it is, this would be a candy rye for me a little bit. You know, sometimes we talk about that rye that gets that little bit of citrus candy going on. This one definitely has that. If there was a cinnamon Twizzler, this would be it.

I'm sold. Yeah. If you want to make those, I'm right back in on that. So Mike, what Twizzlers do they have?

We talked about this before.

They got cherry and strawberry, right?

Cherry and strawberry. They actually, I've seen some like creamsicle ones out there. I've seen a couple odd ones and stuff. You'd have to go to like a specialty candy store to get those. But usually just those cherry and strawberry ones.

I'm about to Google like Japanese candy stores because that's always where you get the really good stuff. Yeah. Like the Wasabi Kit Kats. If you haven't had one, they're way better than they ever right to be.

I'm lucky that I've traveled the world and I've got to see stuff like that and try those different things. Um, and I know Jim, you're a big twizzler guy, but there's not a cinnamon twizzler that I know of a twizzler. If you're listening to us, make sure you make us one, send it to us, sponsor the show.

The closest thing is a cinnamon bear, right?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, you got some cinnamon gummy bears and stuff like that. You can get, um, I would say that Swedish fish, those little more sweet than they are sweet. Yeah. But good lord is this beautiful tasty whiskey that deserves to be shared amongst friends and stuff. I think the bourbon that's 99 proof drinks the same as this though.

Well, I always view proof as balance. You know, I think that's something we like to get known for is we always like big, interesting noses. You know, we want the pout to have a good viscosity and feel to it. And I think that's what's so funny about proof is I've always said I've had 80 proof whiskeys that drink hot. You know, they're unbalanced, too much overwood tannic influence. I've had stuff at 140 proof that tasted like caramel candies. You know, I think if a whiskey is balanced, it's gonna show you where it wants to be. And I think that's what's fun about this 99 proofer is it's full. Like it is a heavy whiskey. It's got a lot of depth to it. So it drinks a lot more bold than I think a lot of whiskeys in that 99 proof range. And the rye is the opposite. You know, the rye doesn't drink like it's 120. It's got that really rich, like heavier nose, but the pallet's the inverse. It's sweet, it's light, it's bright.

Let's talk about the grounds here. Uh, cause a lot of people will ask us all the time where, what tour would you recommend? What tour, you know, they're like, Oh, we're going to the big distillery down the road, right? They should. They do a great job. They're like, Hey, we're going to go to Buffalo trace and what, but what would you recommend? And I was like, man, you're in Frankfurt. I'm like, you're really missing out. If you do not go to castle and key. Um, and the guys that asked me, I'm like, your wife will fall in love with this place. 100%. They'll have a great cocktail. You'll get to see some botanical gardens here. It almost is an old castle here. It is just beautiful. It's down on this. You come down here and it's 10 degrees cooler than it is up on the highway.

But tell us about the grounds. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of that was foundations that were built by E.H. Taylor, you know, under his own original development of the site. You know, when he built this place, he built it to show off. You know, the guy was kind of the P.T. Barnum of bourbon, politician by trade, you know, started in banking, through banking found Kamais trading, then through that found distillation. And at that point, our time in our industry It was hard to get our reputation up. You know, people drank, if you had money, you drank Cognac, Brandy, Scotch, Oudevies, Scotch, Rye. Everything was seen as better than what we produce in the state of Kentucky. And it made E.H. Shaler furious. So his view was not only is going to set his foundations being quality, older mattress, he wanted to show it off. So he built a rail line out of Frankfurt to our site to bring people from New Orleans, Chicago, New York, I mean, I think even as a transplant from Virginia to Kentucky, you have a lot of misperceptions about the state until you're here. You know, you think it's backwoods or it's not industry is not possible here, and it's just all not true. And even back then, that's what he Taylor did. He brought people to show you that we are as progressive and forward thinking and industrial focused and really creative here. So he built a massive limestone white castle in the middle of nowhere and a bunch of English child pleasure gardens and didn't stop there. He built a peristyle bathhouse over his spring. It's crazy. I mean, he was one of the first to do spirits tourism back in the 1890s. I mean, the bourbon trail is E.H. Taylor in the 1890s and it was just him. But now on our side, we just build off that legacy. He was good at hospitality. He was good at taking care of people. And that's exactly what we've been working on is building out our bar program on site. We have an amazing beverage program on site. We also want to be really community minded. So Thursday through Sunday, if you just want to bring a picnic and sit by the creek with the kids, you're totally cool to do that too. More than welcome to. And summer music series, we do a concert series every Wednesday of the summer. I mean, every the first Wednesday of every month, our hospitality team is going to hit me up on the cell phone and be like, that's not true. Don't promise it every Wednesday. But we do it once a month. But it's a lot of local artists and some of them aren't. You know, some of we got some big country names coming up this year. Those are ticketed just so we can pay them. They want that. It's part of the contract. But we do a lot of like bluegrass, a lot of Americana, just a lot of good people who can play some guitar, play some banjo, come out here. But we just want to make this site accessible and that's always what our initial hospitality approach to view was. There are a lot of distilleries around us to do a heck of a job. You know, like Woodford Reserve down the road, it's a great tour. Buffalo Trace does a great job, especially if you get Freddie. And our view was, well, we don't have bourbon. So how do we get people here? And I was like, well, we don't know how to get people here. So we were like, well, what if we just serve great cocktails? We'll put some beer on tap. You know, we'll do food trucks and stuff on the weekends. And our view was always you don't even have to take the tour. Just come just come hang out. And then we'd always have people walk away and say, well, we wish we would have done the tour. And we're like, well, obviously we do, too. But. We just got to get you coming back. And I think that was our view with the tourism side is, you know, I like the balance of what's in this area because you can go to Woodford Reserve, very storied, very historic distillery corporate. You know, they do a lot of volume through those tours. You know, you can go see David at OCD, like awesome guy. He's been distilling down there on that little lambic system. makes super cool random whiskeys like a heck of a fun tour. And then we're kind of the middle ground, you know, we're not making a barrel a day. We're also not a billion dollar company. So we get to see this balance of history and accessibility and kind of just a family feel here that I don't know if you get at some of the other corporate sites in the modern era as much as you used to.

I've actually sat down there by the spring house probably 20 times because for Jim and I, we'll go to distilleries a lot. And I wouldn't say once you've seen one, you've seen them all. But if you come to the same one and take people to it for me, I'll be like, go take the tour, listen to them. Because if I see a tour guide say something wrong or if you're going to clinch up, I kind of do clinch up or I'm like, that's, that's, that's not right. So I don't want to be that guy. So in there looking back at me, my friends will be like, Hey, is that right? And I don't want to be that person to the tour guide. So I'll just go out there. I was like, Hey, go enjoy the tour, do your tasting. I'll be waiting out here for you. And they're like, you sure we hate that you're going to be sitting out there? I'm like, I'm perfectly fine with just relaxing here. This is one of the most peaceful places I could sit, buy some rolling water. I get to hear the dam there, the water's going over the dam. It is peaceful to me. Get myself a cocktail or a beer, sit there and drink it and let people do their thing.

I mean, if you're looking for a win, if you brought your spouse, and I'm not going to say brought your wife, because sometimes, Mike, I mean, we've got a lot of female listeners. Sometimes it's the wife bringing the husband, right? Yeah. If you're bringing your spouse, to tour the Bourbon Trail and hit some distilleries. And they're not as bourbon excited as you are. Castle & Key is a great place, not because of that, but because you can come here, you can get a cocktail at the outside cocktail bar, and you can take a walk through the botanical gardens, stop down by the reflecting pool, look out at the falls on the river. have a great time, and still do the tour if you like. But if you don't, it's okay. They're perfectly happy to have you here drinking a cocktail on site, visiting the gift shop.

Yeah, that's always been our view. We want you to have a good time. You know, we're firm believers that we want this brand to exist for a long time, and I think the way you do that is being personable and relationable, and relationable is a word. I don't know. We'll figure that one out later. Um, relationship oriented is probably the correct word there. Um, you know, just like that hospitality, it's like, if you welcome somebody into your home, you know, they're going to support you and whether that's, you know, we have a lot of people who don't even drink come to site, which is one that blows my mind. Like my, my mother-in-law, like she finally started to say, I work at a distillery. It's taken six years. Um, you know, just old school Southern Baptist. It is what it is. I have, I don't drink around her haven't since we got married or even started dating. It's just, it's not worth. I would never want to put my wife in that position, right?

Not picking that. You're picking that battle. That's perfect.

Unnecessary. You know, I was like, that's just not something I need to do, but she loves it for the gardens. She's been out here, you know, talks about the gardens that John Carl office has done. One of the best fine gardeners in the world. She always wants to know about the gardens and she wants to know about our distillery cat, Rick. So I send her some pictures of Rick, send her some pictures of the gardens and she talks it up to other people. Now she's like, you should go there. I never thought we were going to turn the corner on that. She stopped sending me job applications. So that's been cool too.

On the second half, I think we should discuss a little bit more history of the distillery, like what they're producing here. The boiler room, because it is the first thing people see, the castle itself. And we'll get into some other expressions. What do you think, Jim?

Absolutely.

Love it. Man, Jim, you know what I've really been enjoying lately? Oh, you're going to tell me. Some of that seldom seen farms maple syrup that's been aged in bourbon barrels. It is absolutely delicious. Not only in a cocktail, but you can cook with it, right?

You can. You absolutely can. Now, Mike, Kevin just sent me a new shipment, so I got a little bit more and I've been making some beef jerky lately. Really? Yeah. Now I know you're the meat master, but I tried my hand at it. I said, you know, I want to make some beef jerky and I've got a pretty decent beef jerky recipe and it's got a little bit of soy sauce, a little bit of Worcestershire, a little bit of, you know, onion powder, garlic powder, those kinds of things. But I always put brown sugar in it. Well, this time Kevin sent me a bottle of his granulated maple sugar. Wow. And I decided that I was going to substitute the maple sugar for the brown sugar. Oh, game changer. Let me tell you. Total game changer. Total game changer. Some of the best beef jerky you've ever had. So I'm going to make another batch here in about a week and I'll be sure to get you some.

Man, that sounds delicious. Vivian took and we just got an air fryer like most people got these days, right? And she took and soaked fresh pineapple in that maple syrup and then put it in the air fryer and it kind of crisp up a little bit. Oh, sounds good. It was just magically delicious. And people probably wonder why we love it so much. Kevin competed in the Maple Festival last year, 2021, and he was named grand champion. That's saying something.

So Statham Seam Farms. grand champion of the 2021 Maple Syrup Festival.

Yeah. Wow. That's saying something. Yeah. You're going up against some heavy hitters in Maple Syrup. And I know we're talking about just the syrup, but you know, that's something to be proud of. Hats off to you, Kevin. Kevin's also competing in a couple other competitions. Make sure you check out his website. Check out his social media on Instagram and Facebook. You won't be disappointed. If you want to buy something from him, where can they go, Jim?

You can go to seldomseenmaple.com and Kevin and his crew, they've got a great website, very easy to navigate. They've got all their products on there. You can buy their maple syrup by the bottle. You can buy it by the case. You can buy that Oh my goodness, Mike, that stuff is so good. And they've got some other gift sets there too, so you definitely want to check it out.

Well, he's also going to be in some distilleries pretty shortly here. Some distilleries that I love and I know you love. He's going to be down Leapers Fork. You could find a syrup down there aged in their barrels. Trudy Oak down in Dripping Springs, Texas. I was just out there. His syrup is going to be there. Awesome. And at Garrison Brothers in Texas, if you think you love some maple syrup, make sure you go to Garrison Brothers and pick up a bottle from them also. Kevin appreciated. Uh, I know he, he loves people. You're supporting a local farmer, a local product, a small family. This is no factory place. It's putting out maple syrup, right?

Jim is a good man. Do a good work.

Yeah. Got to love it. Well, make sure you check out his site. Like Jim said, seldom seen maple.com. Pick up a bottle.

Hey, we are back. We're sitting here at Castle and Key. Mike. Beautiful place.

Yeah. We got a whiskey wizard on with us. That's to me, that's just amazing that whenever one of us says some crazy tasting note that we have, he's on spot on with us. He's a class.

That's it. That's it. You know, he's just being nice. I don't know.

If you were popping off like, oh, this, I'm getting cotton candy and I'm like the back bumper of a Tribeca. I'm like, I don't know.

Yeah, I think, you know, tasting notes for me is just what you know. And I think I've said cotton candy before on a show sometime on a super sweet ride, I think. Um, but to me, you said honeysuckle just a few times. I do say honeysuckle a lot. Uh, and,

Well, I mean, you live on a farm or not a farm, but you live enough in the county where you, you have probably have honeysuckle around you.

There is honeysuckle like down the road. But when I was growing up in Texas, there's a lot of honeysuckle and you, you know, I stepped out and be like, you got to clean this fence row out today. And it'd be just. So much honeysuckle growing, it sucked. It was the worst thing. So it's a traumatic experience you lived through. It was.

And you can't get it out of your mind. I can't.

That smell, you just covered it in it. You know, there's nothing wrong with that. It taught me a lot of ethics and values and how to appreciate life and And now that I drink whiskey so much, that taste comes back to me and I'm like, man, this is super beautiful smell. It takes me back some good childhood memories or teenage memories with my brother and that experience. So that's what whiskey is supposed to be about. It's about stories sitting around a campfire, a deer hunting camp or anything like that. Wouldn't you agree?

Couldn't agree more. I've always said I'd rather have bad whiskey with good people than great whiskey with people I don't really want to be around.

Yeah.

And I think that's what we're trying to do professionally from a production side, especially at our scale, is how do we put memories into a bottle? How do we give you something to talk about? You know, I mean, even I've got my dad into whiskey. He used to only drink one. And then now he'll drink other stuff. But he does all of his math based on, you know, how many Woodford reserves can he buy for this bottle? And it's never the right amount. Like this is six Woodford reserves. I'm out. He's just not his thing. He's like he's a quality and quantity guy. But we get to drink whiskey together. And I never thought that would be like a thing. You know, I think it's super cool to be able to go over to his house and have a pour and hang out. That's pretty awesome.

Well, in the first half, We got to taste your batch two bourbon. I think it's fair to say that Mike and I were both very pleased. I'm blown away, Steve. Because we've had the batch one. Yeah. And it's good. Batch two is a little special.

I think it's special. I think before it comes out, we'll have to do an official review of it. I can't say nothing. nothing bad about it. There's nothing bad about that bottle of whiskey. Usually the only thing I can knock on a whiskey is the bottle, but this damn bottle is so bad ass. It's pretty bad ass.

I mean, how can you knock that? 850 gram bottle. I mean, that's a, that's a heck and heavy bottle. All metal deco pieces. I mean, that label is printed in the United States too, up at Eurostampa. That's right in kind of like north of Sensei. They do great work. It's been a joy to work on that bottle.

And for the first half, we also had the second pour. We had the Restoration Rice single barrel. It was at about 119 proof. And all your single barrels are around that range?

It depends on the floor. We had a big run of ride single barrels recently that are just hitting a sweet spot around around four years old. They're all from the fourth and fifth floor of the warehouse, so they'll pick up some proof. We enter a ride at 118. Yeah. So I've seen them as high as like 123 recently. The first kind of set we did were really low serial number ride barrels, and they were all from the first three floors. And much like what we saw with the bourbon coming out of the first three floors, we dropped proof. Yeah, I think the lowest one was like it lost almost nine or 10 points of proof. You know, it went from like 118 down to like, I think, 109 or 110, which is a big proof loss. So just different flavors. You know, I think at this higher proof, we're seeing a lot more stone fruit. I think you see a lot more sweetness at those lower proofs. We saw a lot more chocolate. We saw a lot more pipe tobacco. There's a reason that warehouse is so sexy, though. It's got all those different aging climates in it. So you're going to get a bunch of really great whiskey coming out of the different areas based on what you're into. Now, both of those whiskies

are on the verge of what we might call a high malt, right? Close to it anyway. Yeah, I would consider these relatively high malt.

And it's those stone fruits kind of on the menu. I'm a, I'm a big fan of peaches, you know, mangoes, apricots, anything in that kind of family, baked pears. You never fried up a bunch of pears and some whiskey with some cinnamon in a pan with some like brown sugar.

All I gotta say to do is add some heavy cream at the end.

Just so you got to finish it with a little heavy cream.

So baked pears, Mike, I've talked about stewed fruit before and you kind of looked at me funny, but it's not, you're not stewing it. There's a difference between stewed fruit and baked pears.

I don't have a passion for stewed fruit, man. I'm going to be honest with you. I'm a big fan of baked pears, stewed fruit.

I think more of a sauteed, a pear is kind of, you know, sauteed fruit stuff and you slice it right. And we have some pear, a couple of pear trees on our farm and I like to do that for my wife, and you pour just a little honey in there in the pan, and you're almost making a cream to pour over those. And I usually use rum, but man, now you got me thinking. I might use some whiskey this season and try that with that. Maybe air fryer. Oh, that's even better right there. Man, this is these all these good ideas or this is what whiskey does to you, right? It makes you have good ideas.

I'm just here. Hold my whiskey. So whiskey improves intellect.

I think I'm just here to help figure out what alcohol you need to pour on your fruit to make your wife happy. So just slide into my DMs and ask me questions about it and I'll just help you out.

Yeah, I think this is this is great. Well, you poured us another whiskey for the first second half. What you got for us this time?

So this is just another Rye single barrel. I love checking out single barrels side by side because I think you can see kind of the range of what our warehouse is producing. So this is similar, a little bit higher in proof. This one is at 121.1, bottle number for people at home who might have this one. This was serial number 1216. My guess is on this one is probably like, I'd say it's fourth floor in that warehouse, but let's dive into it.

Now, Jim's the rye guy. He is the rye wizard in this family right here.

It doesn't make me a connoisseur. I just know what I like.

Yeah.

This one seems like it's got a little bit more of that baking cabinet in it, just a little bit. Now, the first one was a little bit different. This one has a little bit more baking spice, I think. First one was kind of candied a little bit, a little bit of, but light on the citrus, but it was there.

I'm drinking it already, but I'm getting a little bit of sassafras on this a little bit. Maybe even, we haven't said this a long time, Jim, whorehound. Whorehound, yeah.

I know where you're from if you know what whorehound is. It's like when somebody drops like a Cheerwine tasting, they're like, I'm getting a little Cheerwine out of this. I'm like, I know now where you grew up. It narrows it down.

Anything that has that, that, that little bit of maybe medicinal, but more sweetness to it. Um, you know, I've said before, those spiced apple rings, not a lot of people know where those are from. They're very hard to find. Um, but I could get that in here. Um, very man.

Yeah. The spiced apples ring. I'll be honest with you. I haven't seen those on a plate or offered up as part of a meal in probably 30 years. But I remember them vividly. Did you just call me old? Yeah. Well, Mike, you're up there, but I haven't had it in a while, but I remember them. They made such an impression on me and I always liked them, but I don't even know where you buy those things.

I mean, I think that's a diner that still serves the Salisbury steak for $6.99 with two sides. I mean, they got to still exist there. I bet if you go into Eastern Kentucky, you're going to find yourself a place that still serves canned, recooked, spiced apple rings. There you go. Probably.

I ain't nothing wrong with them. That's just one of those memories like we were talking about. Brett, this, you know, I'm sitting in this, we're in a beautiful building and stuff and I'm looking at the, it's really clay bricks. I think that's what these are with the air pockets in them. But not all the other ones are full on brick, right?

Yeah, so with this building, this was actually, we're sitting in kind of our modern office structure. Historically, this was actually the cafeteria, which is why it's very appropriate to only talk about food in here for both our plant and Old Crow, which was our sister plant, which is why we left the old blower fan in the front room that was for the buffet line, which is just, why would you ever get rid of it? But this building, that clay brick is gonna be from a later period. So we think it's probably like, I'd say late thirties, somewhere in the forties potentially. where the warehouse is on site, that old fire brick, those were built by E.H. Taylor in 1907. So that's that serious deal brick. And I've let one person take one off site and no one else. So everybody always asked for a brick. And the only brick I ever gave anyone was Omar Marshall. So Omar's a big guy in the whiskey community. He passed away, I guess, last year, which was tough for everybody. But his grandfather was the plant, the boiler room manager here. Oh, wow. So he had a lot of ties to sign. Omar asked me one day, he's like, I want a brick. And I said, anything you want, brother, take it.

So that's one of those guys you just say, here you go. What else can I get you? Can I get you some whiskey?

I was like, do you want more bricks? You want to bring around the truck? And normally it's people are like, I'm trying to complete. I'm working on something at home. I need a pallet of brick. I'm like, absolutely not. I also, I let somebody steal some barnwood here who is using it to make a fiddle neck and I'm like, that sounds like a legitimate reason to steal some barnwood.

Yeah, that is a, that's one of those projects you let somebody have something for. Cause you know that story will be told forever.

Well, I thought it was normally when at that point in the site, you know, we get a lot of people coming into scrap and stuff and this old guy was pulled up and you know, it's a good beat up Ford Ranger, you know, that thing's got 250,000 miles on it. Probably not the original wheels, you know, and he was looking through this big burn pile we had set up. I'm like, hey man, can I help you out? He's like, I'm just grabbing some wood. I'm like, Hey, buddy, you know, he's like, well, I don't need that much. I'm like, what are you doing? And he had all these small, you know, like foot and a half, two foot pieces on him. Why do you need like a two foot piece of old heart pine? It's like I make fiddles and I'm missing a neck. And I was like, OK, whatever you need, man, let me know.

Yeah, because who makes fiddles, right?

I was like, I want to see it. I want I kind of want to see it get played now that came from our site.

So how many years of that happened? since the shutdown of the distillery.

Oh, I mean, I think decades, you know, when they shut down production here in 1972, you know, the intent was to reopen and they just never did. You know, they continued to bottle and age product here all the way to the merger with Jim Beam in 87. In the 90s, you know, we passed hands a couple of times, you know, we end up with an architectural salvage company in the early aughts. But, you know, at that point, I mean, this was a rough and tumble spot. You know, we had two kind of champions of the facility. Unfortunately, both of them have passed. One was Shorty Tate or Gary Tate. The other one was Sandy Goins, who is a retired lieutenant colonel. And they called him sheriff because he always open carried. And if you got caught on site with a coping saw, he told you there until you were properly disposed in the back of the squad car. But, you know, those two individuals are why we it wasn't worse. I mean, people just, you know, some of those kids, right? You know, I love when you meet people and they're like, I've been on site before. I'm like, oh, cool, man. Stealing anything good or like, well, I came here in high school and I'm like, We've all been there. Good for you guys. Hope you had fun. Don't do it anymore.

It's dangerous in some places, right? I mean, if you get into the areas that haven't been renovated,

I mean, the old bottling hall building is a great example of that. I mean, there's no lights down there. It's all solid concrete. And there could be, depending on where you stepped, a big old hole with a lot of water down in there.

And the Oak Road is still right down the street, even worse, right?

I mean, that is one of the things I think David has a really tough time with is people who just walk right past that old boiler room down there and just want to go walk into those warehouses for some reason.

Yeah.

I think some of that's Darwinism. You got to be smart enough not to walk into a collapsing building.

Absolutely. I've seen the drone flyovers down there and it's amazing. But at the same time, you can tell how fragile it is.

What I want to find out there is the old softball field or the old baseball field. There used to be national distilleries and all the other distilleries had an inner like an inner distillery, baseball or softball league. And apparently Crow had one of the fields to it. And I'd love to bring it back. We have some great stories from like old national distilleries employees. One of them, his dad got hired down for security, old Crow, and he was like a triple A prospect for like the Yankees. And they're like, why'd he hire them old crow? He's like, he's a ringer played first base. They were trying to win that year.

You know, I think somebody that was maybe, I don't know that far back, but you know, Jimmy Russell was a hell of a athlete himself. Right. And I wonder if he played on any of those softball teams or.

He's got to know, man. I mean, that would have been probably the right era for that last. I know there was a league, you know, 40s, 50s, there was a league, so it had to be pretty deep past that too. You know, Jimmy actually gave us great advice on warehouse B. He was the last person to age on site here.

Really?

Yeah, he was aging a lot of rare breed down here when they were leasing it back to him, to Austin Nichols, and the last The last barrels that were aged here are some of the barrels that were utilized in the first masters key blend. which is just super cool. And that gave us a lot of education about that warehouse. Why we know the where the proof dropped so bad, you know, cause that thing dropped into like the upper eighties at barrel strength.

Wow.

And it's cause that first couple of floors, that warehouse would drop proof on you.

I used to call Jimmy Russell, the muscle, Jimmy Russell, the muscle Russell. Cause he was such so good in sports. They call him Russell, the muscle.

So how much when BH Taylor was like producing whiskey here, how much whiskey was he putting out?

Um, he was putting out a good vault and he grew the site a lot too. You know, when he first started here, his son, Jacob Swigert Taylor bought the site and was involved here in around 1879 ish. And, you know, and he's probably doing something small, maybe a couple of barrels. And then each Taylor built the castle. Previously was a brick building. He removed it, built it, tripled the size. You know, and he put in an initial still and he was running that thing pretty hard. a good amount of barrels. Numbers wise, I think he hit over a hundred at his peak of production, which would have been probably between, I'd say like 1903 or four all the way up to prohibition. A hundred barrels a day back then is a lot of whiskey.

Yeah, the boilers here just monstrous.

Yeah, those four boilers were upgraded under National Distillers in 1935. I mean, this place would have just been chugging down coal as fast as you could get into those coal dumps. I mean, they were steam heating all the warehouses. They were steam cycling. They would have been powering all that steel and equipment. At one point, National Distillers actually had the largest horizontal doubler in North America is where our gin room was. And it's starting to fade on the floor, but we had the original brackets for it. And that thing was wall to wall in that space. And that is a huge room. I didn't want to work in there. They had an old vent fan that was vented up to the ceiling. I don't think it would have done anything. That room was probably about 120 all year round.

So when the distillery was in its early days here, transport of barrels must have been an issue. How did they get barrels to market?

I mean, prior to the expansion of the rail line down here, it would have probably been miserable. I mean, you're probably taking them on the back of mule carts for the most part. Half a dozen barrels down to the river. Most likely. I was like, you could have probably maybe forwarded them down like Glens Creek and gotten them to the Kentucky River, which is, you know, Glens Creek is a tributary to the Kentucky River. Probably not well or efficiently. But when E.H. Taylor took over the site, he built, he worked with the Kentucky Highlands Railroad Company to build that line all the way from Frankfurt to our site, not just for barrels, but for guests too. And then it ended up being an LNN railroad berm. And then they took it all the way down to Versailles in like, I think 1917. Don't quote me on that. It's been a long week.

So a hundred barrels a day. That's a lot of whiskey. We only have a handful of distilleries today that can produce more than a hundred barrels a day.

I mean, he was a, he was a behemoth. I mean, under each Taylor, they were the first to sell a million cases of a single brand was under Taylor, which is a whole lot of product back then.

Now let's compare that to today. What are you guys producing a day?

We're back to almost darn near to 100 barrels and it's taken us eight years and we're very gracious for the bank. It's been a big jump to be able to get up there. When we first looked at it, we were looking at a smaller system and then the math just gets better. The bigger you get, the more efficient you get and then we sell our contract just to a variety of clients, which pays our bills. It also gives us the loving ability to be patient. Uh, with our own whiskey. So we're not having to rush anything out. Cause so we got some cashflow. Um, but we started doing 20 barrels a day and then 60 barrels a day on two shift. Um, and then now we're doing a hundred barrels a day, 360, well, 365 ish, you know, we always try to get off the holidays. We can get off and, um, yeah, I mean, we're rocking and rolling 36,000 barrels a year, which is more than the 360 me and will, um, promise each other. We would make when I was told I could grow a ponytail, but no ponytail today. I don't think I look good with a ponytail, man.

But you've got a good looking beard, though. That's almost a wizard beard.

This is shorter. I had to get it trimmed. We're going into media launch for bourbon. And Alex Blotnick was like, have you scheduled a beard trim and haircut yet? And then my wife's like, have you scheduled a beard trim yet? That's always when I know it's the time. It's when she's like, hey, have you called Jason, who's my barber? I'm like, why? About what? She's like, oh, no, just didn't know if you plan to go see Jason soon. I'm like, oh, cool, cool, cool.

Well, you know what that beard would look good with is one of our bourbon bullshitter t-shirts. So we got one for you. Hopefully you'll rock it.

Yeah, I think we'd love to see you in it. We'd love to have you out there showing people how not seriously you take whiskey.

I mean, it is an extremely gracious present. I'm going to throw it on. It's soft. It's fluffy. It's a really high quality t-shirt and you knew my size, which was extra curvy, full size man. Thanks for not bringing me a small. I don't think it would've worked out.

You're a regular sized man. I think you are.

But that's cause you're, you're a large, you're a big dude. Like I've seen you on like, you know, on the online side, I'm like, Oh, that seems like a reasonably sized man. And then it's usually in person. You're like, wow, your hands are like double the size of mine.

I think you're full size. I'm full size. Yeah. I'm going to the summer season, so hopefully I can slim back down. It's big guys. It's a struggle. It's definitely a struggle. And the reason why is because we like our whiskey so much. And I know you were saying, be patient, be patient, be patient. I got a glass in front of me, and it's killing me. It's killing me not to drink it. But you guys got something. The word on the street is some weeded bourbon that'll be released.

Maybe, we'll see. I mean, we're not gonna give you the drop on the date, you know, cause we haven't looked at the blend yet, but we've been distilling weeded bourbon and it's always been part of our strategy. You know, Will Arvin, our founding partner loves wheat. So no matter what you give Will, he's like, it'd be better if we did a weeded bourbon. And that's what he drinks personally, you know, before starting this site. So we've been laying down weeded since 2017. You know, the oldest barrels are gonna be turning five here. um towards the end of this year well more in like septemberish which is about when wheat starts to come up yeah i think some of our wheat's been really good at four um i don't think all of our wheat's been good at four you know so when we're looking at you know product strategy i think we did really once five years of age for us and um you know we went back and told will that and he was very supportive of it because his only rule is it needs to taste good So the first weeded bourbon we release will be a minimum of five years old. And I think it's going to be pretty tasty. This is just a random single barrel. I don't think it's a particularly amazing one. I think it's a really decent average one for us. You need to bring out the honey pot. I mean, if you want to go drill barrels, we can find one, but.

We don't want to put a bunch of holes and unnecessary holes in barrels. Hopefully we'll be one of the first people to get to taste the wheat when it does get released. But you got a glass for us here today. You know, Jim, I'm excited.

You're excited. I'm watching the excitement. I'm watching you blossom right in front of me.

So this is a similar grain bill to our traditional or, you know, rye secondary grain bourbon. The only difference in those is this is 73% white corn, 10% white wheat and 17% malted barley.

White wheat? Get into the white wheat for me.

Man, we just, you know, I think that's one of the big things that we always focus on the beginning of the project is we hunt the best quality grain. If it makes sense historically, you know, like white corn with each shellers preferences, it's a great fit. If it doesn't make sense historically and it's all about quality, that's OK, too. But what we found with white wheat is red winter wheat is great. You know, the brands like Makers Mark use it. It's what you're going to see throughout the majority of the industry. It can be a little can be a little aseptic. It can want for a little bit more age. It can have a little bit more of a kind of a slightly bright spice tone to it. Where with white wheat, think Triscuits. You know, the farmers that we work with out in Adairville, the Hulcombs and their family of Walnut Grove, his father is actually who brought a lot of white wheat to Kentucky for the Trisket plant.

I love Triscuit.

I'm a big Triscuit fan, Mike. We'll work on that Triscuit sponsorship too for y'all.

The nose on this does have that, I'd say a weeded cracker nose to it. I was trying to get a floral note out of it too, but the floral note's really not there on this one.

I think you get, and I like it when you get better maturity out of it, especially on the palette, you get this really nice like kind of pie crust, phyllo dough, kind of like really rich, sweet bread kind of vibe out of it. Not quite Hawaiian sweet roll, but pretty darn close.

Actually, I was just thinking that as I was nosing. I was thinking those Hawaiian, the Hawaiian bread that you tear apart the rolls for when you use with artichoke dip.

I am so glad that you said like, Baking dough and stuff like that because I've said that in front of people before like this is the apple pie But it's not the apple pie itself It's the apple pie crust and they'll look at me like I'm strange and I'm like, I really do get that Do you just ask them if their mom never baked for them?

Is that like the follow-up is like did your mom just never bake for you?

Well, they were worse skinny jeans probably so Yeah Um, I won't, I don't fit in skinny jeans, so I don't know if they make a skinny gene for me.

They stretch pretty far stretching this far. Jam. It starts to look like spandex after a while. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well heck, let's taste this thing. Cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Oh, that is so soft. That just almost like snuck in.

I got this, I got goosebumps. That's what I got. Talk about it. Good Lord, this is going to be good. I don't know. I just can't wait. It is that right. I don't know that I've had a white wheat whiskey before. I'm not positive if I've ever had anything like that. I've had red turkey wheat, but not a white wheat. I've never heard anybody say that, brought it out before.

Man, it's like velvet. It's really soft. Super soft, super balanced. I think you get a really good depth out of it. I think that's what people think of with weeded bourbon. You know, I think it's, you know, if you're if you dig that category, and I've always been a big fan of it, you know, I've been very fortunate to drink some very nice tits of well or bottlings and all those things you want to drink. And I think weeded bourbon just needs to be. Sippable, you know, I think that's that classic style where you want to sit on the back porch, read a book, watch a game, drink some weed and bourbon, hang out with people you like where, you know, it's just it's made to enjoy.

I can see where you're saying this is probably not. You know, it's close. It's not there. It's getting there, but it's not there yet. I could see that, but I'm excited to see what the final is on this. Uh, it's just, I'm so excited. How I found that out, Jim, that they were going to do wheat and I won't tell anybody, but I'm not here taking a photo for our review, right? Because it's like we said, it's only 15, 20 minutes. I'm getting in trouble now. Somebody was walking out and made him started talking. And this is a Sunday. It's really Sunday night. Cause me and you drank, did some reviews and did an episode. I was like, I'm going to run over there and take a photo before it got dark. And I got here just the perfect time, the sun's setting and I didn't think nobody else was here. And he walks out and me and him started talking and he was asking what I was doing. I told him, and I told him, I'm really a big wheat guy. And he said, man, we're going to be having a wheat come out. And I was like, you told me the wrong thing guy. You told me the wrong thing. I might be down one of those guys down here just rummaging through the warehouses.

They got locks and cameras now. It's actually a lot better than it used to be. Yeah, I love our distillery guys. I mean, I think that's what's so cool about the facility as a whole is, you know, we work as a big democratic consortium. You know, everybody's got a good opinion. You know, we want to hear what people have to say. You know, I think we have a lot of really good experts on site. So instead of having like a single individual, you know, like a classic master distiller role, You know, making all the shots, doing all the PR, doing all the media stuff. We have a diversity of people that are really talented. And when you got a question like, I think I know about fermentation, our head of quality is way smarter than me. He has a master's in it. And then you look at like Jason, our distillery manager, he's a good leader of people. I'm not allowed to manage anyone because I'm basically incompetent at answering my emails. And I think that's what allows our team to be the best. We have an amazing head of operations. You know, our warehouse leader, Ron, is dude, he's here every day doing the Lord's work. And I think that's what's so cool about it is we defer to our experts. And we, I mean, we fight like a family. I mean, sometimes you think somebody else is wrong, but we talk it out. And then we find it right. That's the way a good business is supposed to be. Yeah.

You're going to have those, you're going to have those arguments. You're going to have those rough times, but it's when people that sit down together and say, okay, hey, I was wrong, you're wrong. If you both say, hey, I was wrong, let's look at this in a different way. Every business is going to go through that. Every company is going to go through that. Well, I love that.

It also means you're passionate about it. If you don't want to stand up to your own opinion, it means you're just phoning it in. There's plenty of other things you can do to make more money to phone in on.

Well, you brought up your social media. Where can our folks find you on social media?

Yeah, so we have a couple of different options for you. I got to get the new drop on the TikTok. That's new to me. I'm still, I don't get that stuff. But we have an awesome Instagram account. That's always the easiest place to find us. It's castonkey on Instagram. Our Facebook is always great on that side, too. There's also shopcastleandkey.com, shopcastleandkey on Instagram now, too. That's curated by our retail manager. So if you ever want to just see all the new cool stuff she's bringing in, we work with Clayton and Crume out of Louisville. If you like leather and you like things you can drink out of, they're probably the best in the world at it. right now, you know, local company too. So check out that side. Our website, you know, we're doing a big overhaul and revamp of that. So it's not super slick right now, but the nice thing about the website is we have a VIP mailing list. If you want the kind of secret deets on something we drop before it even hits Instagram or Facebook or any of those things, I always recommend that. You know, Alex does a great job and she doesn't send you an email a day. It's like one or two a month tops. And if it's two, it's because we're letting you in on something like, hey, we might be drowning some bourbon. You know, that's that second email. And that's the one you want to make sure you get. So jump on Instagram. Shout us out. Say hi. Come take pictures. You know, I don't know all the tags again.

You know, on TikTok, you are at Castle and Key.

Thank you for knowing that. I'll admit with TikTok for a long time, I was like, man, I don't need to be on TikTok, just watching people dance. And then all of a sudden my wife's on it and there's like amazing cooking videos and the cocktail scene on TikTok.

I think that's why they've been kind of waiting to tell you about TikTok because they know they've got to tell you, you have to dance. I've had so many people tell me that they're like, that's all it's on there.

And I'm like, man, there are videos on there. There's a working with game on there. There's, Bourbon Tik Tok is his own animal.

I like that. I like the meat cooking stuff.

Meat cooking stuff's on there. I like that a lot.

Yeah. That's why I think I'm actually backing on Tik Tok. I was like, I don't need, I don't have the time to watch people do dances. I do have the time to watch people smoke meats. So I'm going to get back into that.

They've got some, some of those big Tom Hawk steaks on there. I mean, I've seen some pretty awesome ones.

Even today I was looking up air frying a chuck roast.

I was trying to figure out if I could do it or not Can you air fry a chuck? What's the answer?

That was a deep discussion at our house today Deep discussion in our house about this. Several YouTube, TikTok, Facebook videos watched, Googled it a couple of times, and you can air fry a chuck roast. You need to trim the fat a little bit and you also, no bone is the preference. No bone.

Get the bone out of there. Is that general rule for air fry and get the bone out?

I'm not sure. But, you know, people somebody's tried it and something messed up. I don't know what. Maybe the marrow and the bone. I'm not sure.

I'm wondering if you think it's just. There wouldn't be any weird moisture content there. It could be the marrow. I guess it could melt and like overcook your like the bone basically overheats itself, maybe in like maybe it explodes. I need to watch a few more TikToks. I would also watch a TikTok of somebody exploding a bunch of bone in an air fryer. I'm also interested in that.

Just shrapnel, bone shrapnel all in your kitchen. So Mike, you think maybe we could give a little something away today?

Yeah, I mean, Brett's the one that's going to tell us whether we can do a giveaway or not. But I think you do got something for our listeners.

Yeah, we definitely do. You know, we're a big fan of what y'all have been doing. And, you know, we've been listening to the podcast on our side just amongst our team. And, you know, we want to get some rye out there. You know, bourbon, I would give it away, but it's all gone. So you got to come figure that one out. But yeah, let's do a bottle of rye batch three from 2021. So that's the last rye release we've released. It's great, tons of stone fruit, lots of baked brown sugar on it, lots of baked cinnamon, just a really great sipper for going into spring summer. Hat, everybody's got to have a hat. And let's do some coasters too. We have coasters that have the old engineering plans on them. So it's kind of like a really easy puzzle unless you've been drinking, then it's actually a lot harder than you think. But it's a set of coasters and it's a sitemap for us.

Oh, that's a pretty awesome giveaway, Mike. Yeah, I'd heck I'd like to just keep that for myself, but we won't. We'll give it away. But listeners, here's what you got to do. You got to be 21. You got to reside in the United States at 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Instagram. The day of this post, you comment in the comments. of the post about this episode. Yep. How much or how many barrels was EH Taylor producing as their max here?

And what was that around 1907? Yeah.

Yeah. So you listened to the whole episode, figure that out. You'll win that from Castle and Key. I'll let you know who it is. It is fair across the board. I tried to send everybody a message. If they played, at least send them a message and say, Hey, thanks for playing or something like that. But one lucky winner will win that from Castle & Key. Pretty amazing giveaway, Brett. We can't thank you enough.

I mean, I think it's also to y'all. Thank y'all for coming out. You know, we're big fans of what this has been and you also have really great perspective on batch two. I feel, you know, we feel really good about what we've been doing and it's nice to hear other people feel that way too.

When we took the break in the middle of break, you walked out and I told Jim, I said, man, if we were just sitting here drinking whiskey, I could have drank that whole bottle by myself with no problem.

Not a good idea. We call you an Uber. We get you on home.

You know, I could down that thing too. I could have did it.

Yeah. I mean the volume per body weight is probably okay, but I couldn't do it.

Because we're going to go eat at a nice restaurant after this, right?

Are you guys going to the Stave? Oh, yeah. We had the Stave for lunch. I joined you. We got the pickle brine, hot chicken, a little honey drizzle on it, mashed potato and green beans. Oh, my gosh. It's a really good decision. I'm damn hungry, Mike.

Yeah, yeah. Let's get you all fed. Man, we can't thank you enough for taking this trip down the Bourbon Road with us, inviting us into your house, being the whiskey wizard with us. What a great conversation, Jim.

Yeah, absolutely. Sharing your whiskey with us, sharing your stories with us, telling us about this great place and the history of this great place and the vision that you guys have for Castle & Key going forward. What a treat. Thank you so much.

Thank you all again. Well, Jim, where can they find us on social media?

You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. YouTube. You can even find us on TikTok. I've been trying to get Mike to dance. He won't do it. That's all right. We still have some good TikTok videos, don't we?

We do. We do. We do two shows a week. The way not to miss those shows is go ahead and hit that plus sign, that check sign, that subscribe sign on your app or on your computer. if you're listening to us on youtube um hit that what we need you really to do though is scroll on down hit that five star review leave some comments those are really important you know what will happen if you don't oh my gosh what's going to happen mike the big bad booty daddy of barbara will come to your house with a bottle of this Castle and Key bourbon. We'll drink it all night long. Jim will be there laughing away. By the end of the night, we're going to get that five star review out of you and we'll get some comments. But seriously, those comments that review opens up distilleries doors for us like Castle and Key gets great whiskey on our show. Great guest like Brett Connors here, the whiskey wizard. We'd really appreciate it.

Yeah. So like Mike said, we do two shows a week. Every week we do a Monday episode, craft distillery episode. We focus on a single expression, something we decide whether or not we think you ought to add it to your bar. And then every Wednesday we do a more of a deep dive. We'll have a guest on like Castle and Key. We'll have several expressions. We'll deep dive on a subject. We'll do an interview. We'd love to have you listen to both episodes every week. We also want to know what you think about what we're doing. If you've got a comment, if you've got a suggestion for an episode, if you have a suggestion for a bottle or a distillery, make sure you reach out to us. You can always go to our website. We have a contact us page. You can also email us directly. Mike and I are very approachable. Hit us up on email at I'm Jim at TheBurbinRoad.com. He's Mike at TheBurbinRoad.com. But like we always say, probably the best way, slip into our DMs on Instagram. I'm jshannon63. I'm Big Burbin Chief. And we'll see you down.

you