276. George Dickel 8 Year Bourbon Whiskey Review

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

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Hello everybody. I'm Jim Shannon.

And I'm Mike Hyatt.

This is The Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, it's another craft distillery Monday. We've got a Tennessee whiskey in the house. Tennessee bourbon.

I know. We've been on this Tennessee kick lately and I think it's going to continue for a couple more weeks. We got us some other Tennessee whiskeys to talk about, but not really a craft distillery, I would say, but old school distillery though, right?

Yeah, it's, it's, it's been in the history books for a number of years, certainly for a hundred years or more. What do we got on the show today, Mike?

Well, we got old George Dickle bourbon whiskey. Uh, it's age for eight years.

This time we're not drinking a Tennessee whiskey straight up. We're drinking a Tennessee bourbon whiskey. It's kind of great. I'm looking at the color of it. Uh, I'm thinking it's a little on the light side for an eight year though.

Yeah, that's what I thought too. Not a, and the color wise, I don't even know what I'd call that like Sunday.

Yeah. It's like really light. I mean, it's almost like a sunrise Amber, like very light, almost like an apple juice.

Yeah, for sure. So this is 90 proof. It's aged for eight years. The mash bill is 84% corn, 8% rye, and 8% malted barley. Now listeners, you might know that mash bill. That is George Dickles standard mash bill. MSRP on this is $30. Not bad for an eight year old bourbon though, right Jim?

I would say that's a, that's a fair price. We haven't got to taste it yet, but certainly, you know, $30 for an eight year old bourbon is, is a good price all the way around. So this is, uh, this is a whiskey that is, uh, well known to people in the whiskey world, particularly those who love their Tennessee whiskies. This one just happens to be a bourbon. So Mike, what can you tell us a little bit about the history of George Dickel?

Well, you got to what George Dicko is a German immigrant. He was born in Germany in 1818 and then he came over to America in like, I think it was 1844, made his way down to Nashville about 1847 and he kind of started a liquor store down there. Um, And he just kind of got into whiskey and selling whiskey. He was accused of wholesale on whiskey, I guess in the civil war and making money from profit was, but he was acquitted of that. Now his brother was convicted of it though. So something might've been done there. But there's some pretty neat facts that I didn't know looking all this stuff up, Jim. George Dicko or Caskey Distillery Whiskey was produced at the famous Stitts Willard Distillery in Shively, Kentucky from 1910 to 1917 due to Tennessee's enactment of Prohibition. In the 1940s and 50s, it was made at the OFC distillery. Yes, the modern day Buffalo Trace in Frankfort, Kentucky. That's, that's some pretty neat stuff, right?

That's pretty cool. Well, as we know, uh, when, you know, the rest of the country entered into prohibition, 1919, I think it was Tennessee had already been in prohibition for quite a long time, about 10 years.

Yeah, that's for a fact. That's the reason they moved up to Kentucky. And even after that, they had their own problems. They didn't really come back down there to Tennessee until the late 50s, I guess. And at that time, the company that owned them actually tried to buy Jack Daniels, and Jack Daniels refused to sell out, as others did. What George Dickel do, they went ahead and reconstructed Cascade Hollow Distillery, compete directly with old number seven. And they've did that for many a year now down there.

It was a long drive period for Tennessee. They got to start their prohibition long before the rest of us. And they ended up not being able to come out of it for quite a number of years after national prohibition ended. But anyway, George Dickle is certainly back. They've got a great bourbon whiskey here that we're going to taste. Mike, I said we get straight to it. What do you think? Let's do it. All right. I'm nosing it. It's got a little bit of alcohol on the nose, a little bit of ethanol. I am getting kind of a fruity nose on it. A little bit of mineral, kind of a mineral note.

I'm getting that, that oak in there for the eight years is there. Um, I do get that mineral you're talking about though. Uh, kind of like when I smell Coors beer, I might sound funny to people, but I get that mineral note from a Coors beer, but I, I'm getting that from this.

You ever, when you're a kid, did you ever rub two rocks together? Like rub two rocks together, just regular old rocks, right? And you got that smell off of them.

Well, I saw poor Jim. That's all I had in my pocket was two rocks.

So you're very familiar with this smell here. It's kind of a mineral note, a little bit.

It's got a little bit of banana in there, Jim.

Yeah. I agree with you on that, Mike. I was picking up that fruit, but it might've been a little bit of that banana note, a little bit of peach, maybe. I don't know. Not too, not too much, but well, heck, Jim, let's drink this thing. Let's do this. Taste it. Cheers. Cheers. Wow. That mineral note is very present on the palette. I'm not getting a huge amount of Oak on that. If I am getting a little bit, it's a little bit more of a new Oak.

I'm actually getting a like peanut butter on this. Um, for some reason, I know I keep thinking back to peanut butter whiskey, but almost a dry peanut butter, maybe peanut shell. Yeah. But maybe that peanut butter powder we mean you've talked about. Yep.

I'll be honest, Mike, my first impression of this is not of an eight year old whiskey.

What are you thinking? Like five or something.

Now it's got some nice notes, but yeah, a little bit. It feels a little bit lighter than eight years, maybe around five or so. The color is definitely light. The oak, uh, influence on it for me is a little more new than it is charred, older oak. It's got a little bit of ethanol on the nose. I'm not getting a lot of sweetness there though.

No, like I said, that dryness to it. Um, you know, that dry peanut butter powder, that might sound weird to people. um get the oak on there just a tad bit a little bit of tobacco in there now it's got a little bit of a hug to it uh surprisingly for the small amount of riot has but the corn content on this is what shocked me 84 percent

Yeah, it's a high corn content and you're not getting a lot of that corn sweetness. You're not getting a lot of that, uh, that caramel corn at, uh, you know, that sweet sticky kind of, uh, caro syrup. So it's obviously had enough years in the barrel for that to kind of disappear, but the barrel itself hasn't really added a tremendous amount of influence to it. So it's almost like. It's had the years it needs to get rid of that corn influence, but it hasn't had the years it needs to get that nice, well-aged oak influence, a little bit more of a new oak to it.

Yeah. I'm wondering if that's that high corn content anyways, um, aging like that, maybe not enough malted barley, maybe not enough, uh, rye in there to, to give you some sweetness, uh, uh, some of that sugary sweetness out. You would think there'd be more. But I don't know, you know, this is still charcoal filter, just like all the other whiskey, but I don't get that Flintstone vitamin taste out of this though. There's that mineral taste, but not a Flintstone vitamin taste.

I agree with you. It's, it's a, it's a bit of a different note there. So the mineral, the mineral flavor from this is a little bit more like a. Well, like I said, that's sort of that smell of rubbing a couple of stones together. It's not so much like the Flintstone vitamins, as you mentioned, which we've seen before in a dickle Tennessee whiskey, right?

Yeah. Yep. I do get a little bit of a carrot cake on this for some reason. I don't know. Maybe I'm hungry for a carrot cake, Jim. Um, it's near dinner time, so I'm thinking about carrot cake for some reason today. Um, but I get a little bit of that like homemade carrot cake. you know, when somebody really uses real carrots to make their carrot cake with. And then that frosting kind of mixed with it, but not the sweetness from the frosting, just that vanilla taste.

Well, I would say Mike, uh, you know, if I were to summarize, I'd say there's a few sharp edges on this. Um, the, the nose is a little bit too heavy on the ethanol for my, for my taste. The colors of the light, uh, the sweetness it's dry. There's not a lot of sweetness there, but there's also not a lot of, uh, you know, oak influence, maybe a little bit of new oak, um, not too much, um, You know, that, that well-aged charred oak influence, you did mention a little bit tobacco. I have to agree with that. There's a little bit of tobacco hint in the backend there, but this was not knocking my socks off.

No, I'm there with you. I think if I was looking for a Tennessee bourbon, um, you know, for 30 bucks, it's not bad, but I might ask for my third bucks back on this one right here, Jim. That's, that's a rarity from both of us. Right.

Yeah, normally, um, we're pretty sure about what we bring on the show. In this case, we, you know, we're careful about what we do. We're, we're, we understand the impact that we might have on our listeners and, and they're buying decisions. So we take it seriously. Uh, in this case, I would say, um, it's probably worth a try. You may get a different take on it than us. Uh, but for me, it's a little bit, I don't know, a little bit different than what I expected a little bit, uh, I don't know, lacking in a couple of areas.

Yeah. I would have thought I've been more viscous than it is. It's not very viscous at all. Um, for an eight year old, you know, you expect that, that deep character and maybe that's because of the proof on this. Would this been better at a bonded did a hundred proof? I think that probably would have, um, opened us up some notes, probably would have made it a little bit sweeter. But when you proof it down like that, you know, You can bring out some bitterness in your whiskey. I know if I drinking whiskey on the rocks and it sets there for a while, I'm going to, it tastes bitter to me. And that's really right. Why don't drink whiskey on the rocks? Cause I don't like that bitter taste. Um, so, uh, I'd like to see George Dickel come out with a bottle and bond of this and to see what that tastes like.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, by no means is this a faulty whiskey or a bad whiskey is just one that doesn't quite, you know, live up to what we expected. Sometimes expectations are pretty important. Uh, in this case, I would say it didn't quite reach that bar for us. Uh, but $30 is a fair price for a bottle of whiskey like this from a well-known distillery. I would say, uh, if you're intrigued, you want to find out for yourself. purchase a bottle, give it a try, or at the very least pick up a, pick up a pour of it at your local bar, uh, and make up your own mind. Mike and I are just a couple of bourbon bullshitters. We know what we're doing, but we also, uh, get it wrong sometimes. Right, Mike?

Yeah, I think we both got it right on this. You know, is it worth $30? I don't know. Um, Before you'd buy it, I'd try to find it at a bar down there, maybe in Tennessee or something, and try it before you purchased it. If you want it, hey, you still mix it. I wouldn't pour this down the drain at all. It'll get mixed. I'm gonna put it out at the fire and let some people drink it and have at it. Hey, that's what whiskey's for, is to share. And I'm sure that some people will drink it with some L-8-1 or some Coke down by the fire, right?

Well, I mean, we do have a big bonfire at your place this Friday, so I'm sure this bottle will be out there and there'll be plenty of things to mix it with. Right. Yes, sir. So Mike, where can people find us on the internet?

Well, you can find us on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. We're all over the place. Our main place is on Facebook. We also have a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies. Go in there and check it out. You got to answer three questions to get in. Are you 21? Because you got to be 21 in the United States to consume alcohol. Do you like bourbon? Hell, everybody likes bourbon, right? And do you agree to play nice? Because we don't tolerate any rudeness there. Meaning, if you want to drink from the very bottom of the shelf, that old tin high, what I drank, or all the way to the top of the shelf, maybe some George T. Stag like Jim likes. We want everybody to be in there loving life. Celebrating life. That's what whiskey is supposed to be about. A great conversation. You know, we don't do politics in there. We don't do religion and we don't do social issues. You can knock us for it, but that's who we are. Those conversations for a different place. Our place is for whiskey, right Jim?

Well said, Mike. Well said. Well, we do two shows every week. We do a Monday episode like today's episode. We call it our craft distillery Monday episode. We take a bottle, a single expression from a craft distillery. In this case, George Dickles, uh, you may or may not consider them a craft distillery. I would say they're bigger than that. Uh, but we'll take a single expression. We'll look at it. We'll taste it. We'll make a few remarks and opinions of our own. We'll let you know whether or not we think you should add it to your bar. Then every single Wednesday, we do that full length episode, that one hour, that 30 minutes to get you to work and 30 minutes to get you home. We'll have a guest on the show. We'll explore a deeper topic. We'll have several bottles. Uh, we'll have some great conversation, uh, some great in depth analysis. Uh, every Wednesday, we'd love to have you listen to that episode as well. Two shows every week, tune into them both. Mike, how can they be sure that they don't miss a single episode on the Bourbon road?

Well, what you want to do is scroll on up to the top of that app. You're listening to the song right now. Hit that check sign, that plus sign, that subscribe sign, whatever you got to do to keep listening to us. Your app will tell you, hey, these two jokers have an episode coming out today or has came out. That way you can listen. Then you know what I'm going to say. You scroll on down. all the way to the bottom hit that five-star review leave us some comments we would really appreciate it those comments really do help us you know what's gonna happen if you don't the big bad booty daddy a bourbon is gonna come to your house with this George Dickel aged eight years hell I even bring some of their bottled and bond Tennessee whiskey with me We'll drink that all night long. By the end of the night, you're going to give us that five star review and have a big giant smile on your face. But like I always say, seriously, those reviews, those comments, they open doors to distilleries, gets great whiskey in our hand, great guests on our show. Like our guests this coming Wednesday. I'm not going to tell you who it is. He might be a turkey wrangler though. So we really appreciate it.

All right. Well, we value our listeners opinions. We certainly want to hear from you. Mike mentioned how you can give us a review, but you know, if you've got an idea for a show, if you have a bottle that you think is extra special, maybe a distillery in your hometown, you've got a guest you think would make a great Addition to the bourbon road. Make sure you let us know. You can hop on our website, the bourbon road.com. We've got a contact us page there. Fill it out. Let us know what you think. We're pretty responsive. We'll get back with you. You can also send us emails if that's your thing. I'm Jim at the bourbon road.com. He's Mike at the bourbon road.com. But like we always say, probably the best way, just hit up our DMS on Instagram. I'm Jay Shannon 63. I'm big bourbon chief. And we'll see you down.

I'll be waiting for you to come back.