279. Doc Swinsons Alter Ego Whiskeys

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 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 seldom seen maple dot com. Pick up some stuff from there today. We'd appreciate it.

Hello, everybody. I'm Jim Shannon. And I'm Mike Hyatt. This is the Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, we are sitting in Stream Yard. Didn't get on the road this time, but we have been spending quite a bit of time on the road lately.

Yeah, if we had to get on the road for this, for this whiskey right here, it'd been a hell of a drive for us, Jim. And with gas prices the way they are, it would have ate our piggy bank up. Yeah. So who do we have on the show with us today? So we got Jesse Parker and he is the master blender for Doc Swenson's. Now, if you're in Kentucky, you probably have seen this on the shelf here in Kentucky. Pretty nice whiskey from what everybody else is saying, but heck, we're going to let Jesse tell us about it. Jesse, welcome to the bourbon road.

Hey Jim, Mike, thanks so much for having me on here. I'm excited to be here on another good podcast, uh, tasting some good whiskey.

Absolutely. Well, this is a new one for us. Mike and I haven't had it before. Uh, and we appreciate you sharing your whiskey with us. You did send us some samples. You sent us some full bottles as well. So we're in pretty good shape. We're all primed and ready to go. It's great to have a new friend and a new whiskey to drink with them. So thank you very much.

Yeah. Thank you. Glad to hear you got all the bottles too. We just want to make sure, you know, you got enough to make sure, you know, it's really good.

We're going to do your bourbon. You've got a bourbon you sent us. We're going to do that in the first half. In the second half, we'll drink another one of your expressions, but we kind of like to get straight to that whiskey. So why don't you tell us what we have in our glass first here?

Sure. Let me pour a little more for myself. Um, so this first one is kind of our signature, what we started with. And it's our Doc Swinson's triple cask. And it is a straight bourbon whiskey, a blend of two different mash bills, both from MGP aged a minimum of five years blended together and then put into ex cognac casks, uh, Pedro Jimenez and Olorosa Sherry casks.

And that's some big names right there. I don't know if I can do all that. Yeah.

All of our labels seem to have that reflect that there's like, uh, how do we say this again? And why is there so many names on your bottle? I, to be fair, we, we, we started our branding kind of in-house and have played with it and yours truly designed the labels. So, uh, it's, it's been a unique journey.

So you said two different sherry casks and a cognac cask.

Yeah. Oloroso sherry, Pedro Jimenez sherry, and of course cognac. And they're all for the most part, large format casks. So they're typically 500 to 600 liter for about 95% of them. So it's a little more mellow. The big goal here was to really focus on the fact that it's still a straight bourbon whiskey. And that's what we really like to put our name on here at Doc Swinson's is we still want to, you know, Make sure we honor what the the base whiskey actually is and that's bourbon.

So you'll still taste I think a lot of that in there Okay, well, we'll dive into the details of this whiskey. But for now Mike, what do you say we take a nose and take a sip?

Yeah It's got a really nice nose on it Yeah, super sweet It smells viscous in the glass a lot of floral notes like roses and

I'm getting a little bit of cherry on this one, Mike. We talked about cherry and bourbon the other day and I'm getting a little bit on this one. Sort of like cherry Coke.

Very, very beautiful nose, Jesse. I, you know, it's always nice when a whiskey has a nice nose to it. Uh, if it, the nose doesn't smell good, you know, you don't want to put it in your mouth, right? That's, uh, that's what they say anyways. I don't know.

Yeah, that's probably the point of having a nose. I feel like sometimes you don't smell it before you eat it. It might keep you from, uh, going down a path. You don't want to.

Well, Jim, I'm already drinking on this thing. Um, that first sip had a pal to it though, didn't it?

Yeah, it's very rich and it re that cherries really coming out for me in that sip. Um, but I'm starting to get a little bit of like, uh, a little bit of that nutmeg and a little bit of cinnamon on the backend, maybe. Cause I'm feeling a little bit of the burn, you know, kind of good one.

Yeah, it's got a little layer to it here and there on that back end. Like you said, Jim, that burns coming in a little bit. Definitely a nice sipper and it drinks a little bit hotter than 95.8, I think.

Well, I feel like they proved this one really well. It is rich. It is bold, but it sits on the back of the palette with that nice little cinnamon hug. I like that. But still that fruits there, that fruits up forward, that cherry, I like it. I'm still going to say kind of cherry Coke.

I don't know if you've heard that before, but, uh, I mean, definitely cherries is, is a pretty big one. I think most of the burgers are that we use for our base here have a lot of, uh, there's a nice darker fruit forward characteristics to it. Um, so yeah, I wouldn't say that's too far out of the ballpark at all. I think you're pretty right on.

Well, we normally skip over the vanilla, you know, just don't even mention it and caramel, but it's there. It's definitely there.

So Jesse, tell us how Doc Swenson started. And, you know, when I look at the label, you said you designed this label, but when I think of Doc Swenson, I don't know why I think Doc Holliday, but I do.

I mean, it definitely has kind of that old Western, you know, pre-prohibition era kind of style to it. And that was very much some of the inspiration was kind of an old medicine label, so to speak, you know, that came out of the 20s. the early turn of the century there. It was also what was popular about seven years ago as far as styling went, so we ran with it. It was my first good trip down to learning how to use Adobe Illustrator. Like I said, everything here at Doc Swinson's is pretty in-house for the most part. We have a little bit of help on the outside from time to time, but that's really Doc Swinson's. Okay, so Doc Swinson's started kind of as a, we didn't really initially intend it to become what it has to be honest. Our parent company, we all got paired together about seven, eight years ago. There's four of us and to do private label product for other groups like grocery store chains and things like that. Our initial intention wasn't to create this our own brand of whiskey, to be honest with you. It just kind of happened over the course of a couple of years. So working with all these different distillers across the really across the world and primarily, of course, in Kentucky and Indiana and Tennessee, we were able to get our hands on some pretty unique and amazing casks that were quite old. So five or so years ago, we started playing with them and doing specialty finishes. And we'd only release like maybe 12 to 40 barrels a year. So something real small under the label Doc Swinson's, which really is kind of an ode to where we're from here in the Pacific Northwest. In general, that's where the name came from. It's loosely related to one of the founders of Seattle. But of course, we don't do a whole lot of marketing on that because that's not really our brand. We don't have a grandpappy that did this that at least any of us really know of, maybe some old bootlegging back in the day. And it's certainly nobody from a past life's recipe. This is ours, our creation. So more or less, Doc Swinson's is kind of a culmination of our chaotic minds put together. and more or not processes developed from my childhood. I became obsessed with reading books about spirits and wine when I was really young, and this is what it's turned into.

So Doc Swenson, he's that guy that came through town with the wagon. He's the snake oil salesman. He had the little bottles of elixir that would cure all and

I mean, in a nutshell, yeah. I mean, that's kind of the whole idea that was put off or put onto the label and the style, the motif. Um, absolutely. Um, but to be truly true about it, we are incredibly transparent and no, it probably won't grow your hair back.

It might grow some hair on your chest though.

To be fair, my chest has definitely got hair over the years. Maybe it has, you know,

And maybe that is that that in this whiskey right here, that spice that I'm getting, uh, that, that 21% or I, uh, in there, that's gotta be playing a factor.

It absolutely is. We all here really like rye whiskies. I love rye whiskies. I love heavy rye or high rye bourbons. They tend to be some of my favorites. I really like the spicy characteristics you get out of it. I think it makes a beautifully complex bourbon. It's a personal thing for me on that end. This triple cask, Doc Swenson's triple cask, is actually a blend. It starts as two of MGP's high rye mash bills. They're 36% and they're 21%. So every single one of our releases, with the exception of our single barrels, is either a blend, a blend that has been finished, or a single mash build that has been finished. We don't release anything that we haven't really put our stamp on here. That's what I think really separates us from some of the others out there.

Well, you know, the craft starts, I think, and we've talked about this in previous shows, the craft starts in barrel selection, you know, in choosing what barrels to pick. Then, of course, the craft continues when you start to blend those barrels, and particularly if you're blending multiple mash bills. And the craft continues even more as you start to finish those products and watch them age in the additional barrels for the flavoring.

I'll be honest with you, there's a lot of craft in this bottle from the very get-go. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's definitely a labor of love, especially in particular triple cask on this end. This one has me involved in every single step, blending it along the way. Where some of our other expressions, I allow nature to take a little bit more hold onto it, which is unique in its own right as well. And then there's something else that I do a little differently here on triple cask. After I blend all three of these casks together, the cognac and the two sherrys, they actually marry an old cognac fooders that are about the size of Mini Coopers. So that really helps put like a really nice mellowing process or mellow to melanous to the bourbon in addition to how we add our dilution water from about 114 proof to the smoother 95.8.

Oh, is that where the cognac comes in? It's from the fooder?

No, so it is truly three separate casks, mostly in varying sizes. But like I said, typically they're all larger format casks that held cognac or cherries for 20 plus years. I'm pretty careful about where I get my casks from. I want to know as much about the provenance as I can. And those get blended together and then put into the marrying fooders where they sit for typically a month, sometimes more before being bottled.

Jesse, are you the one that came up with the, uh, you said you created a label. So I'm assuming you created a little stamp on there that says bottled them ready.

Um, you know, to be totally fair with you, I don't think I came up with that one. I think our sales guy, Steve did. Yeah, I think he came up with that, that tagline. He's pretty, pretty good at those. So, um, we all have a little bit of us in these labels. Um, I, I'm the one that just sticks them together for the most part. And then kind of comes up with some of the, uh, the backstory and the process, of course, on each product.

I mean, I really liked that, that you guys put that on your label because that's saying, Hey, you're not going to rush to do anything. Uh, you're going to wait for when the whiskey tells you, Hey, I'm ready to be drank.

Yeah, absolutely. Mike, that is exactly what we do here. In fact, people always ask me like, Oh, so what is it? Is it 45 days in the barrel? Is it 60 days? Is it two years in a barrel? And my answer always simply is that the barrel tells me really when it's ready, ready to be to be pulled and everyone that goes into these blends has a different age time frame on them based upon how the whiskey is evolving in there. And that is truly how I actually blend the whiskeys. Um, it's not just based on, Hey, well, these ones have been there for 45 days. We'll call it finished. We don't just check that box. That's not our style. So we, we really believe in bottled when ready.

And, and this is a, this is a mixture of two different match bills as you mentioned, but it's also, you're not using four year old barrels. You're using five and six year old barrels. Is that true?

So there's kind of to some degree, there's a bit of a blend. The youngest we've ever put in this particular product was like 4.8 years old. Sometimes we kind of got to make some whiskey go into the finishing gas. And it's been a little bit harder to find older whiskey these days, I'm sure you're all aware of. But none of it goes into the bottle before it's five years old. So it is a continuance for some of them. So it's good range from that mid fours up towards six years, not quite, and then finished for anywhere from typically on a minimum of three months up to a year is kind of the spread I'm working with these days. And that's changing, evolving, of course, as we have time and more risky.

Well, the, the texture on this is really nice. Mike, it's kind of got a velvet kind of a velvet hammer. That's a good way to say it. It kind of hit you on the back of the palette, but it's, it's nice and velvety on the tongue and, uh, it's very enjoyable. Great.

Good job. Thank you. I appreciate that. Like I said, this is a lot of labor of love has gone into this and we try and keep a pretty nice consistency between each bottling, but do keep in mind, we do have batch numbers on each one of our bottles to emphasize that this process does change or evolve a little bit as time goes on. The goal is always to, if there's something I can improve and I find, I'll try and do that.

You guys are in like 26 states across America right now. Yeah. What's a bottle like this average price for something like this go?

So, um, I, and this is where my sales guy who would probably yell at me through the window or something like that. Um, it's usually around $65 somewhere there, I think is the generally the sweet spot for this. Um, of course that depends on what state you're in. Um, but usually around $65 a bottle. Um, and then taxes are a whole nother. We're in Washington here. It's the worst state for liquor taxes. I mean, you might as well add 30 bucks to it. Wow. But yeah, if I go to California, we can pick this up probably for, I don't know, 55, 60.

Maybe. I think that's what it was in. Yeah. I saw it at Liquor Bar and I think that's what it was going for. They actually had your Rye there also. And then they had one of your experimentals that had a different price tag on it.

Those are always incredibly limited. So and oftentimes they can be older whiskeys as well. So, yeah, they usually, you know, making 400 bottles cost a lot more than making 5000. Yeah.

And is that what how big a batch is right now is about 5000 bottles.

They kind of range depending on as the casts are ready. But I think with triple cast, we tend to be close to 8,000 bottles per batch or so. And we do keep most of these notes relatively updated on our website, docswhiskey.com. So you can literally look up the batch number and find the information attached to it. And they get a little more detailed depending on which product it is, of course.

Well, Jim, I tell you, man, that cherry is sticking with me, that cherry note. More of a really nice cherry pie, maybe with a dollop of ice cream that's warmed up. Man, that vanilla ice cream and that warm cherry pie and that crust in a glass, that's what this is right here. It's pretty damn nice, Jesse.

Thank you. To be fair, some of this information I got to give to my grandmother who used to put liqueurs on my ice cream as a kid. So, this was kind of a little bit more of the dessert kind of whiskey, you know, you want to hang out with the glass for a while.

Now there is a little bit of a nutty note to this. Is that coming from the barrel finish? Is that coming from the original bourbon? Where's that coming in from?

Absolutely. So you hit that nail right on the head, actually. The Oloroso Sherry finish, if you just try our Lamente, which is just that one, which is one third of the, you know, one portion of the triple cask, It has quite a nuttiness to it, actually. It's very citrusy and nutty, so a fair amount of that comes out of the Olorosa sherry finish.

Okay, cool. Yeah, I've got a long way to go to be able to attribute notes to their sources. I mean, right now, Mike and I are just working really hard to pick out the notes that we can recognize, much less to know where they're attributed to. Hey, just keep drinking whiskey. That's right. We definitely do our part. Don't we, Mike?

We might drink a little bit of whiskey, Jim, not too much, but, uh, maybe a thousand bottles a year. I don't know. We get around.

Hey, that's, that's awesome that you do that though, really. Cause keep in mind, I'm only 31. Even though I've been doing it for 10 years, I'm still learning this every single day. It's absolutely incredible. It's, it's an incredible industry to be in.

So, you know, Jesse, like yourselves, we were talking earlier before we started recording and, um, people always ask me and Jim, Hey, what's your, what's your favorite bourbon? And, and Jim is spot on always. And I want to always say the same thing is we're always looking for that. new thing that we haven't tried that's gonna just blow our minds. That's what we're looking for. That's our new favorite right there. And when we find it, we're like, man, that's spectacular. And I really like this. This is really growing on me. That first punch now, You know, that first initial punch, once you get past that, uh, it really opens up and is a beautiful, uh, expression of whiskey. And I think that's why I finished whiskeys. Um, people need to pay attention to them and they could really get you in a whiskey. If, if, if you're new to whiskey and you're having a hard time finding something you like out there, listeners, try something like this right here. Um, if, if you got 60 bucks, um, try it and, uh, You might be surprised.

And, you know, I always say the same thing. Look for the craft in the bottle. So if you're looking at a non-distilling producer who's finishing bourbons or blending bourbons and adding that true craft to the bottle, most of that's going to be available in research. You can find it out on the internet. You can listen to podcasts. You can certainly read labels and look for that craft. Look for the indication that craft in the bottle. There's just as much great stuff happening from an NDP producer. than there is from somebody who's actually distilling, making the distilled themselves. So there's an awful lot going on. And I just say, do your research and try some of this stuff. I think you'll be surprised.

I don't disagree. That's an amazing way to go, to be honest. To be fair, I think there's a lot of people forget that blending is a big part of the art, especially in making spirits out of Europe or Central or South America as well. So I know we sometimes catch a little flack because we're not the base distillers, but think of us like chefs. Usually chefs don't raise their own cows either for their steak.

So Jesse, how did you get started in this business?

Other than a strange fascination when I was a child, for all things alcoholic. That's really where it started. My parents were really into brewing beer back way before I was alive. Just on a home level, really interesting stuff. Then of course, when I was old enough basically to pack the hop bags, I did it. I brewed a lot of beer as a kid with my family and then produced liqueurs with my grandma, as I said earlier. We had fruit trees, berries, all sorts of great stuff on a little family farm and in our property. I think it just really sparked the fascination for processing methods for me and then realizing what kind of joy you get out of tasting something through, honestly, a lot of patience and attention to detail. So I took a little bit further and was curious how in the world you get spirits, specifically because I liked the liquors as a kid. And as a kid, I wanted sweet sugary things on ice cream. So I basically just started picking up every book I possibly could about distillation methods and techniques, liquor production, wine, you name it. And I kind of went down my own path and really wanted to understand some of the... One of the coolest industries, I think, on the planet, actually, because it stems into so many different things in our lives that we're really unaware of. And it's history. So combining history with manufacturing, with the pure joy of what tasting is. And that's how it all came together. when I was in university, the craft distilling movement started taking off. So this was 2011-12 right in there. And down the street from my university, there was an apple orchard that put in a distill from Vendo. Gorgeous distill. And I applied because I needed some money to pay rent. And thinking I would get some great education from whoever maybe they had hired, not thinking, not realizing that really, most of the people that start their own craft distillery often didn't, at least at the time, didn't have much of a background in it. So essentially, they handed me the keys, this older couple, they handed me the keys and said, well, we make, you know, 3.4 million pounds of pears and apples a year and you figure it out. So I got into brandy distillation and applied the techniques that I learned from so many different texts and also meeting people in the industry to producing brandies. And ultimately led me in the path of blending, which is what I really fell in love with. And that's how I got here.

You know, who doesn't want to go over grandma's house if she's pouring liquor on your ice cream? Right, Jim?

I think so. Absolutely. I never got the opportunity, but I would, I would belly up for that. No doubt about it. I'm just wondering if we could, I'm just wondering if we can expect, you know, grandma Swenson's, uh, Likuders on down the road somewhere. Oh yeah. We'll have to introduce it to the marketing team.

That'd be pretty awesome right there. That'd be funny. Or even a grandma's liqueur ice cream for adults. That sounds pretty good.

Next life in this arena.

Well, everybody needs a whiskey ice cream. I think that's true.

That's true. That would, that would be amazing actually.

Now, what do your parents think? You know, they brewed beer, your grandma served you and I don't know if she's still alive. She got to see you do that. Those are not, but what do they think of you? Uh, pretty much run into distillery and blending.

You know, it's kind of funny. Even growing up, my dog's name was Whiskey. So I feel like it was just almost destined. I mean, last name is Parker. It seems to go along with the crowd a little bit. And I know my parents are pretty proud, primarily because I think I could pay my own rent. No, they're incredibly proud and happy that I've been able to take what I essentially just became obsessed with as a kid and learning as much as I possibly can and turn it into a career that I really love. I love the people I work with. They're wonderful support. And then basically following a dream of mine. So I'm sure they're incredibly happy about that. And my grandmother is still alive. Uh, and she is aware of what I'm doing. And, um, you know, I, I'm sure if she can hear this podcast, she'd be kind of laughing in her chair at the moment.

So, yeah, I would say as a, as a parent and I'm a parent of some 30 somethings. So, uh, I would say that, uh, the first thing is, uh, keep them out of jail. Right. Second thing is, uh, can they pay the rent at that point? You're doing good as a parent, you know, anything after that is win-win bonus, right?

Yep. I think they I don't know if they could have said that better. I know they would agree with that statement exactly. So I think my parents just always say, go have a good time. Try to stay out of jail. If you do, though, I'll come pick you up. That's what they used to say. So I got to say they're very supportive of whatever the heck I was getting up to.

Well, Jim, any final thoughts on this? The bourbon.

Well, I can tell you this much. I'm really glad I ended up with a whole bottle of this because I'm going to cherish it. I'm going to drink it and I'm going to be looking forward to the next expression that comes out of your operation there because it's really good. I mean, from texture to finish. to initial impression on the palette was a tremendous. Mike, you said it was a big boom boom when you took it. Um, I think it has a, it has an immediate impression on the palette. I think you can taste the influence of the steps you took in making it. You can sort of identify, uh, those components a little bit. I need a little bit of help on that, the source of that nutty flavor, but I think, uh, yeah, it's, it's all there. I think it's a whole package. And I'm just wondering if you're going to submit this for some competitions.

We have actually and it's actually done incredibly well. It's taken quite a few double golds and Platinum's recently among several very notable competitions, including San Francisco, Ascot, Cigar and Spirits, New York Spirits competition have all rated this one pretty excellently, which is great because it's one of our core lines. So it's one you should in theory be able to find in any of those states that we're distributing it into. And we're finding a lot of feedback, especially once people pick up the bottle and actually give it a try. Sure. So that's what we encourage you to do. Try something new. You might really like it. Mike, final notes from you?

Yeah, I just really like it as a finished bourbon. It's something a little bit different than other finished bourbons I've had out there. There's not a whole lot of triple cast going on. So I've got to commend you on taking the time and doing that and blended it correctly. That first impression was, wow, it's got that spice, that boom to it. But that second sip was just so beautiful and stuff. And I really liked it. I actually poured a second pour and drank that while we were doing that. So hats off to you, because I usually don't do two pours on a show in the first half. So, well, listeners, stick with us. We'll be right back. 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. Um, 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. Uh, that's saying something.

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. Um, you could find a syrup down there aged in their barrels, treaty Oak down in dripping spring, Texas. Um, I was just out there. His syrup is going to be there. Awesome. Um, and in Garrison brothers in Texas, if you think, uh, you love some maple syrup, make sure you go to Garrison brothers and pick up a bottle from them. Also, uh, 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. Listen, so we are back. We've got Jesse Parker in the house. He's the master blender for Doc Swenson's in the first half. We got to taste their, uh, alter ego, triple cask bourbon, straight bourbon, uh, finished in Sherry and cognac casks. And I think and I both, uh, finished that first half with two thumbs up in the air. We both enjoyed it thoroughly. I think we're both pretty glad we have a bottle to sip on after the show is over as well. What do you say, Mike?

Yes, sir. Most definitely. I'm enjoy this. Actually, we'll probably share this with a lot of people. We actually poured a sample for Bruce Russell from Wild Turkey. So I'm interested to hear his thoughts on it. Me too.

All right. So in the second half, we get to kind of shift a little bit here. We're going into a new expression. We've got your Alter Ego Rye and this one has a little bit of a rum cask finish on it. So I'd love to get straight to this whiskey as well and have you talk about it while we're checking out the nose.

Certainly. Almost all the whiskeys I release here, I like to put an incredibly complex, almost impossible to follow processing method behind them. So I apologize if this one in particular gets a little bit hard to follow by the way it's produced. Kind of like the triple cask, the Doc Swinson's Solera method, rye whiskey finished in rum casks. We thought it'd be fun to make this one a little bit of an evolution over the last three or so years. And we start with two mash bills again, two both MGP. They're five plus years old, to start with, and some of them up in six now. And we blend those two. It's the 95% rye mash bill and their 51% rye mash bill. So you've got a lot more corn and you've got corn in that one, right? So it's almost more reminiscent, closer towards a bourbon, a little bit more of those influences in there. And we blend those two together, which creates our blender's cut rye whiskey, which we haven't even released yet. But we will. We like walking backwards in our way here. So We take that and we put it in what was our old bourbon casks. So the bourbon that was in those casks went into the triple casks that we just tried that had rum sitting in them for a number of months to years. And that rum is a private blend that we make here. So I also blend that. four different nationalities, aged anywhere from three to nine years old in three different types of casks, ranging from American bourbon to sherry and Oloroso, Pedro Jimenez, and in addition, Curacao casks, which has almost the smallest portion of it in it. It's like a fraction of a percent, but it has a really nice little bit of- Oh, it's good to say.

Wouldn't take much of that, would it?

No, not at all. I mean, one cask, I kid you not, over the couple of years we've been doing the Solera method release, I probably used a couple of gallons out of that cask. And I have 164 barrels in this process for the record, the Solera process that the rye goes through. So to back up a little bit, it goes from two blends of rye, Um, aged approximately five to six years old, um, that are blended and then put in these ex bourbon casks of ours that had a rum sitting in them for a period of time. And then we put the rye in that. And that's in the giant Solera system. So we've got upwards of three layers slowly moving towards four and more. And I don't know, y'all know what a Solera system is?

I think Mike and I know what Solera is, but I'm not so sure 100% of our listeners do. Sure. So it might not be a bad idea to sort of break down Solera for them.

Absolutely. So this was inspired by, of course, a lot of sherry producers out of Spain, where there's basically, I think the best way to visually represent this is say that there's a pyramid of barrels and there's a couple layers. Let's just say there's three in this instance. There's whiskey, in our case, there's rye whiskey sitting in every single one of these barrels. And we take a small portion upwards of no more than 20% out of the bottom layer of all the casks and we blend that together to bottle it. That's going to be the oldest whiskey in the selection. And then we replace that small portion that we removed at the bottom from the layer above it. We take the same amount out that's required to refill the casks below it and put it in the lower casks. And we repeat that process all the way to the top of our pyramid, at which we then add our youngest whiskey into, which in this case is the fresh blend of just the 95% and 51% rye whiskey. We put that in the top. And for our sake, because this is all as a rum from cast finish, all the cast were bourbon turned into rum. And then now we influence to make sure there's still rum going into the system. We put the rye in a separate set of cast to get the rum characteristic. And then it goes into our Solera. And over time, the idea is you could put a little bit younger whiskey in the top. And as we move away through the tiers here to bottle this product on the bottom, it creates an incredibly complex fractional blending process that each bottle some portion of that whiskey went through every single casks along the way. That helps kind of keep some consistency as well as creating an ever aging product. So we never empty the casks out completely. So the older product is teaching the younger product.

Yeah. Well, it's fair to say that no matter how many times I hear the Solera process explained, it thoroughly confuses me every time. I mean, the basic understanding here is that you're mixing things and never quite ever emptying things. And at the end of the day, you get the mixture of the old and the new and all things married together. Pretty interesting stuff.

I think it's almost something you have to see in person to kind of understand. The first time I had ever seen it was actually at Iron Root Republic down in Denison, Texas. Those guys are doing some and they were like, hey, this is how it works. And I was like, okay, well now that totally makes sense. Totally makes sense.

It's definitely a visual thing. If you saw it, you're like, oh, duh, that's obvious. It's just explaining in words. I could never seem to figure out the best and shortest way to explain it. Um, but it is a fairly complex process. Um, and, and it also allows this particular expression to lean a little bit more on how, how nature primarily affects the last portion of the blend.

I don't know if it's the rum factor in here, but I'm getting a little bit of espresso bean and a little bit of cocoa powder on this for some reason.

Um, one of the rums in particular actually has a lot of espresso, uh, characteristic to it. Yeah.

Yeah. The nose is, the nose is really good on this. I'm getting kind of a, Mike, you know, those spiced apples that we talk about from time to time for me, this is more of a spiced pear. So kind of a, uh, there's a little bit more of a lighter note to it than an apple, kind of like a pear. And yeah, it's, uh, they do make spice pairs, don't they? I don't know that I remember, but I would imagine they do. I've never seen one.

Um, the spiced apples are Jesse's probably like, what the heck are these spice candy?

I was like, we used to can our own fruit and pears and apples were certainly amongst them. And the pears we always put cinnamon in with. So I get it. That's exactly what this tastes like.

But well, there's these you're saying there, uh, there's a jar and they're like sliced apple rings that have been like, uh, They're not pickled, but they've been canned and they're very spicy syrup in there. And, uh, I don't know even know when you serve it. I don't even know if you can find them anymore.

Yeah, it's, it's kind of you. So have you ever bought a can of pineapple rings? You know, the actual pineapple rings come in the can and they're stacked all on top of each other. Kind of like a little onion ring looking thing. Well, spiced apples are the same way. They come in rings like that. And the juice that's put in the can with them is hot, spicy juice. So sort of a Christmassy holiday kind of spice. And yeah, you serve them during holiday meals. But anyway, that's what we operate off when we're doing tasting, right? We operate off our memories from childhood, our memories from things that were positive in our lives. And for this, I get a spiced apple, but man, it just leans a little bit more towards a pear for me.

Absolutely. It's kind of funny that you say that a lot of tasting comes back to memory. In fact, all of these products have a memory for me when I go to blend the whiskeys. This one, in fact, is the exact thing you're describing is something that my mother used to make and can when I was a kid. And in particular, occasionally the pears, the spiced pears, sometimes she didn't get it right and they'd ferment a little bit. And believe me, my mother saved them all for me. So I know it sounds terrible. They were great parents for the record. We're not just drinking all day letting the kids drink, but this is exactly what it reminds me of. In fact, when we're processing this in the back, some of it, we spill a little here and there on the floor, moving the tubes and everything around. And the whole building smells like spiced pears. It's absolutely incredible. So that's this, I'm glad you picked up on the pear there.

I think this this drinks just like the nose though. I mean, it's to me is spot on the pair that Jim was talking about. The espresso bean is in there, that powder, maybe a little bit of creme brulee. Yeah, man, this is a this is almost a dessert whiskey to me. They're like after dinner whiskey.

Yeah, this is a sweet, um, I'm not going to quite say it's a candy, right? But it's, it's, it's on its way to become one. I mean, I think give it a little bit more time. I think it would be a sort of a candy dry. Uh, but I am getting like, uh, some anise, um, a little bit of that. And also like those little, um, those little white.

figs that you had out on the table yesterday. Turkey, turkey figs. Turkey figs. I'm getting, I'm getting turkey fig on it too.

So, yeah. Um, wow. I think we could continue to talk about this as we sit here and sip on it and find more and more. There's a lot going on.

It definitely keeps evolving and kind of just unfolds on your tongue as you taste it. It's one of my favorite expressions for that reason. Also, I think it's a fairly approachable rye for people that don't necessarily like rye whiskey.

Yeah. I think what might be keeping it from going too far in that candy direction is probably that 51% rye that's in there. That 95.5 has a tendency to go there quickly.

Yep.

Yeah. So I'm texting Bruce Russell right now.

Right on. Oh my gosh. It's kind of like an honor that I got some of my... Yeah.

And he actually said he loved the bourbon and he liked it a bit better than the rye. And I said, maybe it was the rum and the rye didn't hit him just right. So he's actually texting back right now. So we'll see. We'll keep the listeners updated. What the Russell family thinks about Doc Swenson. Oh, that's how I pray. That's how I praise you.

That is, that is, that is truly an honor. You know, I mean, I'm all the way up here in the Pacific Northwest, but I've had my, my time in Kentucky too, and met some great people that have been honestly like just wonderful mentors or influence on, on, on, on what I'm doing. Cause I certainly am not from a bourbon heritage, at least that I know of.

So he texts back and he says, I actually thought a little water helped the ride to him.

Oh, beautiful.

Yeah. So a guy that really does know about whiskey and has grown up with it his entire life. That's my praise for your bourbon and said that water would open up your eye.

Oh, man, that made my day. I have no idea.

I don't think I've ever had feedback or anything from, you know, whiskey. Just Jesse's is like, I don't care what you to bourbon bullshit. Just what Bruce Russell says.

All right, Jesse, well, I'm going to, I'm going to challenge you a little bit here. So we've talked, we've talked about your bourbon. We've tasted it. We give you our opinions on it. We've talked about your ride. You've got our opinions plus others. Okay. These two bottles are sitting on the shelf here in Kentucky. Our listeners want to know what other States are available in. I'd love for you to just rattle off what you can.

Oh my gosh. That is, I hate to say it. That is, that is a challenge. I'll probably know. It's like being pulled over and having to say the alphabet backwards. It's not gonna happen. So California, Texas, Arizona, Washington, New York, I think New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan, Illinois, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, I'm sure there's a couple other in there that I'm missing, so I apologize. But I can tell you this, if you ever want to know, go to our website docswhiskey.com and you can click the bottle finder button, put your zip code in and it will populate what's near you. And if you can't find it in your state, we do ship to, I think, 39 other states too, which you could find that link. It's like a shop now or something on our website. And that'll get you right to all of our specialty expressions and the stuff too, which are in limited supply. So that's a way to get you there.

If you can't get it there, right, Jesse, and your state doesn't allow them to ship, our listeners, all they have to do is find their local senator or Yes. Representative and write them a letter and say, Hey, I want to be able to get whiskey shipped into our state. Right.

Absolutely. Please. I mean, push it. Why not? I mean, wouldn't you, wouldn't you want to get what you want when you can? It seriously helps us out.

Mike, I would say, I would venture to say that if someone shows up at the bourbon on the banks this year and they're a roadie. There's a chance there might be a bottle on our table. What do you think?

If it's not all gone, if we still have some, I'll definitely bring a bottle of it or heck. We might know somebody that'll hook us up. Who knows? Who knows? I do have a whole bunch of samples. Now you guys got some other stuff, experimental stuff that comes is coming out. What else do you have coming down the pike?

Absolutely. So in the name of what we do, we're experimenting all the time. So I work with a number of different casks from all over the world to finish our different whiskies in our blends. Coming down the pike, we're thinking of releasing here in early to mid-July is going to be three different fortified wine cask finishes. So Tawny Port, finish Muscatel and Pineda de Charentais, which are all going to be part of their own little series. And then in addition, we've done a couple stranger ones. One of them will start with the least strange, but probably one of the most exciting, which is called Funky Drummer. It's our rye whiskey that's finished in Jamaican rum cast specifically. It's been the one that's been, I know a lot of people are asking for these days. We were trying to release it almost a year ago and we didn't because we decided it wasn't quite where we wanted it yet. So that one's going to be a big hit coming out. Probably the two stranger ones, which I'm actually really excited about is it's the salera method rye that we were just tasting last. That was finished in Inyeho tequila casks. Wow. Which is pretty wild. So rum, tequila, finished rye. And that's got some beautiful notes on it. It's a pretty exceptional cast. I was able to get my hands on from Amazing Cooperage as well. And then probably the strangest one and the one I'm arguably most excited about seeing what people think of is our smoke on water is what it will be called. And it's very limited. I only did four quarter casks. So it's a peated scotch quarter casks that we finished our rye whiskey in as well. And I know a lot of you out there are probably thinking, oh, it's smoky. It's going to be gross or something like that. Trust me. I've so far sent it to a number of people just to get their feedback. And I've had several people say I was going to give the bottle away until I tried it. So that's a pretty unique one because I like peated scotches a lot.

They can be very beautiful if you understand them. That's how I try to help people.

Absolutely. The spicy rye, yeah, you just got to take your time with them, to be honest. And honestly, the spicy rye that we blend, it's our two mash built blend of rye in the peated quarter casks is nowhere near as peaty or intense as you think it would be. In fact, it's actually relatively fruity with a nice wet smoke backing and a little bit of like roast hatch chili peppers. This is pretty amazing, actually.

So, man, that sounds to me, it sounds amazing. And I think I have a sample of it upstairs. So me and Jim, we're going to have to dig into these and maybe that's a whole other show, Jim.

Yeah, that could be a whole other show for sure. I think it's a great idea.

Well, Jesse, where can our listeners find Doc Swenson's online and where can they find them on social media?

Yeah, so this is the other side of that test. I'm probably the worst millennial ever. And I'm terrible at social media marketing. So I forget how to do hashtags all the time. I hate to say it. But online, our website simply is docswhiskey.com. And if you happen to have a bottle of ours, there's a QR code on the back, you can always look at it with your phone. Um, and then Instagram is probably one of the best spots and as well as Facebook and that's, uh, uh, Doc Swinson's, um, you should be able to find our, our, our Instagram and our Facebook through that.

Well, Jesse, it's been a pleasure to meet you, a pleasure to have you on the show. We certainly appreciate you sharing your whiskeys with us. I think Mike and I will continue to enjoy these bottles you've provided for some time and we'll make sure to share them with as many people as possible to introduce them to your product. I think, you know, Mike, a lot of times when we're bowled over by a product and there's a product we feel pretty positive about. We try to, we try to share a little bit with as many people as we can. Most certain. We'd like sharing it with Bruce Russell.

Uh, I think that he's a good guy to share it with. But now Jesse, you guys, there's this extra bottle that came, right? I don't even know what it's for. Is it, is it for one of our lucky listeners?

I think it's going to be absolutely for one of the lucky listeners.

So there's a glass and there's a bottle of the bourbon and some stickers for one lucky listener. And what you're going to have to do, you know listeners, what I'm going to tell you to do, right? On the comments, on our Instagram posts, what we want you to do is go ahead and make sure that you're 21, that you reside in the United States. that you're following Doc Swenson's whiskey on Instagram. Obviously you're going to be following us if you're seeing us, but what we want you to do all day long, we want you to tag three people. And then we also want you to put hashtag Doc Swenson's. That's what we want you to do. Tag three people and also hashtag Doc Swenson's at the end of the night at nine o'clock. Cause I'm an old man. Jim will tell you that I got to go to sleep at nine o'clock for some reason. Um, I don't get my daily nap. Uh, so tag doc Swenson's on there. Follow them. Um, we're going to give this a bottle and a Glen Karen from them away to one lucky listener.

Well, Mike, that's a great, uh, that's a great prize. I think we'll have a lot of people jumping in on that one. Uh, on the day of the release of this show and in our Instagram post, I really look forward to hearing what our listeners say about their experience with Doc Swinson's once they get to pour it in their glass. So Jesse, again, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for spending, uh. a little bit of time in the afternoon with us. We certainly appreciate it. We hope we could do this again real soon and talk about some other expressions that you've got coming out.

Absolutely. Jim, I thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to be on a show like this with y'all. Um, and, and of course, trying the whiskies. I mean, people such as yourselves and, um, and your listeners are the ones who really help, uh, keep us making rolling out new whiskies. Uh, we're a small company, so it all really helps. So thanks so much. And I'm excited to do another one with you.

Awesome. So Mike, where can people find us on the internet?

Well, you know, you can find us almost anywhere. You can find us on TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. Our main place you can find us is on Facebook. We got a private Facebook group called the Bourbon Roadies. You want to go ahead and check that out. Three easy rules to get in the Bourbon Roadies. Are you 21? Do you like bourbon? Because hell, everybody likes bourbon. And do you agree to play nice? Because we don't tolerate any rudeness. Meaning, if you drink from the bottom of the shelf like that old tin high like I used to like to drink, all the way to the top of the shelf like that George T. stag that Jim loves, we want you to be able to come in there, celebrate life, celebrate retirements, births, graduations from high school, college, whatever, even death. We want you to celebrate somebody's life. Raise a glass to that person, but just no rudeness. Our moderators will help you on out of our group.

Awesome. So we do two shows every week. Every Monday we do a craft distillery episode. We kind of focus on one expression from a craft distillery, try to shine the light on people doing good work. We'll tell you what we think about that expression, whether or not we think you ought to add that to your bar. And every Wednesday, we'll do a full-length episode like today's with Jesse Parker from Doc Swenson's. We'll spend an hour. We'll break it down into two halves. We'll get you to work. We'll get you home. We'll drink a few expressions. We'll have some great conversation. We want to make sure you check out both episodes every single week. And Mike, what can they do to make sure they don't miss one of those?

Well, listeners, you need to scroll on up the top of that app. You need to hit that check sign, that plus sign, that subscribe sign. That app will let you know, hey, these two jokers have a show out today. That way, like Jim said, you can get to work, get back, listen to us, find out about some great whiskey like Doc Swenson's. Then we need you to scroll on down, hit that five star review and some comments, because you know what's going to happen if you don't. The big bad booty daddy of urban is going to come to your house, dragging a wagon full of this Doc Swinson's. You'll drink all night long. By the end of the night, you're going to leave us that five star review. I guarantee. No seriously those comments that five star review opens up doors to great distilleries gets great whiskey in our hands like Doc Swenson's great guests on our show like Jesse here. We really do appreciate it.

So Mike and I are very approachable. Mike loves it. When you walk up to him in a liquor store, he loves it. When he sees you in an airport, uh, make sure you stop by and tell Mike you enjoy the show, but we're also very approachable on the internet. So if you've got an idea for a show, if you've got an idea for a guest or a bottle, if you've got a small distillery in your hometown, that's doing it right. Let us know up under our website, go to the contact us page, send us a note. We'll get, we'll get on top of it. We'll get them on the show. We'll get a bottle from them. Well, everybody know what we think about it. You can also send us an email. 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 Shen 63. I'm big bourbon chief and we'll see you down the bourbon road.