268. Treaty Oak - The Day Drinker Texas Bourbon

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.

He does custom flags out of bourbon barrels. Not only does that, he do that, but he's also using veterans to build those flags with. I've got one right behind me, Jim. I know you got one on your bar. Beautifully handcrafted, repurposing a bourbon barrel, not throwing it away, not making it into smoking chips, making a piece of Americana, right?

It's something that'll last probably quite a few years longer than a bourbon barrel would, right?

Not only that, but he's using veterans to build those pieces of art with. You know, you got to love that. But he's also giving back to his community at all times, helping veterans out like ourselves. He is really in tune to that. Go check his site out, uh, cruise customs, flags.com. You can buy his flags on their key holders. Jim's got some, uh, these neat little cups that are chart inside made out of oak that you can put a cocktail in.

They call those the whiskey grail, don't they?

Yeah, that is kind of reminds you, you know, when you think of a grail, but truly a whiskey grail right there. Go check those out at Cruz Customs Flags. Purchased from this guy, veteran owned, veteran operated, making a veteran built product.

Hello everybody, I'm Jim Shannon. And I'm Mike Hyde. This is The Bourbon Road and today Mike is another craft distillery Monday. We're kicking back at Jump the Bend Farm. We've got Woodrow the Whiskey Dog at our feet. He's out like a light. He is. I don't know what's wrong with him today. He's been running around like crazy today though. Yeah. Well, he looks like he's in good form though. He's right where he needs to be at our feet during a podcast. We've got a nice bourbon today that we're reviewing. This is one that you acquired.

Yeah, I went and visited Treaty Oak a couple of months ago, took a trip down to Texas. And this is one of their bourbons that kind of shocked me a little bit. It's called Day Drinker. And when you think of day drink and you don't go out to day drink, you know, just to get plastered because you'll be at five o'clock and you'll be like, hey, I gotta go take a nap. And this whiskey's for that is to make sure that you're nice and easy going. Now, he's only 12 months, and I know people are wrinkling in their nose right now. That's 12 Texas months.

12 Texas months is not 12 months in a normal aspect. I'm sure is, especially not in Dripping Springs, Texas.

Now, that's about 45 minutes. West of Austin, some of the most beautiful country to me, you know, big limestone cliffs in the hill country. Really pretty country. You almost feel like you're in old Mexico or something when you're down there. It's a gorgeous place. I'll tell you, if you were in Texas and you get to go to this distillery, I advise you to stop by. But this bourbon right here just shocked me. I was just like, well, I can't believe it's 80 proof and it has such a nice notes to it. Um, but it's been a minute since I've drank it. So I was like, man, we pulled this sucker out and let's give her a try.

All right, let's check it out. What's the corn mash bill on this? How much corn's in it?

57% corn, 32% wheat, 11% malted barley Jim.

Yeah. So why the spice? Where's the spice coming from?

Maybe that much malted barley in there.

Yeah. It's got to be coming from the barrel and we all know that we can get some spicy wheaters too.

Now this is only $23 at Total Wine. That's a pretty good price for 80.

That's a great price. Yeah. It surprises me. And, and I know these are Texas months, but surprises me is typically we did bourbons take longer in the barrel. So this is a 12 month Texas. We did bourbon.

Now it is a little light and glass. I'd call that golden honey, right?

Yep. Golden honey. Very light amber.

No, ethanol nose. No, just some, some flowers there. I can't pick up on that flower.

Yeah. It's a little floral there. Uh, there's no off putting youthful notes to it though, at all.

I might get a little, just a hint of a banana on it and stuff. Um, like, like that fake banana, you know, or runs candy, um, something like that, that, you know, it's artificial banana. It's a little strong, maybe a little sweet tea on this.

I'm still surprised by the amount of spice on the nose. It's not overly sweet. Little cinnamon. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, not overly sweet. The floral notes are there though. A light, light floral note. Um, I, you know, I just, I'm shocked by it. Well, heck, let's, let's taste this thing. Cheers. Just a tad bit of spice there.

Yeah. It skips right past the front end for me a little bit, the sweetness upfront, but it skips that middle hits the back end. I get that spice. It's kind of, um, a pleasant wash over the tongue. I should say.

Now, when you said, I poured these, you were like, you poured a big pour for yourself. And I did because I knew this is just what it says. It says day drinker. That's what it's meant for. That's what they wanted when I talked to them. They really wanted this just to be a nice, in the middle of the day, you could sit down with a glass and it's, it's nice and cool too.

Yeah. Now do you think you could add ice to this?

Do you think that would be a mistake? I think it'd be a mistake.

Yeah.

I think it'd make it bitter for some reason. I think that about all bourbons. To me, it has like this honeycomb cereal aspect to it. That's a corn cereal, but it's got that honey. It looks like honeycombs, but I like it. It's light, it's airy, just refreshing.

Yeah.

I think I mentioned that I felt like it was kind of,

It was kind of, you know, it had a nice sweetness upfront. It had a spice on the back, but it felt like it was a little something missing in the middle. Honestly, I think that's just the 80 proof for me. I'm missing that, uh, that texture. I'm missing that, uh, that boldness that you'll get from a higher proof bourbon, but there's nothing in here. There's absolutely nothing in this bourbon that would warn you off. Like you would expect.

I would kind of compare this to like an Irish whiskey almost because most Irish whiskeys are that 80 proof, right? Yeah. They got that sweetness to them. This has that. That's sweeter from Texas right here.

You know, if it didn't have that little bit of spice, I would say, man, this is an Irish whiskey because the malting that's coming through definitely is. Uh, but I think that that, I don't know, the barrel and the wheat together have just, uh, have given it that nice little back end spice kick that it's got. I mean, overall, Mike, it blows my mind that, that, that this whiskey can be. It's good after only 12 months.

That spice is sitting on the tongue. Almost like what you talked about last week, we talked about that cinnamon toothpick, right? And that spice is just sitting there just tingling away. I'm like, man, is that toothpick still in my mouth? Yeah. You're getting in trouble drinking this. Yeah, I don't know. Me and you probably drink that whole bottle.

We could, but we might not be done. If we had a second bottle, we might be into a second bottle.

If we would have took this to that Derby party we went to two weeks ago, this would have did pretty good.

Yeah, I think it would have.

Not a long finish on this at all. We'd said last week with Basil Hayden, subtle smoke that had that kind of soft medium, right? Yeah. This just kind of got that same thing at that 80 proof.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't think this is meant to have a long finish. I don't think this bourbon is meant to stick with you a great long time after you have a sip. I think it's meant to just encourage you to grab that next sip.

Yeah. And that's that, like I said, that's exactly what they want you to do. Um, they say you can serve it in a cocktail. I don't know if I would do that either.

Yeah. I mean, you could, you certainly could.

Maybe for somebody that's looking for that, um, a lighter whiskey, you know, um, for their cocktail. That's not overpowering. This might be for them.

Now this is a nice square bottle. Um, it does not have a cork stopper in it. This has a screw top. That's the day drinker. They want you to get down in a day. Yeah. So this is a, this is a, uh, I don't know if you call it a budget bottle, but this is a very affordable bottle.

I mean at 23 bucks from Total Wine, how can you, you can't knock an eye to it. Um, and they're a small distillery, uh, They're doing great things down there. They got some big boys down there. But this one right here is made for what it's made for. It's not going to break your bank. If you're looking to maybe try something different than Jim Beam, white label, yeah, I'd pick up a bottle of this right here.

This is an easy drinker, no doubt. I think you could introduce this to any whiskey person and it's not going to blow them away, but they're going to be surprised when you talk about. the mash bill and the age. You done emptied your glass. I did. I did.

It drinks real easy, as it should. That's what I was telling you before is it just drinks so easy. It's light, refreshing. This is a spring, a summer, and an early fall sipper right here. I wouldn't pass it up, listeners. Check them out today. Yeah, absolutely.

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

You find us on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. Heck, there's all kinds of Twitter. We do have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies. If you haven't joined, you've only got a couple months until we get to October 1st, Jim. And if you're not a roadie, you're going to be sad that you weren't already one. Because we're going to be at Bourbon on the banks October 1st. We're going to have a plethora of bottles there from our collections just for our roadies. You got to show us that you're a bourbon roadie. It's easy to join. It's really easy. What do they got to do, Jim?

Yeah. You just go to Facebook, search the bourbon roadies, and it'll come up and ask you to join. You'll get hit with three questions. Want to make sure you're 21. Want to make sure you know you're getting yourself into a bourbon group. And we want you to acknowledge that when you get in there, you're going to play nice because we will not accept any rudeness. We've got three moderators in there that run a tight ship. They'll be sure to let you know, tap you on the shoulder. The idea here is that they run a tight ship and they make sure that everybody's being nice to each other in there and nobody's chopping anybody off at the knees for drinking the wrong stuff. So there is no wrong stuff.

No, not really. Whether you're drinking Treaty Oak for $23 or you're drinking one of their higher dollar bottles for $100, whatever you're drinking, we want you to be able to go in there and celebrate with us. Absolutely.

We do two shows every single week. We do a short episode like we're doing today. With the treaty oak day drinker it's called our craft distillery Monday episode usually runs about 15 minutes every Wednesday. We do a long episode to 20 to 30 minute halves enough time to get you to work and back. We'll deep dive a subject, we'll have a guest on, we'll visit a distillery, we'll drink through a number of expressions. So you get that long show every week too. Mike, what can they do to make sure they don't miss a single episode of The Bourbon Road?

Well, you want to scroll on up, hit that check sign, that plus sign, that subscribe button, whatever app you're using. It's usually at the very top of that app that'll let you know, hey, we got a show that has come out. Then once you'll scroll on down, hit that five star review, leave us some comments. We'd really appreciate them. You know what I'm going to say though, if you don't, the big bad booty daddy of bourbon is going to come over to your house. He'll drag cup bottles of Trudy Oak with you. Can't bring the day drinker because it's for day drinking, but we'll drink some dark stuff that night. The night drinker. The night drinker. Yeah, something about 120 proof. By the end of that night, though, you will give us that five star view and some comments, I guarantee. No, seriously, those comments, the five star reviews, distilleries like to see that. That's what gets us in the end of their doors. It also gets great whiskey like Trudy Oaks Day Drinker in our hand. We're able to give you some great reviews. We'd appreciate it.

All right. Well, we'd love to hear what you think about the show. Mike has told you how to leave us a review. But if you've got an idea for an episode, if you've got a bottle from your hometown distillery, you'd love to see reviewed. If you've got somebody you think would make a great guest, please let us know. Hop onto our website, go to our Contact Us page, leave us a message. We'll get back with you. You can also send us an email. I'm jim at TheBurbanRoad.com. He's mike at TheBurbanRoad.com. But like we always say, probably best thing to do is hit us up on our DMs on Instagram. I'm jshannon63, I'm Big Bourbon Chief, and we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.