261. Coors Five Trail Blended American Whiskey

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

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. It 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 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 this is the Bourbon Road. And today, well, I'm without Mike. Mike has got his feet up. He's at the beach. He's enjoying himself and it's a well-deserved vacation. Mike's works really hard for the Bourbon Road. and we're awful glad he gets to take a little bit of time off. But today we've got a very special guest on the show. We've got a very special whiskey on the show. We're pretty excited to have David Coors here from the Coors Whiskey Company out of Bardstown, Kentucky. David, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much, Jim. Great to be here. Certainly excited and sorry to miss Mike, but I'm jealous he's sitting on a beach somewhere, but I'm sure he's enjoying himself.

If I know Mike, he's got a couple of silver bullets in both hands and he's waiting across the pool.

Good for him.

But today you've brought a whiskey for us, and it's a new offering from the Coors Whiskey Company. It's something that you guys have been painlessly working towards. And I know we were pretty excited to hear about it. And we kind of like to get straight to that whiskey and not spend a whole lot of time chit chatting up front. So why don't you tell us what we have in the bottle, what we have in our glass, and what we're going to tell the listeners about.

Certainly. So yeah, in the bottle is a blend of four different whiskeys. We've got 45% of that blend is weeded bourbon from Indiana that's four years old. 35% of it is four grain from Bardstown bourbon company that's four years old. We have a four-year-old Colorado single malt from Colorado that actually is a single malt that uses malt from our malting facility here where I sit in Golden, Colorado. We've been making malt for almost 70 years and we've been selling it to other breweries and distilleries during that tenure. So we were able to track down some single malt with our malt in it. And then we finished it off with 5% of some 13-year-old Kentucky bourbon to give it a little bit of depth.

So there's nothing in this blended American whiskey that's under four years old. So very respectable to have a 13 year old in there as well.

Correct. Yes. We wanted to be sure we put out best taste in product possible and we wanted to do it right and be sure we had nice aged product that consumers would enjoy.

Great. Well, what do you say we take a sample of it and see what we think?

I'm glad it didn't take too long to do that.

Oh, that's a nice sweet nose on it.

Yeah, what I love about the blend and I will openly admit that I've only been deeply into this whiskey game for a couple of years, but a casual consumer over the years. But what I do love about it is that you really can pick up each of the four components that are in this whiskey. And I think that sweet nose you're picking up is certainly that weeded that jumps out on the nose and also on the palate.

Now I looked at those percentages as you was calling them off and I, and I'm going to say that it appears like, uh, overall, when you put everything together, you're sitting at around 20% malt, maybe around 60% corn and the rest of that's heavily wheat and a little bit of rye. So there's a pretty good component of each in there.

Correct. Yep. That's, that's good math.

Well, I am getting honey and caramel. The malt is very apparent, but it's kind of a brown sugar malt. I kind of like that. Exactly. I'm not getting any real youth on it. I mean, four years is a good number for any whiskey and particularly for bourbon. And having that 13 in years added a little bit of that oak to it. Let's taste it. Cheers. Cheers. Thank you. Well, it's very well balanced. I think a good word is maybe seamless. I'm not like identifying these hard breaks or seams between the four blends, the four whiskies that are going in there. The composition is very smooth.

I love that seamless. Yeah. I think I always tell people that you really, your taste buds take a journey as you pick out each one of those components.

You have the malt is very upfront, good baking spice, a little bit of oak, not too much, but the vanilla is heavy on it. I really like this. This is, I'm going to say it's a little light. It's not bold or overpowering. It's probably perfect for the proof. I think it's a good way to say it.

95 proof and we do proof it down with water that out here at the brewery that we put in a tanker and ship out to Bartstown when we package it. So it's got Rocky Mountain water in it for the proofing process.

Well, I think there's a lot of respect for that Rocky Mountain water. It's been doing a job for those of us who have bellied up to a bar for many years. Oh, thank you.

I was just going to say there's one note that I really enjoy, and I don't know if you're picking it up, but I can either quiz you on it or I can disclose it on the finish.

Yeah, go ahead and tell me.

The one note that I love it has is just kind of this gingery note on the finish that really cleans it up nicely.

I was going to say that the rye becomes most apparent on the finish, and there is a bit of a hint of ginger there, which is kind of nice. I've gotten that before in other whiskeys and it's not often. So it's something that kind of stands out when you do get it. I would say for this one, nothing really juts out too much in one direction or another. That's when you're talking about a balanced whiskey, that's kind of what you're looking at. Something that kind of, where you have to sort of, I'm not going to say dig for the notes, but you have to concentrate for the notes. That not one thing is just popping out and becoming an overwhelming impact on your palate. I think it's a great whiskey. I think you've done a fine job. I think to take four different whiskeys, so four very different whiskeys and make them come together in a seamless fashion is not an easy job. So your blenders have done a real good job here.

Thank you. Yeah, I can get more into the story, but it started in the throes of COVID on my countertop.

Oh, I do want to hear more about that. In fact, that kind of leads us into the next line of questions, and that would be, you know, where did this inspiration come from? I mean, you're a very busy guy. You're part of Molson Coors, and you have a big job there. So this is something in addition to that, I would say, right?

Yeah, so this fall, in late 2019, we decided we were going to expand beyond beer. And I was fortunate enough to be provided the position to oversee our ventures into spirits. And it was a chance for me to live out a 20-year dream I've been thinking about for 20 years. And I'll even go back to that a little bit, which was I was in college and I was dabbling in whiskey a little bit. really intrigued by it but but very casually and and i remember being home for christmas break and i'm driving through the golden valley brewery with my dad my dad's peak course and you know and and uh we're driving he's driving the suburban hands on the wheel and i said dad you know why don't we make a bourbon and he looks over me and or didn't even look over me he just looked at the steering wheel and he goes we're good at one thing and that's beer And that was the end of the conversation. And I said, Okay, sir. And I wish I would have been a rebel and had some 20 year old whiskey for you to sample today. But it finally provided me the opportunity this new role and as we've diversified the portfolio of our offerings to venture into the spirit space and that passion of whiskey and bourbon again casually over the years and even more so recently with friends and family. I said okay well now's the time we're going to do this and sure enough COVID hits early 2020 and so I started getting some samples sent to me and trying to figure out okay what do we want to do? The one thing I did want to do was include some components from our core part of our barley malt and our water from Golden because then I knew we could at least tie it back to us versus just sourcing some whiskey and slapping a label on it. How could we make it a little bit more meaningful for us? And so I knew I wanted some single malt in there that had our malt and It just was one of those where I'd get home, but come downstairs after being on zoom or teams meetings all day. And I get out the glasses and graduated cylinder and I'd start pouring stuff. My mom, my wife would go, Oh, gosh, here we go again. But sure enough, I I came to a blend that I really enjoyed and there'll be one day when we release that blend, but I took that blend and got in touch with Bardstown Bourbon Company through an old colleague that I worked with in Chicago who now works for them. And he said, you got to come out to Kentucky and just see Bardstown. I said, I know, but I'm working with some other people. And he said, well, I'm going to be in Denver In a couple months, let's sit down. We had a burger at the Cherry Cricket in Cherry Creek, just outside Denver. He said, just come on out and see the place. I said, okay, I've got this idea of what blend I want to do. and took that brief to the team there. And then we spent two days with one of our master brewers, my boss, Pete Marino, and the Bars Down team, including Steve Nalley. And we sat there for two days and we took that original blend and we just went series after series kind of evolving it. And we landed on this final blend that that I think is certainly better than the original one that I briefed them on, but couldn't be more happy with how it ended up.

Now, did you get some education on how to blend whiskey or is it something that you kind of just came into with your own experiences?

No, it was more just, honestly, bench top sampling and trying to figure out, okay, we couldn't do a bourbon because we needed to have that single malt. So I knew it had to be a London American whiskey, but that's not a huge category, you know, and was struggling with, okay, but we really want it to be bourbon. And then figured, well, let's just start putting some of these components together and seeing what we get. And it was literally that was, I think that was in March or April of 2020. I think it was April 2020. And it was August of 2020 when we went out to Barsdown for the first time to start doing some blends. Over that five month period, I just kept going back and trying stuff. I mean, we're all in the same situation in the middle of 2020. We weren't going out a ton. We were going from our computer screens to our kitchen counters. That's when I just go down there and start playing with some stuff. It wasn't until bars down when I leveraged that team and the ton of people that have great skills there to help me out and refine it.

Yeah, they're great friends of ours and we definitely appreciate the expertise they have in-house down there. The catalog of whiskeys that they have in-house there and just the years of experience. So what a great partner you picked. I think you happened on a good one. It's kind of fortunate in business when you meet the right partners and you're able to execute a plan with the right people. It kind of has a better opportunity of turning out well. Let me ask you about the size of this batch. Is that something you can talk about?

Yep. Yeah, we produced 10,000 six packs, so 60,000 bottles of what we're calling batch one. And we are depleting that inventory now and scheduled to produce batch two this summer. And if all goes well and as planned, we'll be out of batch one, if not at that point in time, potentially before then. And we have blended batch two. And it's one of those where, you know, it's like your first child, you fall in love with this first blend, and I'm going, gosh, it's gonna be really hard to beat this one. And it certainly is going to be, but we're really pleased with where batch two settled out and can't divulge too much on that front at this stage, but I think people will be pleasantly surprised with the evolution. The intention of this is really, I use the analogy to drive it within the fairway, so I want the flavor profile of Five Trail to always stay within the fairway, but with that five-ish percent component that will always change that 13-year-old Kentucky. We can't get that anymore. Each year, we'll go on the open market and try to source some fun, exciting barrels that we can put into the blend that really help harmonize the rest of the components. We'll continue to have weeded and four-grain and single malt and then accentuate it with Something else in the five ish percent range give or take each year and that that will be coming out this late summer early fall And it'll be interesting to see how people react that I've got to tell you that we got some news hot off the press literally this morning when I woke up and We got the results back from the San Francisco World Spirits competition and five trail batch number one was awarded a double gold So we were thrilled to have that

Wow, that's really a big accomplishment, especially for your first expression. Fantastic.

Yeah, we went in not knowing what to expect, and we've obviously been a biased opinion of love in our first blend, but to have an institution like that recognize it accordingly just means so much to us.

Well, absolutely. So you mentioned this highway, this highway that, you know, 5 trail is going to exist in. Is it all going to be at or around 95 proof?

So it will be. I mean, that's the plan is to keep it in, again, in that fairway. But we have a batching series on the back of the bottle. And actually, we'll move it to the front of the bottle. And the batching, how to decode this batch number, I guess, is 01 is batch one, CWC for Coors Whiskey Co. 21 is the year 2021, and then dash A. So This is the only thing we launched in batch one was our series A. For batch two, it'll be O2, will be the first two letters. And we will have actually an A, B, C, and D series that we release. And that will include a range of barrel proof. So we won't proof it down with Rocky Mountain Water. We'll take it straight out of the barrel and bottle it up. We have some of batch two currently resting on some Imperial Porter barrels. We make an Imperial Porter here in Golden that sits on whiskey barrels for a couple years. We decanted that to package the beer. We shipped those barrels to Barge Town. We put batch two into it. depending on the timing, we did that back in January, so I'm hoping it's ready in time for the holidays, but if it's not ready, we'll wait and we'll have to do it early next year. But we'll have a cash finish series and then we'll have a limited release series as well where we will put some fun additional components into the blend, some older components, and we'll see what we can find on the marketplace to give another five trail expression that will be a small batch limited release series.

Well, it's pretty exciting stuff. Usually we get to a lot more detail in the second half, and I'll probably get some questions around some of those things for you. You know, we are big Bourbon fans, obviously. The Bourbon Road. does like to take a little bit of a side road every now and then. And that's where the American whiskey comes in. You know, that's where, you know, rye whiskey comes in. That's where various corn whiskies come in, weeded whiskey. We do love to venture out just a little bit. And we're always interested to hear about some amazing stuff that's coming out of our favorite distilleries. So we're going to take a short break here, David, if you don't mind. And when we come back, we'll dive a little bit deeper into what you've got going on now and what you've got planned for the future. We'll talk about some of those special expressions and those barrel-proof expressions when we get back. Great. Thanks, Jim.

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. 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 seemed 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 that's something to be proud of. Hats off to you, Kevin, for winning that. 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 seldom seen maple.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. Uh, you can buy that sugar. 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. I know he loves people. You're supporting a local farmer, a local product, a small family. This is no factory place that's putting out maple syrup, right Jim? This is a good man doing good work. Yeah. Gotta love it. Well, make sure you check out his site. Like Jim said, seldom seen maple.com. Pick up a bottle today.

All right, so we are back. We've got the David Kors in the house. We've got the Kors whiskey company in the house. We're drinking a wonderful Five Trail blended American whiskey. David, I have to say. that every now and then we get really surprised by something. Every now and then we really get something sent to us that catches our interest and really piques kind of that how did they do it or how did they take four different whiskies and put them together in this seamless expression that just drinks like a well-balanced well oiled machine, I should say. You guys really did a great job here. You really did.

I appreciate that. That means a lot.

And, you know, to find out in the first half that you guys have just received the double gold in San Francisco, that kind of confirms what I think we've already decided at our end that this is a pretty darn good whiskey.

That's great. It's something we feel probably with biased opinions. We've always thought that since we bottled it up, but it's nice to get other well-respected palates on this and validate it for us.

Yeah. Sometimes when you're drinking your own whiskey all the time, you can get kind of tunnel vision, right? You think, oh, my stuff is so good. It's so wonderful.

You need to get that outside opinion every now and then. A hundred percent, that's for sure.

But I assume, I assume that you're, you're also a whiskey fan and you're drinking other whiskeys as well to try and, you know, see what's out there and see what's happening in the market. What's next for you guys? And in addition to drinking five trail, I'm sure your bar is, is littered with other bottles as well.

Yes, over the last few years as I've explored the category more and more, it's definitely filled up and I admittedly have learned probably as much as you've forgotten in the last few years because I'm on the beginning end of that journey, but it's a fun It's a fun industry, it's a fun product to explore when you're talking about all the mash bills and barrel chars and age statements and where in warehouses you're putting, storing these barrels and it's just from a beer, especially if you think of craft beer, there's a world you can explore and then you start to make that leap into whiskey and bourbon and you go, holy cow, this is a whole nother world to explore. So it's been a fun journey.

Yeah. Well, in the first half, you kind of took us through some of the things that are in the works. Certainly batch one is in our glass. Batch two is a reality. There are some other things going on. Why don't we slow it down a little bit and talk a little bit more about what comes after batch two?

Yeah, so I think we will continue down the annual kind of batching process of evolving the core SKU with the evolving that 5% component to whatever is available at that time. You know, I think the one area we've been kind of pushed on is saying, well, it's not a bourbon. I said, well, it's 85% bourbon. That's pretty good. And people say, well, it's not a bourbon. So if we continue to to see the traction with consumers and enjoying our products. And I think we'll have to kind of venture down that space. And we've kicked around some ideas of what that could look like at some point in time. But nothing, nothing on the current plans right now. But to appease the folks that that want the true bourbon, we we may have to answer that call at some point in time. And we've got some ideas in that area. Beyond that, I think we're we're still finding our feet underneath us. We're we're new to this industry, new to this game. And I think it's talking to folks like you and consumers and retailers and hearing what's working and what's not is always helpful and steering what direction we want to go in because we want to, at the end of the day, we want people to buy this stuff and we don't want to collect dust. We want you to enjoy it and have fun with it and come back for another bottle.

Well, I think if we've got listeners right now who are sort of scratching their head a little bit and saying, okay, blended American whiskey, I really don't know what that is. I think you hit it on the head. It's 85% bourbon in this case. So the greatest component of this is four-year bourbons with a 13-year in there to add that extra complexity and that oak. But it's got that 100% malt in it that gives it that extra something special. And honestly, there are a number of whiskeys on the market today that are playing in that high malt range. They like to play in that 20% malt range in their bourbons. And I'm a big fan. I'm a huge fan. So the minute I taste this, I taste high malt bourbon. And I love it. This is really good. You get that honey. You get that light fruit note. You get a little bit of Well, you get a lot of vanilla in this one, in the caramel, but you get that wonderful sweetness, that softness from the wheat. You get that rye on the back end that sort of gives you that little tinge of heat on the backside. Now, the finish on this one is a medium finish. It's not super long, but it's also a light whiskey and it's not going to burn you up. You can enjoy it on a hot summer day.

Yeah. And as you can imagine, being a beer drinker, it's always important to be able to enjoy that. And I always tell people, they say, well, how should we serve it? And I like my beverages cold. And so I always put it over ice. But I wasn't much of a neat drinker. and tell this whiskey and I go, wow, it's taught me how to drink whiskey neat, which has been fun because it is not too hot. And it's got just that right little balance and all those components that it doesn't blow your palate out just straight out of the bottle.

So on, on the nice kit, you guys sent us a nice bottle with a couple of glasses and a nice kid. It came in a beautiful packaging, a very high class. But with that came a card that said, we invite you to share and enjoy five trail either neat or with a few drops of water. So I thought, you know what? I'm going to have a few drops of water standing by for this one. Cause I want to see how it blossoms when I had a little bit of water to it. Great.

Yeah, we would have liked to ship you a little mini bottles of, uh, water from the brewery, but we had some challenges, uh, operationally and one day we'll do that to be a nice kind of treat.

Well, I had to just add a little bit of Kentucky limestone water to us. I hope that doesn't ruin it.

No, that's as good as it gets, as you know.

Well, it's hard to stand tall next to that, uh, Colorado, you know, Rocky mountain water. I mean, it's just an amazing thing. Thanks. Wow. It does open it up a little bit. It gets a little bit more spice coming out on the nose. It does change it quite a bit, actually. So the spice definitely comes out with the addition of the water. It's a little more almost a little bit of a niece, a tinge of bitterness, but not in a bad way. It's just letting you know that that rye is there and it's coming out. I think it's a great way to explore whiskey is to add a little bit of water to it. Very nice.

It's amazing what just a couple drops do to a whiskey or even just leaving it sitting out for 10, 15 minutes. You know, like wine, it breathes a little bit and some people think that really changed it. You know, it took me a while to buy into that, but there's something to it as well.

Also in the first half, you mentioned something about expressions that may exceed 95 proof. So can you talk a little bit more about that?

Yeah, so our barrel proof, and we won't know until we decant the barrels and blend it up and test the proofing at that stage, but it'll be north of 110, I don't know if it'll be 115 or 120, but it'll probably be in that range. And as you well know, it just depends on how much the angels have taken and how it all comes together when blended. So really excited to see, we have done tasting of it. So we know what it's gonna taste like and it's quite delicious, but to see that in the final package and how it really comes to life will be interesting.

Let's talk a little bit about your distribution. This is your first expression, batch one is out there. How many states can people find it in right now?

As of today, we're in six different states, Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin, Georgia, and New York. And we have a couple more markets that are under review and consideration, probably about a half dozen or so that by the fall, hopefully we can open up some new markets and can't get into too many of the details there. But we're having interests from a brand perspective with some of that network and people excited as they hear more and more about the brand. to carry it. And so it's really been one of those where we've tested everything from our home market of Colorado, which has been our biggest market just because of the brand awareness of the association with Coors to a place like Manhattan, as we all know, is a challenging market to break into. And so we've really kind of scattered the gamut of different types of market, tried to focus on markets where whiskey is doing well and where the Coors trademark does well. and where we have a route to market through our distributor network that are interested and excited about the product.

Now, I noticed on your website, I visited there before the show today, that you've got a product finder so people can go on your website, say, where can I buy it? And it'll pop right up and tell them. Correct. I would imagine that that will be the first place you need to go to find out if it's available in your area.

That is correct. That's the easiest one. And we do update that weekly. And but as you well know, if a store took a bottle and they've sold it or they took six and they already sold it, you may go there and you may not find it. We're working on how we can implement that into the website, but we do update it weekly.

Got it. Got it. You can also sign up there for notifications, I guess, that come out if you want to be made aware of things that are happening at the Coors Whiskey Company.

Correct, yes, as we have these new releases and whatnot, we'd love to share that news with our loyal following fans first and foremost, as well as through social media, Facebook and Instagram.

Now, you know, the Colorado Whiskey Trail, let's call it the Colorado Whiskey Trail, is really starting to come into its own. A lot of great whiskeys out there, and I would imagine that it has crossed your mind, right, that that's your home state and that's where you guys are from. Do you expect to play a big role in the local Colorado Whiskey scene as well?

Yeah, I think we're trying to figure out what the next step is. I mean, as I went on this journey, I tasted a bunch of different products. A Kentucky bourbon is noticeable. I mean, they're just fabulous bourbons. And as I tried to decide where to source some whiskey from what components to put in. I was just so impressed with Kentucky bourbons. But Colorado does have a wonderful scene coming on some some great brands and great whiskeys and bourbons coming out of the local producers. And we have our malt facility that's close here by. We've got our water, all that kind of stuff. So it's it's certainly we're only into this game about seven months right now. And so trying to get trying not to get too far over ski tips and see if we have a viability as a business and a brand that resonates with consumers is is first and foremost and and then making decisions from there.

OK, so Coors Whiskey Company is based in Bardstown, Kentucky. the main operations out of Golden, Colorado. Five Trail is the brand or the expression that we're drinking today. So you've got some ideas for other expressions, other brand whiskeys in addition to Five Trail.

Potentially, yeah, that's one thing that I love how we created this brand is that we're spoiled. Actually, we're over spoiled with choices of great assets and great imagery and which way we take this. Is it a bunch of releases underneath Five Trail? Is it new names underneath Coors Whiskey Co? Those are all things the team and I have been kicking around and trying to feel around what's best for the brand and what drinkers want to see from us. And so we're still working on those big strategic decisions, but the key is putting really good whiskey in a bottle first and foremost. And that's been our focus up until this point.

So do you have a plan this year for appearances out in public, whether they be whiskey festivals or other big gatherings of whiskey lovers? Can people expect to see your brand out and about?

We'll certainly be out and about. I know I'm working with the team now to book opportunities to go, you know, sit in liquor stores and meet consumers and sign bottles for them if they want to devalue the bottle. But no, it's for me getting out there and talking to retailers and consumers is a blast and hearing directly from them what someone loves to drink, what they love about five trail or other whiskeys and bourbons is, is where I get a lot of joy. And so we're, again, we'll be out and about. We're not gonna be making the biggest splashes. We're still small and trying to stay within our swim lanes, but we will be kind of entering more and more into the scenes. And hopefully one of those brands that you say, well, I'm starting to see that more and more. And hopefully the success continues to drive more of that.

So David, I did want to ask you, you know, our listeners have gotten kind of used to us having a little bit of a contest every show. Yeah. And I was kind of wondering if you'd be willing to do a giveaway to one lucky listener who was able to answer the question of the day.

Brilliant. Yes, I would love to offer up. Maybe we could do a bottle of Five Trail along with a t-shirt and some of the branded Glen Caron glasses.

Oh my goodness. They would love that. That would be so awesome. So awesome. Good. So let me think here. Okay. So David, if somebody wants to win that wonderful prize you just described, we're going to ask them to, um, Pay attention on the day release of this show. We'll have an Instagram post about the show, about this episode. And in that post, you're going to need to tell us in a comment, what are the four different whiskies that go into making this five trail blended American whiskey? You'll have to describe them. For example, a four year old Indiana weeded bourbon. is one of the components. That would be a suitable description of that one component. You've got to name all four though. So you're going to have to listen to the show. You're going to have to take your notes. You're going to have to be very careful and make sure you get it right because there'll be no grace on our end. You're going to have to get it exactly right. So again, one more time, 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on the day of release of this show in the Instagram post, name the four different whiskies that go together to make Five Trail. David, thank you so much for that giveaway. One lucky listener is going to love it. And they're going to share a photo in turn when they receive that bottle and that gift set and get the word out that they were the winner.

That's great. I love it when consumers can tell us some facts about our brand. So that'll be a treat to see.

Well, David, I would like to give you a chance to let our listeners know where they can find you guys, both on social media and on the internet, how they can find out more about your company. Would you take a minute and let them know?

Yes, certainly. So you can find us on Instagram and Facebook at 5Trail. Just handle that 5Trail. And as we mentioned earlier, the product locator is on our website, which is www.5Trail.com. And we are in Nevada, Colorado, Georgia, Wisconsin, New York, and some more states coming. And we look forward to you welcoming us into your homes, into your whiskey bars and back bars. So really appreciate the time. And Jim, want to thank you and Mike for your service for our country. Really appreciate that.

Well, thank you very much, David. It's been wonderful to have you on as a guest. Mike and I are going to look at our schedules and we're going to plan a time to come out and give you a visit, visit that beautiful country out there. Thanks again. And, uh, we really enjoyed your whiskey. Thank you, sir. All right, listeners, well, you know you can find us. You can find The Bourbon Road on all social medias on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, even TikTok at The Bourbon Road. We also have a private Facebook group called The Bourbon Roadies. Where a good number of our very best friends like to hang out, share whiskey, share stories, share pictures, share life events. We'd love to have you come be part of that group. I just search out the bourbon roadies on Facebook, answer three quick questions. Are you 21? Do you like bourbon? And do you agree to play nice? Because once you're in that group, we do expect you to be one of the gang and not an enemy of the gang. So no negative posts, no chopping anybody off at the knees. Just come in and have a good time. We do two shows every week. We'll do a short episode every Monday. We'll highlight a craft distillery, somebody trying to do it right, stepping out of the box. We'll shine a little light on them, let you know whether or not you would add their whiskey to your bar. Every Wednesday, we'll have a little bit longer episode, about an hour in length. We'll get you to work and get you home. I will have a couple of expressions on. We'll have a guest on. Like today, we had David Coors from the Coors Whiskey Company on, drinking their Five Trail Whiskey. We'll let you know what we think about that, whether or not you ought to add that one to your bar. In this case today, we think you ought to add some Five Trail to your bar. Definitely something to be tasted. We hope you're a winner in today's episode. Make sure you watch out for that Instagram post and submit your answers. Be careful. You got to get it right. Make sure you reach out to Mike and I and let us know what you think about the show. We'd love to have you subscribe to the episode. We'd love to have you send us an email or hit our contact us page up on the website. Let us know what you think. If we can do anything better. If you've got an idea for the show, a guest you'd like to see or a bottle you'd like to see reviewed, please let us know. We're pretty responsive. You can send us an email. I'm Jim at the bourbonroad.com. He's Mike at the bourbonroad.com. But like we always say, probably the best way to hit us up is on our DMs on Instagram. I'm jshannon63. He's big bourbon chief and we'll see you on down the bourbon road.