281. The Cocktail Contessa

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 seeing 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're out at Jephthubin Farm.

I know I feel like we should have some Garth Brooks playing in the background with that thunder rolls. Thunder rolls, yeah. You might hear the thunder and lightning in the background.

A lot of storm going through, but we're due for it because it's almost a desert out there.

That's a little parched. And that's the reason we brought our guests in today, because we were parched. It was like 180 degrees outside today.

Well, there you go. Who's our guest, Mike?

So we have the cocktail contestant herself, Heather Wibbles. She is managing director for Bourbon Women. She also has her own website. She does all kinds of stuff. You'll see at her events, Bourbon events around town. That's where I saw her last was at Jim Beam when they did their grand reopening and named Freddie New master distiller there Jimby.

Uh-huh big day big day Well Heather, welcome to the show. We're glad to have you. I'm glad to be here and to make some cocktails for you Yeah, I'm pretty excited Mike that drink a couple of cocktails that are you know, we throw them together Well, we don't necessarily, we're not artists at it, right? I mean, we don't necessarily.

You make a pretty good cocktail. I don't, Jim. I just throw it together and hope it tastes good. Do you measure?

Please tell me you measure.

I don't measure nothing.

Oh my God, you don't measure. Okay. We're going to have to have a conversation about that.

I'm like that old school cook that just kind of throws stuff together.

I know, but if you make the perfect cocktail without measuring, you can never repeat it. Your family will spend the rest of their day saying, remember that time Mike made that perfect old fashioned and he's never been able to do it since. If you measure and write things down, you don't have that problem.

That's why I put a Coors beer in everybody's hand.

You know, then they don't notice, do they?

Yeah.

Is there a reason for the Coors rather than another brand?

I don't know. I just, that Coors banquet, that little bitty yellow jacket bottle is, it fits perfect in my hand.

Well, for you, I guess it seems country. It seems Texas. It's, well, it's Colorado actually. Well, it's west of the Mississippi.

East bound down, you know, a smoky and a bandit was the reason why. That's the reason why, right there. I'd watch that movie when I was a little kid and I was like, man, I'm going to drink that beer. I'm going to drink that beer.

Okay. Well, yeah, I can't do anything about that.

That's what I grew up wanting to be too. I wanted to be Smokey and the Bandit.

Smokey or the Bandit.

Man, you want to really be both. You want to have that car but be able to drive that truck.

Well, you know, that's true.

Yeah. That is true. That's a classic show. And then what was the young lady's name in that show? Oh, I don't think she's young anymore. No, she's not. Because I saw her on TV. Sally Fields. Sally Fields.

I saw Sally Fields in a movie the other day. Very recently made movie. She's still kicking it. That's Forrest Gump's mama. Yeah. That's Forrest Gump's mama.

Among other things. She's been in all kinds of stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah, her resume is quite long. Yes. It's kind of like yours Heather. You're a cocktail contestant. Now that's royalty, right?

It is.

Cocktail royalty.

Do you want to know how that name came about?

Let's hear it.

All right. It is Peggy no Stevens fault.

Of course it is.

Of course it is. She always has the best names for everything. I was doing an event at her house and she had asked me to make some bespoke cocktails for her and come in and create them for the people who were coming and batch some and then do some on the spot. And as I walked in the door, much like I did here carrying a box of liquor and a bag of cocktail implements, she said, oh, it's the cocktail Contessa. And I said, can I use that? She's like, sure, no problem. So I went home that night and registered the domain name cocktailcontessa.com and just started creating cocktails. I had already been creating cocktails for Bourbon women. Yesterday was my nine-year anniversary in Bourbon women. It popped up in my memories on Facebook. My best friend and I went to the Filson Club and it was an event to celebrate Fred Minick's book, Whiskey Women. Joy Perini was there. She's since passed. And she was mixing cocktails. There was Jimmy and Jerretta. Russell were there. Peggy No-Stevens was there, Susan Riegler was there, and it was just this conversation about the sort of forgotten history of women in whiskey. And we were sold. We joined that night and we've been going to events ever since. So really since then, I had started playing with cocktails and I had won, we have a yearly contest every year. We have the Not Your Pink Drink Contest. And the whole premise behind the contest is that Women who like bourbon do not need pink drinks. We don't want to be pandered to. We want a cocktail that tastes good. We want a cocktail that tastes like bourbon. We want a cocktail that celebrates bourbon, right? We're not playing around, right? We're not messing around. And so I won that contest three years. And at the third year, they said, Heather, maybe you could not enter next year and let someone else compete and win. Would you mind judging? Of course, I don't mind judging. Who minds making cocktails and getting to taste test them?

Absolutely.

So that's how that all came about.

I can be a judge of a cocktail, for sure.

Well, speaking of tasting cocktails, Mike, We'd be a bit remiss if we didn't let our listeners know what we're going to be sipping on today.

Yeah, Heather made us some badass cocktails. I don't think I've ever drinking down a glass like this. I feel like I should have my pinky out.

Your pinky definitely needs to be out. Now, I didn't get a fancy skewer and I didn't trim the orange up, so it's not super fancy like I might take a picture of, but it has all the basics in it. And this is one cocktail that I love to make for whiskey drinkers. It is called a Black Manhattan. It is a classic kind of Manhattan that's more recent than the regular Manhattan. The regular Manhattan's pretty old. And it includes Amaro, which is an Italian liqueur. It's a digestif. And it has bitter notes. What was that word again? Digestif.

Digestive.

Italian word. And it is something that you drink to help you settle your stomach after a meal. Some of them may be considered aperitif, so you would drink them to get your appetite going. They are highly bitter, and they're very sweet.

So this is right up our alley, Jim. It is.

Bitter and sweet.

We could eat this, drink this right after we eat that Nashville hot chicken.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. That would be good. I'm missing a Nashville hot chicken.

I bet. I bet. So the Black Manhattan basically is two ounces of bourbon or rye. In this case, we used Rebel 99. We used the 99 proof, right?

Not the Rebel, Ezra Brooks. Oh, the Ezra Brooks. That's right.

The Rebel was a different bottle. And the guys here saw me do what I always do when I test a whiskey with the other ingredients, is I smell the two together. So they got to see me holding two bottles up to my nose and smelling the two together, because if two things smell good together, they're probably going to taste good together.

It's like a double barrel up to your nose.

I know.

One for each nostril.

One for each nostril. And you know you have a dominant nostril, so sometimes you have to switch them. Really? Yeah, you do have a dominant nostril.

I was going to say, if you had a deviated septum like I do, you'd be in much trouble.

You'd have to hold both of them on one side, I guess, right? Is that what you have to do? Yeah, so, you know, since 80, 90% of flavor is from your sense of smell, two things smell together, they're probably gonna taste good together.

I like that. That's very tasty.

Yeah. And it's, you know, it's simple to batch. It's one of, um, you know, I batch things, I turn ounces into cups to batch them. So if I were going to make a batch of eight of those, it would be two cups of bourbon or rye, a cup of the Amaro. And I'm using 4-0 Amaro, which is one that, um, Michter's bourbon uses a lot for their black Manhattans. That's where I first found it was in an event with Michter's, a Michter's event. not at their Bart Fort Nelson, but at their plant, their actual plant before the Bart Fort Nelson was open. I got to do an event there for the Kentucky Bourbon Affair and had one of their black Manhattans. I'm like, oh, I need this tomorrow right now.

I've had a lot of people tell me, they were like, we've been to the distillery. And I'm like, you haven't been to the distillery. I was like, I've been to the distillery. They were like, no, it's down on Main Street. And I was like, no, that's not the distillery.

That's the craft side of things.

That's the pretty side of things.

That's the pretty side.

But they do meet the minimum requirements of a distillery. So they make just enough whiskey there to hold that license and to call it a distillery. And then they send that barrel all the way back down to the main plant and they have it blended in, don't they? Either blend it in or they make bottles out of it, right?

Do they do single barrels from what they make out of the Fort Nelson distillery?

I'm going to say they probably told us that.

I just don't remember the answer. They do now because you can get a single barrel there. That's the rye though. I think you can get a single barrel bourbon there now too.

Are they distilling both rye and bourbon there?

I don't know, that's a good question.

I thought they were just doing bourbon, but I could be wrong.

Yeah, I should have done some research back on one of our old shows before we came in here. I don't remember, Mike.

That stuff kind of, I kind of brain dumped that after a little bit. I don't know, but this is very good. The only thing I got to say is I wish I had a bigger glass.

I got more. No, you're good. I can make you another one.

So we've got the Ezra 99 in here right now, but what's your choice, bourbon, for making this cocktail? If you get to choose.

It depends on what I'm in the mood for. If I want something with lots of raisin and dried fruit notes to tie into the bitterness of the amaro, I might use Old Forrester 100. If I want something with some kick and some spice, michter single barrel rye, always a good thing. I personally love Johnny Drum. We were talking about Johnny Drum earlier. I love Johnny Drum's cinnamon notes because this amaro has both coffee and chocolate in it. And so the cinnamon and the coffee and the chocolate make this kind of almost like after dinner drink kind of thing that you can sip on.

There's a bottle of Johnny Drum over there somewhere, but it's probably way in the back.

Way in the back?

Way in the back. That whole cabinet over there.

If I use my right, my left arm, I can get way in the back. I can't do that with my right arm. I can do that with my left arm.

Yeah. Willard products really bring something different to a cocktail, don't they? They really do. They're just amazing. And I would say it's the same for me with like the Leapers Fork products.

Really?

Yeah. They kind of, they bring that special spicy, almost a crispnessy profile to it a little bit.

Yeah. You were saying, I was talking before about not measuring. I do make one cocktail and I measure for it.

And what is that?

It's a cold brew bourbon coffee.

Ooh, tell me more.

Two ounces of bourbon, ounce and a half of our bourbon maple syrup that we have. Cold brew coffee, four ounces of that, and two ounces of heavy whipping cream.

On top or mixed in?

You got to mix it. I got to mix it. I just can't have it.

But if you shake it up, you can get like that nice layer on the top.

Maybe just one stir would be like, and get a little bit of it in.

See now that would work. That would definitely work. So do you grate nutmeg on top?

No, but I probably would. You need to try that. I probably would have won with some nutmeg. Yeah. Probably would have won. We had our wives and we had for an episode, had our wives on and we each made a cocktail and then we went and had four or five different types of biscuits. And then we had four different types of country ham from around Kentucky. And so we had the biscuit, ham and cocktail and each one of us made our own signature cocktail for that episode.

And the cocktails were supposed to be kind of brunchy, right?

Yeah. Just a nice episode to have our wives on. And they always get mentioned so much and they support us so much. So you got to bring them on, right?

And you got to let them judge the cocktails. But you know why? Women have a 40% larger olfactory bulb than men. They're naturally attuned more to scents and more to smells.

That's why they won, Mike. I know. Dang it.

That's why I'm dead serious. I mean, anyone can be trained up on sensory, right? Anyone. I mean, there's plenty of very talented men and women in it and they all train and, you know, expand their own sensory palette. But women just have kind of a biological advantage that, you know, I thought it was left handed people. No, it's women. It's all women.

We're going to keep sipping on this black Manhattan, but I'd like to find out a little bit more about how you found your way. into bourbon women. I mean, you mentioned earlier, it was a number of years ago, but how you ended up where you are today, we're going to talk a little bit about your book. Yes. And in the second half, after we take our break, we'll come back and have another one of your cocktails. I'm really looking forward to that one as well.

Yeah. The pressure's on for me now.

Yeah. So why don't you bring us up to date?

Well, I told you about how we got into bourbon women and my best friend and I, I had moved. The whole reason I started even exploring bourbon is we moved from Nashville where we had lived for 17 years. Back here, my parents lived in Jeffersonville. I grew up in Jeffersonville and they now live in Clarksville. I thought, well, I don't really want to live on that side of the river because people in Indiana kind of have this thing where they don't want to cross the river. I don't know if you all have noticed that, but if you talk with people in southern Indiana, there's this psychological barrier associated with crossing the river.

That's a shame because we cross it all the time.

I know. People on the Kentucky side are like, eh, it's just Indiana. People on the Indiana side are like, oh my God, it's Kentucky. And even growing up, my parents didn't let me drive to Louisville. So the first time I had to take my brother to something in downtown Louisville, they'd never let me drive. And I turned the wrong way on Main Street and ended up way down in the far part of town. I had no idea where I was. And this is before GPS phones and stuff like that. So you just have your car and a map and that's it. My brother couldn't read a map. I mean, he was just bebopping. He was, I think I was supposed to take him to Actors Theater. So he was supposed to go and do some kind of theater camp. So, you know, that's, regardless, I moved back here. Let's get back on topic, right? I moved back here and I wanted to have more knowledge of one of the main things that Kentucky is known for. Horses are fine, bourbon is more fun. To me, bourbon is way more fun. So my best friend and I had started to do some bourbon trail things. We went to a couple distilleries for my 40th birthday. We rented a limousine, went out to two or three distilleries. I was hooked, she was hooked, and then we found bourbon women and then there you go.

So before you traveled up here from Nashville, was bourbon in the sites at all?

I mean, as much as any person who lived in this area has bourbon in their background, you use it to cook with, right? You throw it in your derby pie. You put it in your coffee sometimes when you're feeling bad, you make a hot toddy. So those kinds of things were always in the background. But a real awareness of bourbon as a special product of Kentucky and something that had a lot of depth and complexity to it, I don't think I had really discovered that until I moved back here and really started to learn about the distilleries. Because once you start going to distilleries and you see the process and what it takes to make a great spirit, a great bourbon, it really amps up your anticipation and your enjoyment of the spirit. And so even people I think who aren't huge bourbon fans, they go to a distillery, they taste a flight, and they may not drink at all, but they appreciate what they've learned. They appreciate the work that goes into it. But one of the things my husband wouldn't drink bourbon for years, and it was awesome because I had a designated driver. My best friend and I would go to the Kentucky Bourbon Affair. We would go to any kind of bourbon event at all. He'd drop us off, he'd pick us up and bring us home. Some of this was before Uber and left. And I just felt kind of bad. I'm like, he wasn't getting to enjoy what we were getting to enjoy. So we went to the Village Anchor in Anchorage. And I had one of their old fashions. It's a brown sugar old fash from the old Forrester, orange bitters. Had a sip. He took a sip. He loved it. He's like, I'm going to order one. And so after that, every Friday, I would make him an old fashion. So that's really where I started to make cocktails. I was trying to get him And you guys can't see this, but I'm actually pointing at him over in the corner. I was trying to get him and he's sheepishly grinning to actually sip bourbon. And so I was kind of crafty about it. And so every Friday I would create two old fashions and he would have to choose between the two. Right. And so eventually I'm like, well, I need you to help me decide. I need you to help me decide which bourbon to use. So he would have to taste the bourbons first and then choose from maybe four bourbons, which two we were going to make.

Sly. I know. And it works. That's the reverse of most stories we hear is most husbands are trying to get their wives to drink bourbon.

I know. And I didn't start with bourbon cocktails. I started with bourbon neat. I didn't start drinking bourbon and cocktails really at all. Most people, you know, start with cocktails. I'm like, oh, this is good. Let me taste it neat. Kind of like what I did with him. I wanted it full proof, high proof, you know, bold, brash, assertive, really fun, bold, complex flavors. But then I understood how much those flavors change with the addition of other elements. I mean, with the Amaro, it's bitter and it's sweet and it's chocolatey and it's coffee. And those notes can be kind of found in that bourbon that's underneath it. And you can elevate those notes in the cocktail. So, I mean, a really a great bourbon cocktail elevates the bourbon.

So in general, would you say when you're making a cocktail, you want the bourbon to accentuate the cocktail or to bring something new to it?

I want the other elements to accentuate the bourbon.

So having them pair together is very important.

It is, just like you would pair food, I pair cocktail elements. That's why I was wandering around your kitchen with open bottles smelling them at the same time. I will do the same thing with bitters. If I'm making an old-fashioned, I often put, I smell the bourbon on its own or the rye or the whiskey or whatever I'm using, and I notice what kind of notes are in it. And then I think about what happens when I put the simple syrup and it knows that again. And then I think about what it reminds me of that I just have on the aroma, but don't really have on the flavor. So maybe I get notes of nut notes in it, but there's not really any nuts in the flavor itself. I have black walnut bitters or maybe coffee pecan bitters. So, I use the additional elements to either pump up a flavor that I think needs to be bumped up or to add a flavor that's complementary to something that's already in there.

Mike, there's a whole new level to this thing.

You think we just throw the kind of things together? That's not what we're doing.

I have bitters, right? No, actually, I have two bottles of bitters. Old-fashioned, no, three bottles. I've got Angostura bitters, I've got old-fashioned bitters, and then I've got orange bitters. Yeah. But I don't use them to do things. I just follow some rules. I just follow somebody's recipe.

Yeah. Well, so let's think about this. So you said you have Angostura, old-fashioned, and orange bitters.

Yes.

So what's a flavor that goes good with orange to you?

I think chocolate goes good with orange. Yeah.

So if you had a chocolate, a bourbon or a rye that had some nice chocolate notes in it, some cocoa, like some deep cocoa, that would be a perfect bourbon for you to use with the orange bitters, right? Because the orange would combine with the chocolate and would taste like an orange cream.

Yeah. Like a old Forster 1910, right?

Oh, that would be so good.

I don't know, we got bitters here, but I don't know. I do know we have some cherry bitters and we have some orange bitters.

Perfect. I would encourage you two other kinds of bitters, chocolate and smoked chili bitters from Hella Bitters. Hella Bitters makes these smoked chili bitters that are fantastic for people who are whiskey enthusiasts. They have heat from the capsaicin, right? So obviously they have some chilies in them itself. And they have some smoke. So if you have a bourbon that has some like leather and tobacco and some char to it and you add the smoked chili bitters and it's a high proof. Oh, it's so good. And it's a high proof whiskey like Pikesville rye. Pikesville rye is just like this. I love Pikesville rye. Oh my goodness. Oh yeah. Like that and some simple syrup like Demerara raw sugar simple syrup. And then the smoked chili bitters just makes an incredible old fashioned for someone who loves high proof whiskies.

Wow.

That sounds like a good match for maybe the Knob Creek 15 year.

Oh, that would be good. Is it pretty smoky?

I think it's got that leather, that char, that extra oak to it.

Yeah. I think any of those, like even the Russell's 13 year is a really kind of a smoky charred taste to it, rich tobaccos and stuff.

Honestly, Wild Turkey 101 is even good with it. I mean, something that's assertive and aggressive can stand up to the smoke and the chili because it's an unusual bitter flavor to add. But the other thing it does is when you have a cocktail, let's say you have used Pikesville to make a cocktail, right? Type proof. When you actually make the cocktail, you're lowering the proof so the dilution goes down. So some of that heat from the proof is reduced. But if you add the bitters with the capsaicin, you get a little bit more of that heat and mouth feel.

I gotta say, since I've been in Kentucky, um, I've had more appreciation for a great mixologist. Um, like I'd never had a true whiskey sour. It wasn't for a mix until probably this Christmas we went to an event down at the seal box at the, uh, speak easy to downstairs with all the tiles and everything.

Yeah.

And oh my God, I saw the girl making it and I was like, I'm going to drink one of those right there right now. And I had it and I was like, this might be one of the best cocktails I'd ever had in my life.

Now was it over the rocks or was it up in a coop with egg white?

Oh, it was with egg white. And I just was like, I'm never going to have a whiskey sour any other way.

If you don't like egg white, you can also use aquafaba. Do you guys know what aquafaba is?

All these new words.

I know. So aquafaba, I'm a vegetarian, so I don't keep a lot of eggs in the house, but aquafaba is the juice from a chickpea can. So the juice that you pour out, you save that, and it has the same proteins in it that when added to the little bit of citric acid and the proof from, and a little bit of sugar and the proof from the whiskey, it does the same thing as an egg white. Like there are people who are vegans who actually make meringues from chickpea juice.

And it has that same frothiness? Yes. Really?

And in fact, the frothiness stays there a little bit longer. And I'll even give you another cheat. You're ready for this, it's gonna blow your mind. You don't even have to do like, there's a really complicated way you can do shaking. So you put the two together, put all your ingredients in a can and a shaking tin and you add the egg white or the aquafaba. You shake it really hard with one ice cube and you add the one ice cube just to make sure the shaker doesn't pop apart because you don't have a lot of ice in it. Shake it for 30 seconds, 60 seconds. Then you add ice, you shake it again and then you strain it out and you get that nice bed of foam on top. What you can do instead is use an electric latte whisk. Okay, have you seen one of those? No. It's about this long. It's probably like six to ten inches long. It's got a little handle on it and it's got a wire whisk on the bottom and you press on the top and it just makes this whisk go really fast. And it's something that you use to make a latte if you want to froth your milk. Well, all you do is you shake everything up so it's cold. You put it in a mixing glass. You run the electric latte whisk for 30 seconds, 60 seconds. Add your ice. Always fill it up completely with ice. And then, you know, traditionally you would make it that way and you would strain it into a coupe that was chilled. Make sure you chill your coupe. It was probably chilled when you had it at the event at the Raffskeller, probably. And then you get that nice foam. If you're going to use an electric latte whisk, which is about eight to 10 inches long, it's got a little wire. It's got a ring with a little wire whisk on the bottom of it. It's basically an electric whisk that's based. It's really tiny. I mean, no footprint at all in the kitchen. I'll have to pull it up on Amazon so you guys can see what it looks like. And you basically, you shake everything together, all of your ingredients with ice. You get it nice and chilled. You put it into a mixing glass. You run the electric latte whisk for about eight to 10 seconds. And then you have this glorious foam on top. Just pour it into a coop and you're done.

Wow.

It's easy peasy.

Learning all kinds of new stuff. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Jim will have one tomorrow. Yeah, probably will. I got a habit of buying that stuff and then it ends up in the cupboard somewhere and I just don't get it back out again.

But if you use it to make a good cocktail and you want that cocktail again, you'll get it out again.

Yeah, I probably would. I promise. So you make cocktails and you wrote the book.

And I wrote the book. Yeah, so the book came about because Bourbon Women was having our 10-year anniversary last year in 2021. And at late 2020, Peggy Noe Stevens and Susan Reigler said, we think we need a book for our 10-year anniversary. We're going to hook you up with University Press Kentucky. You can write a book on cocktails. And I didn't ask a lot of questions because when Peggy and Susan tell you that you should do something, they're usually right and it's all going to work out okay. So both of them really mentored me through the writing process and putting it all together. But what was fun was I did some research on what kind of bourbon cocktail books exist. And most of them are either historical books. So here's the history of the old fashioned or the Manhattan or a history of X, Y, Z cocktails. Or it's just a list of bourbon cocktails. And that's interesting. But I wanted to give people the tools to be able to think about bourbon cocktails so that they could make their own creations. Thank you. So I really wanted to take the book and give them tools to develop their own palette. It's just like you develop a palette for whiskey, right? You all know this. Whiskey drinkers know that everyone's palette is different.

Absolutely.

Right? We need to think the same thing about cocktails. We're hung up on the idea that there's one perfect old fashioned, there's one perfect Manhattan. There's not, everybody has a preference. There might be a classic old fashioned or classic Manhattan, but there's not one perfect Manhattan. So really what I wanted to do with the book and what I do for each main category is I have a science lab, a cocktail lab, and for the one for Manhattans, because we're sipping Manhattans, you try a classic Manhattan, which is made with sweet vermouth, a perfect Manhattan, which is split between sweet and dry vermouth, and a black Manhattan. And a reverse Manhattan, actually, which has twice as much vermouth as bourbon, so it's lower proof. It's very sweet. It's kind of fun. It's sort of a different take on a Manhattan. But that kind of lets you know and lets you figure out which kind of Manhattan you prefer. Do you prefer one that's less sweet? You probably like the perfect Manhattan. Do you prefer a lot of bitters? you're probably going to go for the Black Manhattan. And so being able to go through and do those kind of experiences for yourself and develop your own palette is a way for whiskey drinkers to really understand how to think about whiskey cocktails in a way that just isn't following a recipe blindly.

So how did you get there? How did you get to that point where you could write a book on cocktails. I mean, you're not classically trained as a mixologist or a bartender. You just love them. You enjoy them. It's an art. It's a craft for you. You taught yourself?

I taught myself and I did a lot of experimentation at home. My entire four-year is covered with alcohol bottles. I mean, I've got hundreds of, I don't know, we probably have over a hundred bourbon bottles. We've got tons of liquor bottles. They're all over the house. We have them stored in the laundry room, they're in the liquor cabinet. I mean, you just open up a drawer or cabinet and there's extra bottles all over the place. Just flowing out. Yeah, I mean, you all probably have that problem. Every once in a while you just wander around and you opened up a door and hey, look, there's an extra bourbon you forgot.

It does happen, Mike.

See?

It does happen.

See?

I lose, I lose bourbons is what happens.

And I'm like... You forget where you put them?

Well, sometimes it was sitting right on the bar. I was looking for a bottle of rye and I was like, I know I have it. I know I have it. I took a flashlight and looked back in the cabinets and it's like, and really what I'm looking for is the stopper is what I'm looking for. Cause I can recognize the stopper. I just didn't see it and it just, it was lost, but it was setting up on the bar in our great room behind a bunch of other bottles. And I just never looked there. So after the episode was over, I was like, there it is, right there.

Right where you thought it was, yeah. Right where you thought it was.

But yeah, sometimes stuff just goes missing here in the house.

Yeah.

All right. Well, listeners, we're going to keep sipping on our black bandans here. We're going to take a short break. And when we come back, you have another cocktail for us. I do. And we're going to keep talking about your book and cocktails in general, bourbon, bourbon women, and all good things.

All the good stuff. All right.

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

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

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

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

Yeah. Wow. That's saying something. Yeah. You're going up against some heavy hitters in Maple Syrup. And I know we're talking about just the syrup, but 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. Uh, I know he, he loves people. You're supporting a local farmer, a local product, a small family. This is no factory place. It's putting out maple syrup, right? Jim is a good man. Do a good work. Yeah. Got to love it. Well, make sure you check out his site. Like Jim said, seldom see maple.com.

All right. So we're back. We got Heather in the house. Author. Cocktail Contessa, Urban Women, we got all kinds of stuff going on. We got a new cocktail this time.

You do.

And it's a take on something Mike and I have both tried to make successfully. And I don't know, you can say we've been successful, we haven't been successful, different shades of success. I mean, I like them when we make them, but I'm ready to drink something professional.

Well, after you've several drinks in, anything tastes good.

That's true. So if you're going to make something complicated and fancy, do that first. And then you get all your taste buds all going and you get all excited about stuff and then everything tastes good after that.

So in the first half we had a black Manhattan. I mean, that's pretty darn near the top of my list now. I'm probably going to order that a little more often. I think I've had it, I had it once before at the Old Stone Inn, before they closed down. And the fellow in there that worked the bar, he was pretty good. But I don't know that that touched what I had in the first half. It was pretty darn good.

That's a compliment. Thank you very much. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

So what do we have in our glass?

So this time we decided to switch it up and do something closer to an old-fashioned. And I was talking to the guys earlier about these bitters that I love. It's Hella Bitters, has these smoked chili bitters. And so we use smoked chili bitters along with some orange bitters. And you all have bourbon barrel aged maple syrup, right? That's aged. Is it bourbon barrel aged? Is that correct?

Absolutely. For my good friends at Seldom Seen Farm. Exactly. Six to nine months. Six to nine months.

And that stuff is so sweet. I used about half the amount of sugar that I would usually use. So I use just a quarter ounce in each of those. Don't need much. And can you still taste the maple in it when you sip on it? Yes, I think we can.

Just a tad bit with that chili.

Just a little bit. So the chili is kind of the most prominent note in there. We used Wilderness Trail rye as the base as well to give it a little bit more spicy kick. So we kind of connected the spiciness of the rye. And Wilderness Trail to me is not super spicy. It's kind of a medium spicy rye. So he kicked up the spiciness with the hella bitter. So I did what I was talking about earlier where I took a part of the whiskey that I wanted to accentuate the spiciness and I used the bitters to bump it up a little bit.

So what's the proportion of spirit versus you said a quarter ounce of

So for me, if I'm just making a basic old-fashioned, it's two ounces of a spirit, usually whiskey of some sort, half ounce of a simple syrup, I tend to prefer brown sugar simple syrup made with light brown sugar. If I'm making it with maple syrup, maple syrup can have a very loud flavor, for lack of a better word, can be very prominent. So I usually bump maple syrup down a bit. So that's why I used about half the amount here. So what maple syrup does is kind of fun. When you think about a syrup, it's not just adding sweetness, it's adding viscosity.

Texture.

Right.

Yeah.

See, exactly. This is why whiskey drinkers make the best people to talk to cocktails about. You think you don't like cocktails, but you all know how to evaluate any cocktail anyone puts in front of you. You know mouthfeel. You know finish. You know how to evaluate if it's too thin, if it's too thick. I mean, those are the kind of things that people who love cocktails talk about all the time. And whiskey drinkers don't even think about it. It's sort of like a throwaway. Well, of course I know how to talk about that. So I just I want more whiskey drinkers to drink cocktail because y'all are really good at it.

I think that's one of the things I noticed when I started using maple syrup as my simple syrup or as my syrup.

As your sweetener?

As my sweetener in old fashions is that the texture totally changed. It became much more it became heavier and more creamy. I don't know, creamy is not the right word. Just- Viscous. More viscous.

I think if you're using simple syrup, most simple syrups, it's just kind of watery.

Yeah.

You know, it just waters down your cocktail kind of. Yeah. And when you're using that syrup from maple syrup, it is that viscosity. It's thick.

I mean- Yeah, and I normally use, so when I'm making them, and we've said this on the show probably a hundred times, Mike, we're talking about our old fashions. You know, two ounces of bourbon or rye, and then a half an ounce of maple syrup.

You use a half ounce? Yeah.

A half ounce. And then a number of shakes of bitters, depending on what you're feeling for the moment, and which bitters you use. But mine typically come out pretty sweet, and maybe I'm putting too much in.

Not necessarily. Do you like it that way?

I like it, but you know what? When you drink your own stuff all the time, you can get blinded to what's really good, right?

Well, you have a certain expectation of how it's going to taste, and you make it to fit that expectation. When someone else makes you something, you don't really know what you're going to get. They do it differently. We're talking about viscosity. If I'm working with the Manhattan and the vermouth is really thin, I'll add a teaspoon of simple syrup. So I just add a little bit of syrup when needed to actually add that mouthfeel. It doesn't add a whole lot of sweetness to it. I mean, if you use a half teaspoon or a teaspoon of simple syrup, Our buddy down here really wants a belly rub. And I'm not talking about either of the guys.

Let's just say it now. Woodrow is in here. He's in the house. He's taking the show.

He's laid out.

He's passed out right on my feet.

He's actually got a little smile going.

And he hasn't even had any whiskey.

No, no, he don't need any whiskey.

The dog doesn't get any whiskey.

No, I, the, to me, this, this old fashioned right here is perfect for today because, uh, you left a lot of ice in there. Um, it was a, it was dang near a hundred degrees outside today. And people will be like, Hey, what was you drinking a day? And I'm like, Oh, I was drinking a cold beer. They're like, Oh, you're not drinking whiskey a day. I'm like, hey, can't drink like just neat whiskey outside on a hundred degree day. It's very tough to do that.

It's hard to enjoy it. I would say you can do it.

Yeah, it's you're sweating.

You're like, oh, but it's not, it's not as enjoyable as like a high proof whiskey over one big rock. That's what I would do.

Yeah.

Or, I mean, a great cocktail like this. I mean, this one, I kind of, if you drank this outside when it was hot, it would be a little bit discordant because it's got the spice and the heat in it from the smoked chili bitters, from the hella bitters. And so you would have sort of that connection to the heat, you know, as you were sipping it, a little bit of smoke, which is unusual. And what happens with smoky things is water actually makes things taste more smoky. You all read the study that, you know, the smoke molecule is water soluble. And so of course they studied this in Scotland, right? They did a scientific study about scotch in Scotland.

They've been doing this a few more years than we have. Just a little bit. Were they drinking scotch?

Yeah, they're drinking Smoky Scotch and they add water to it and they're like, hey, I can smell and determine more smoke notes in it when I add water. And it's because I forget the name of it. If I were Susan Reglar, I would remember the name of it. But the molecule that contributes to the smokiness is water soluble. So you get water soluble, kind of pops off the top of it and becomes much more apparent when you smell it.

Wow. So going back to bourbon women, how many Bourbon women are there in the nation today, around the world.

Hundreds, hundreds, hundreds. We've got coast to coast. Our numbers are always changing, so I don't like to say one number, but we've got 15 chapters now. We just are Atlanta, or not our Atlanta, our Florida branch is having their first in-person event. What day is today? Wednesday? Is it Thursday? They're having the first in-person event on Friday.

So if a woman wants to join Bourbon Women, how do they go about that?

Look up bourbonwomen.org. And when you go to bourbonwomen.org, you can join. They'll tell you how much the membership is, tell you all the benefits. And really, one of the biggest things that you get out of being a member of Bourbon Women is the caliber of events aren't just tasting flights. They aren't just having a master distiller come and speak. It's really about bourbon culture, bourbon history, and the excitement that people have when they share bourbon together, right? There's something really special about being in a room full of women sipping bourbon. I mean, there can be some guys in there too. I'm not going to be exclusive, but it's really nice when women have their own space to talk about bourbon and enjoy it. And it's a very different room when it's full of women. The conversation is different. And one of the things that I enjoy so much about bourbon women is not only women having their own space, but bringing in master distillers or people who aren't really convinced that women are part of the whiskey conversation and have them give a presentation to a room full of women. And the women are not only listening to everything they say, they're asking really astute questions and they're expecting a very high level of explanation. And they want to know the story. I mean, for for us, I think, as permanent women, it's never just about, you know, we're not a drinking club. We've never been just a drinking club. We want to learn about bourbon culture. We want to connect over bourbon. We want to help one another develop. The friendships that you make with a glass of whiskey in hand may not be the friendships you would make any other time, but they can be really powerful friendships and relationships.

So, and you guys have one large event every year that women could come to, like a national event.

We have a national conference this year. It's in August, August 25th through 28th. We doubled the size of our conference this year. We had feedback that it was too short. So instead of just being three days, it's now four days. We start on Thursday with special bourbon nerd excursions. And we're doing excursions to different distilleries that are three or four hours long. You know, we're taking them, you know, to let's say this year we have Buffalo Trace, BBC, First Town Bourbon Company, Maker's Mark. We always do some Moonshine University excursions because people want to be certified as a bourbon steward at Moonshine University if they're in Louisville, right? So we start on Thursday, we have now all day Friday, all day Saturday, and on Sunday morning, we're adding excursions this year because people said, well, we're here. Why don't you go ahead and keep offering excursions?

Well, I mean, when you have a three-day event and people are telling you that it's too short, you know they're having a good time.

They are. And I will tell you, it was so funny on Sunday last year, you know, we had to skip 2020, right? Everything shut down in 2020. We were able to have a conference in 2021. And Sunday morning comes and usually from about nine to maybe 10 or eight to 10, we have breakfast. 11, 12 o'clock, there were still people in the conference room sitting there, visiting, talking with the people they had met, talking with the master distillers who had came, talking with the brand reps who had come. I mean, it was people did not want to leave. Part of that was probably COVID that we finally got to be together. We finally got to have this great conference. But part of that, I think, was we're just not done with the conversation about whiskey. And I don't even know if four days is going to be enough. I'll be honest. We have, you know, last year we started on Friday and there were people coming in the Saturday and Sunday before because they were going to spend the whole week doing bourbon stuff. So I was out at a distillery on Saturday and someone goes, Heather? And she pulls down her mask and I said, Nancy? And she had come in from Colorado and she was there already to start her week and they were doing distillery excursions all week until symposium started. We call it sip-posium, not symposium, just sipping. But yeah, so I mean, Bourbon Women puts on that main event every year, but we also have, every branch has several events. during the year. And we really try and make sure that we do virtual events as well. I mean, with, I don't know if you guys had this observation, but with COVID, we really could not gather. And so we really had to become proficient in creating fun and engaging virtual events, which we had no experience with before.

How did that go?

Great.

Yeah.

It went great. It was so much fun. And you know, what was funny is people would see one another on the Zoom screen and the chat would just be filled with all these side conversations back and forth and all these comments and all these, hey, are you in such and such? Can you get this? Can you get this bourbon? Have you tried this? Have you been to this distillery? And so it was like a, you know, you had the presentation going, but you also had the side conversation of like people whispering in the background and having comments. So, it was very fun and I think there are some bourbon women who are not near a branch and we have to continue to be able to present fun and engaging virtual content for them. I don't think virtual is going away at all.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, Mike and I struggled a little bit with that because, of course, we're not visiting distilleries anymore. record episodes online. And I think that there was kind of a breakthrough there where the episodes started out, I think typically those video-based interviews can be kind of cold and not real, I don't know, you don't really connect. There's not that personal feeling.

Yeah, there's some distance. You're sitting with somebody like you're sitting here in a front room with a dog on your feet and making us cocktails. You don't get that experience, you know, two or 300 miles away from each other over a computer screen. So it was a learning curve, but we, we got through, we had some rough episodes.

But I think, I think both we and our guests over the course of COVID learned how to do it better.

We learned how to connect virtually in a way that we have never had to before, I would say.

So now we still do them from time to time. We had an episode just the other day with a West Coast distillery and we had a fantastic time because we connected. We had a great time. We obviously drank their whiskeys, but we connected with the guest and it was, well, it's different than it used to be, I think.

And I think that's kind of a cultural thing now.

I think everybody's kind of gotten to the point where not only can they record their episodes remotely or have their meetings remotely, And it can work remotely now, right? And be productive.

And I think that, you know, if we go back to the whiskey side of things, whiskey enables people to make connections, right? The greatest gift you can give another whiskey drinker is to share a great whiskey or just to share a different whiskey with one another. And that's one of the things that bourbon women is just all about. It's about sharing whiskey. with a bunch of women, right? And a lot of times we're doing things where we may make a connection that we use for business. We may use it for personal or some kind of personal reason. Or you make a friendship that you never thought you would have. And I can't tell you how many people that I've connected with on social media who are bourbon women. And then I hadn't seen anybody in two years. And symposium last year was like this big reunion. I saw someone across the screen I'd only ever known on social media. And she said, Heather, and I ran to her and we gave each other a big hug. I'd never met her before in person, but these connections that you make over whiskey, whether virtual or in person can really be strong.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Well, Heather, so what, what was, how many tickets are left for the symposium?

Not that many, but we really want to sell out. So we are really, you know, I'm working with our PR team. I'm working with our content team. We're kind of pumping up, you know, ramping things up. I've got a bunch of pictures I'm going to make into some fun reels and try and get some traction. So we really want to get, we really want to sell out, not just because it's nice to have that cushion, but because when I want that many people to experience it.

So it's a four day experience, right? It's a four day experience. And what's the cost on that?

A non-member ticket is I think $4.95 and then a member ticket is $70 off. So a member gets $70 off the ticket. It's $4.25. It starts Thursday. And there's lots of add-on experiences, just like with most kind of conferences or bourbon festivals have VIP kind of experiences. We've added some of those in because the feedback we got was, we want to do something special. We're there. Let's do something we haven't done before. So we're having those bourbon nerd experiences on Thursday. And we have one of the things that's most popular are the in a bourbon house dinners where you get to go and have a very small intimate dinner at Peggy no Stevens house at Susan Regler's house or at Monica Wolf's house and all of them are consummate entertainers. They are bourbon hosts. They are bourbon They're just specialists in the field of bourbon just in general. And they have these magnificent parties that are small and intimate and fun. And you really get to connect with the people from the brands who are there because usually they have a special guest. Sure. Like last year, Peggy No Stevens had Lisa Wicker.

Oh, I love Lisa. She's so great.

It was so much fun. And, you know, it was it was a really special evening. And those are the kind of experiences that I wish I could give everyone. But we only have a limited number of tickets of those, you know. And so there are like we have a VIP tasting. It used to be called the president's tasting. We don't have a president anymore. We kind of reorganized. So that VIP tasting, myself and Margaret Horlander, the chair, were kind of pulling together these special bottles that we find. And I'm going to make a specialty cocktail. And it's going to be for 25 women, which is twice as many as we were able to have last year because of COVID. But we're really going to sit them down and walk through four or five or six special bourbons that you can't ever get or can't ever find and celebrate them together. Wow.

So if a bourbon roadie, one of our listeners, wants to get a ticket, a good portion of our listeners are female. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. If you go to bourbonwomen.org, there's going to be a page at the top that says, Symposium 2022. And in fact, I added a button to the middle of the homepage that says, take me to the information about bourbon, about the symposium, because I wanted it to be easy to find.

It says, join us now.

It says, join us now. And right under that, it should say something about, I can't remember what I put on the button.

Come sip with us.

Come sip with us. That's what it says. So, you know, we really want as many people as possible to come and enjoy it because it's a special experience to have. And it's something that, you know, if you look, if we go back to the book, the book is called Bourbon Is My Comfort Food. You know, when we put it together, we wanted it to have a real base about Bourbon Women. And so every chapter starts with a cocktail from the Bourbon Women leadership or someone who heads up one of our branches. We have branches across the country of branch ambassadors who are heading those up. And those are volunteers. These are people who donate their time to put together these events in different communities. So, you know, there's a whole chapter that's all about are not your pink drink winners. There's a whole chapter with cocktails submitted from our branches because we want to acknowledge that we are at this point a national organization. And I don't think that when we started, when Peggy Noe Stevens and Susan Riegler and a small group of about eight or 10 women started it, I don't think they could have foreseen the expansion across the US that we have now. I think if you had said that when they started, they would have been kind of puzzled about it. But I think the natural growth of the excitement about bourbon and I guess the engagement of women in bourbon both as consumers and as people who work in the industry has grown over time. It's just been a natural progression.

And the best things in the world are like that, right? They're not planned. They're not planned. They're organic. They just happen.

Exactly.

Pretty cool. And a great bunch of ladies who started that. I mean, certainly Susan and Peggy are two that have been on the show before. And Peggy is, you call her the queen of bourbon, don't you Mike?

Yeah, I think to me, she's the epitome of Southern hospitality.

No, she's the first female master bourbon taster. Yeah. And before her, you know, there wasn't, she kind of started the conversation about women and bourbon and women as consumers of bourbon. And Bourbon Women was really one of the first, if not the first organization to really center on that. So it's a conversation we like to have and we want everybody to join in, you know, we're really working on making whiskey more inclusive.

Yeah, I think to me, she's just super nice because she, you know, we're sitting at the, at the village anchor outside dining. It was the middle of COVID, right? It was. We were wearing masks except when eating. Yeah. And, uh, you know, she'd been on the show, but she recognized who we were and came over and said hi and, um, gave her wife some cookbooks, which they were super grateful for. And then paid for a round of drinks for our table. Yeah. Yeah. Sweet lady.

Very much so.

So, bourbon is my comfort food. Heather Wibbles, author. This is the Bourbon Women Guide to Fantastic Cocktails at Home. Where can people find this book?

You can find it online at Amazon at Barnes and Noble's. Carmichael's has it in town. Any independent bookseller, if you want to support your local bookseller, can order it and have it in town. I know it's carried at independent booksellers in Chicago and California. I've had friends find it and have it ordered at their, you know, their location where they are. And, you know, anywhere you want to get it, you pretty much can get it. It's available everywhere.

Now, this is a quality binding on this book. I mean, when you pick it up, you know, it's got kind of a, almost a satin or rubberized texture to it.

And I really had no idea what it was going to look like. I'd seen their proofs, and they didn't tell me that it was going to come in a month early. So with supply chain issues, they kind of moved my deadlines back about a month and said, we want everything in early just in case we run into any issues, which was fine. But then I didn't realize I was going to get it a month early. And I opened up the box, and it was very emotional. I will tell you, I did not expect to be emotional about it.

Well, it's quite an accomplishment. Well, heck, I'd be emotional if I had a book that was released and you see it out there. It's something to be proud of.

It is. And, you know, the way they designed it, I took all the pictures and the pictures are just beautifully presented in there and it's well designed and they really took the manuscript that I had and the pictures that I had and made it into a cohesive whole. So I really have to thank the press for that.

I can see your husband over on the couch over there. He's beaming with pride.

You. He had a lot to do with the book. He called himself the book bachelor while I was writing it. There were several weekends that I just said, I have to do photography. I have to work on a chapter. I have to do edits. I have to prove. And he's just, go do what you need to do. So what if we did something special for your listeners? What would you think about doing a Bourbon Is My Comfort Food book giveaway on your channel?

I think we'd have some listeners that are pretty anxious to enter that.

You think they might do that? Well, so why don't we, why don't you guys post on your channel the day this is released? You can put a picture, you want to put a picture of that with the dog. We could do that.

Oh, Woodrow in the book.

Woodrow in the book. You don't get Woodrow, you just get the book.

Just lay it down on him right now. We'll take a photo.

Yeah, you'll take a photo.

Can you lay it down on him?

You want me to do it right now?

Yeah, do it right now. We'll see if we can. All right.

We're going to see if we can put him on his belly. Oh, don't get up. Lay down. Here, let's do this.

Set. Oh, this is live. This is live podcast at its best. There we go.

All right. So what we'll ask people to do is to like and follow you guys and follow me at cocktail underscore Contessa and tag three people. And that way lots of people will be able to enter this and they will all have a chance to win bourbon is my comfort food. And I will also offer this, which I offer to anyone who has the book. I offer cocktail support online, which sounds kind of funny, but if you're working on a cocktail and you can't get it to turn out right, if you are not getting things to taste the way you want, if you're concerned about a particular ingredient, to message me on social media, either cocktail underscore Contessa or on Facebook, cocktail Contessa.

Awesome. And you'll sign their book for them.

Absolutely.

Awesome.

Absolutely.

That's a pretty amazing giveaway. I think so. Well, Mike, I'll tell you what, this has been a great show. I always love cocktail shows. I mean, I always like, I like food shows, like music shows, like cocktail shows.

Are there any shows you don't like? It sounds like you're liking most of the shows there.

I like the bourbon shows too, but you know, sometimes these cocktail shows just are really great because I, it's something I wish I could do better.

And you can, right? It's not that hard. You just have to think of it like whiskey, like make a flight of cocktails with different base spirits.

And Jim, you just got to remember not to drink the bourbon before you make the cocktail and write it down, write it down, measure and write it down. Measure Mike.

You got to measure.

You got to write it down. You both have your jobs.

I agree. Exactly. Well, I've really been enjoying this old fashioned, you know, A traditional fashion is good, but I love it with a twist like this. Those spicy bitters, those smoky hot peppery bitters in there, a little bit of maple syrup makes something special, something I hadn't had before, something I really enjoyed.

And it's easy to make. I made it in about 30 seconds.

Well, Heather, we certainly appreciate you coming on the show today. It's been a blast. It's been very informative. Mike and I have had a great time. Um, I look forward to reading through your book and trying some of those cocktails. I think, uh, I might learn something. I might, I certainly will learn to write it down because you've, you've made a point.

I made that clear.

You have.

If you learn to write things down and to think about it that your palate is your own with whiskey as with cocktails, my goal has been met because all I want to do is create more whiskey drinkers and cocktails are the gateway to whiskey.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And thank you guys both for having me on. This has been a blast to make some cocktails with you and hang out with Mr. Woodrow, kind of keeping my feet warm.

Yeah. He does a good job of that.

He's a sweet boy.

Well, we'd like to give you an opportunity to let everybody know about your website, any other information about how they might find your book, Barb and Women, everything you have going on.

And there's so much stuff going on. There's so much stuff going on. So to find me personally, CocktailContessa.com is my website. Instagram is Cocktail Underscore Contessa. And then Facebook is just Cocktail Contessa. And then if you want to join in Bourbon Women or find out more about Bourbon Women, that's bourbonwomen.org. And I would be remiss if I did not also talk about our foundation, which is dedicated to education and diversity in the spirits industry. That's bourbonwomenfoundation.org. So we've got those two things going on, but you can join bourbonwomen at bourbonwomen.org or also just email me heather.wibbles at bourbonwomen.org. I'll help you out.

Wow. You've got all the contacts.

I do. I can connect you.

All right. Well, Mike, where can people find us? You know, you can find us on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, man, everywhere, everywhere. YouTube also we're on there. We've got a couple of videos. Probably need to get some more on there.

But we're not on Twitch and we're not on Discord. I don't even know what those are. Not yet. Well, I don't think we will.

Okay.

He's tapped out. Slack?

You do Slack too?

I do Slack. TikTok's enough. TikTok's enough. Yeah. So you find us all those places. I'm about to have some new funny videos coming up with Professor Big Chief. Oh my gosh.

Folks, get ready.

You'll get to see Professor Big Chief talking about some whiskey, probably on TikTok and Instagram. I'll have a good time with it. Look for that. But you can also find us on our private Facebook group called The Bourbon Roadies. Couple thousand people in there, come in there and join us. You gotta be 21, you gotta like bourbon, and you gotta agree to play nice, because we don't tolerate any rudeness. Whether you drink from the very bottom of the shelf, little tin high like I like to drink back in the day.

Ancient age. Ancient age.

All the way to the top, like Jim likes to drink the George T. Stag, something like that, some Pappies. Wherever you're at on that shelf, we want you to be able to enjoy that without any bullying in there. We just don't tolerate it. Yeah, you won't last too long if you don't play nice. There's other places for that. That's right. We don't do politics, religion. We don't do guns or knives in there. No social issues. No social issues. We don't do any of that stuff. Just whiskey. We talk about whiskey, yeah.

Yeah, so it's a great time. We do two shows every week. Mike and I do a Monday episode. We call it a craft distillery Monday episode. We bring in a craft distillery, single expression, a bottle to try between us and taste and decide if it's something that we might want to recommend you put on your shelf. We're always trying to lift up a small craft distillery, doing something a little bit out of the box, trying to shine a little light on them. If you've got a small craft distillery in your hometown and you think they're doing it right, make sure you let us know. Every Wednesday we do a full-length episode like today with Heather. You know, we'll dive into a couple of expressions. We'll do two 30-minute halves. We'll get you to work. We'll get you home in the car. Sometimes we might even get you back again. The episodes run a little long sometimes, but we hope you enjoy both episodes every week. And Mike, what can they do to make sure they don't miss a single episode?

We know what you need to do. Scroll up on top of that app there, hit that check sign, that plus sign, that subscribe sign, whatever you need to do. Your app will let you know, hey, these two jokers got a show that has come out today and you need to listen. Then you know what I'm going to say, you need to scroll on down to the bottom of that screen, hit that subscribe button, that five star review, leave us some comments. We enjoy those. But if you don't, you know what's going to happen. The big bad booty daddy of bourbon is going to come to your house. He's going to drag Heather with her.

Wait, what?

Yep, we're gonna make some cocktails all night long. By the end of the night, you're gonna have a smile on your face. Hell, Heather will have a smile on her face.

But you're going to write it down.

They're going to write that down. Five star review for sure. But seriously folks, you know, those comments, those five star reviews, they open up doors to distilleries. They get great guests on our show. Like Heather Whittles here, the cocktail Contessa bourbon royalty in our house. Get great bourbon in our hands to review. We really do appreciate it.

We certainly do. Now, Mike and I are very approachable. We'd love to hear from you. If you've got an idea for a show, if you've got an idea for a guest, if you think there's a certain expression we should have on the show, let us know. Mike and I will do all the work. We'll get it on here. You can always reach out to us on our website. We have a Contact Us page, the bourbonroad.com. But 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 the best way, hit up our DMs on Instagram. I'm jshannon63. I'm Big Burban Chief. And we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.