300. Three Chord Tennessee Straight Whiskey Review

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

Well, you know who likes to give back to their community is one of our sponsors, Jim. Chris Cruz from Cruz Customs Flags. He does custom flags out of bourbon barrels. Not only does that, he do that, but he's also using veterans to build those flags with. I've got one right behind me, Jim. I know you got one on your bar. Beautifully handcrafted, repurposing a bourbon barrel, not throwing it away, not making it into smoking chips, making a piece of Americana, right?

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

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

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

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

Hello everybody, I'm Jim Shannon. And I'm Mike Hyatt. This is The Bourbon Road. Today, Mike, we're at Studio 1A, my basement.

Yeah, Jim's badass bar.

Hanging out with a few new bottles. One in particular is a company we've had on the show before, probably more than once.

Yeah, I think we've had them on once or twice before. We've reviewed a couple of other whiskeys, and this will be a new one for us. This is actually three-cord whisky. They're out of Michigan, but they're a non-producing distiller is what they are. The owner of the company, uh, Neil Geraldo. Yep. A little bit of famous guitarist, right? Yeah. He's been around the block just a little bit.

He's got a famous wife. Yeah. Pat Benatar.

Yeah. I mean, you were just like going down memory lane and listening to some other, her music, right? Yeah. Some really great hits.

She had a lot of hits, probably too many to count. She had a few that were, uh, Probably stood out above the others.

Hit me with your best shot. Yeah. Heartbreaker. Heartbreaker. Music like that right there. That late 80s, early 90s. Um, and obviously three chord is all about the music, right? Harmony of flavor, uh, structure and finish. Uh, their brand logo is actually a guitar pick. That's, that's pretty cool. And it says the power of three.

Yeah. So Neil owns this company. He was also a guitarist and a keyboardist like we're talking about here. In addition to Pat Benatar, he has played with Kenny Loggins, Rick Springfield is where he started.

Wow. I ran into Rick Springfield in Missouri at Table Rock Lake down there in an elevator and he looked like he was 90 years old.

Well, he's probably 90 years old. Well, he's getting there, isn't he?

Well, he's probably in his 70s maybe now.

Yeah. You know, I think I kind of lose track of that. You don't, you don't really realize how, you know, how somebody's getting along in their later years until you hear about them. You see them on TV. Yeah. Somebody has an interview and, or you run into them like you did and you get surprised. Wow. And there's been a few years go by since.

Well, you know, you think about it. He was playing there at Table Rock Lake. And it was a small convention center. So he wasn't playing no stadium at the time. Probably two or 3,000 people inside that little convention center. And it was a private convention. So he's probably being paid to come and play and stuff. And that's what artists do. But I'm sure the whiskey had caught up with him at some point. I'm sure he drank whiskey over his years on the road. But kind of getting back to this right here, This is a non-disclosed mash bill, obviously. A lot of them do that. That's all fine. It's a Tennessee straight whiskey gem, which tells you what?

Well, it tells you it's two years old. It tells you it's made in Tennessee. It was made using the Lincoln County process, so it's been filtered through some maple charcoal. Yeah, it says that on the bottle.

Charcoal maple filtered, or mellowed. It doesn't say filtered on it. It says mellowed.

So I'm noticing a trend here because it seems like an awful lot of the non-distilling producers are starting to come out with Tennessee whiskeys.

Yeah. Are we making a move towards Tennessee whiskeys?

You know, I just think that they're finding their own stride in the whiskey world and they're starting to get some more broader exception. I think, you know, whiskey has matured a lot in the last 10 years and I think primarily because of bourbon. And as a result of that, I think Tennessee whiskey's got a lot of exposure and people want to know more about it. So I think a lot of these brands are coming out with their Tennessee whiskey expressions and rightly so because Tennessee whiskey does have its place amongst the great whiskeys of the world.

This says this is Tennessee whiskey aged in new oak barrels for a minimum of 36 months. I mean, the youngest whiskey in here is three years old. So they'd had to put that on the bottle. Right. That's the rules.

The rules are if it's under four years old, you have to state the age. Yeah. But before we get to the whiskey, Jim, did you know this is our 300th episode? 300 episodes, man. I did know that, but I'm just surprised that we've been able to hang on this long. That's just, that's a lot. It is. When you think about what goes into making a single episode for the show, the amount of work it takes.

Yeah.

to say that we've done 300 of them. That's pretty crazy. That is super crazy.

It is super crazy. Most people would probably do one a week, or some people do it in seasons, or they only do one a month. So some podcasts might only be in their fourth year and only have 48 episodes out. Where we're doing two a week, we're reviewing a whiskey every week. And you're right, a lot of work does go into, hey, let's figure out what we're going to review this week. What are we going to talk about doing the research on the whiskey itself? Having side conversations about how we're going to go about it and stuff. And then coming up with main episodes, that's. That sometimes could be a nightmare with scheduling, right? It can be. It absolutely can be. But heck, it wouldn't be right to not say thank you to all of our listeners out there.

Absolutely. Because if nobody listened, we probably wouldn't keep doing this. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine that we would. You've got to have somebody getting some benefit out of your hard labor, right?

Yeah. I mean, we get plenty of benefit out of our labor. We do. Nice dinners we get to go to, nice events we get to go to. We don't pay for those. We're a guest most of the time. We'll get nice bottles of whiskey like this three quart right here given to us. We get to do a lot. We're looked at a lot. We get a lot of nice reviews. I think we're at about one hundred and ninety seven just on Apple of reviews on there. People have written words about us.

That is so cool.

That is so cool. So thankful that. You know, I got invited to come on this journey with you and kind of look at whiskey from an insider's perspective and talk about it and. But I can't imagine that you thought at the time when you started, it was like, I want to be at 300 episodes one day.

No, never thought that. In fact, I wasn't completely sure anybody would listen to the show. I mean, I think that's the way everybody feels when they start a podcast. They're like, well, I'll do this. Let's see how it goes. People probably aren't going to listen. I mean, how are people going to find out about it? Am I going to be doing a good thing? Are they going to like it? What's the right formula? But, you know, you just do you. You just go in and just do what you do and don't worry a whole lot about the numbers and keep going. And if if what you're doing is good, it'll catch on.

It will. And we try not to look at the numbers too often. We do. We're not going to lie. We do look at the numbers just like anybody else does. And does it does it hurt if you fall out of the top charts? Yeah, it does. But then you got to look at it with the right mind because we're in a food category. And we're competing with coffee. We're competing with reviewers of restaurants. So we're competing with a lot of food celebrities that people don't realize. So even to be in a top 300 category, you're doing something right.

Yeah, actually, I was watching the Food Network yesterday. I think it was. And one of the judges on there was a podcaster that has a food podcast. And food network's pretty big, right? I mean, and those people who cook on there, they're pretty big stars, food network stars, right? Of course, the judges are coming on there and one of them's a podcaster. I just wanted to look it up. I just wanted to see where they ranked. Far below us. Really? Far below us. And they're in the food network, in the food category, and we're blowing them away. So that just goes to show you how dedicated our listeners are and how they tune in every single week and they keep our numbers up real high. I mean, it's pretty impressive.

Yeah, for the last week while we're recording now, this is going to be two weeks ago really, but we've been in the top 100. Matter of fact, we've been in one of the top two shows in America, obviously our good friends over at bourbon pursuit are probably always going to be number one. Um, and we're, we're right behind them. So that feels pretty good.

It does feel good. It does feel good. They do a great job. They have a great show. I love listening to it. I think you do too. So, um, but they, they've got that chemistry, they've got that thing going on, you know, they got, first to the starting line kind of deal, right?

Yeah. And there's other podcasts that have helped us out along the way and gave us advice. Dad's Drinking Bourbon was one to mention. Couldn't thank those guys enough down there in Tennessee. John and Zeke have always invited us in their town and said, hey, can we help you out? Some other ones, Bourbon Lens guys, we actually did a show with those those two guys. This is my bourbon podcast, Perry, Perry.

Yeah.

Yeah. People like that making this industry work with us. You got to thank thank them. And then you got the people that are not podcasters. You got the YouTube channels that. Mashing drum, my bourbon journey, you got it's bourbon night. And then along comes this other format, a whole nother format, right? Tik Tok. Tik Tok pops up and you got people like, Basement Rick House, just building this monster thing. And then you got Instagram guys that have their own channel, Chris on Urban Bourbonist, Bourbon Man. I can go down the line on Instagram of people that are building these gigantic accounts with followers and stuff. So all that helps us make our podcast even that much better. It helps us get content, come up with stories and kind of bounce off each other a little bit. Sure, absolutely.

Well, Neil, I want to let you know that we're still sitting here drinking your whiskey, even though we're talking about our 300th episode. And it was a nice, this is a nice whiskey to sit down with and, and just reminisce a little bit about the 300 episodes behind us and kind of what the future is going to be for us.

Yeah, it's, it's, uh, it looks so bright. Uh, the future and stuff, you know, we got plenty of things planned. We got some big whiskies in our lineup, um, some big names and whiskey in our lineup. I can't wait to have those listeners on and stuff. I don't think you'll see that we're just gonna be us. That's it. Just keep doing what we do. Drinking whiskey and just being who we are.

Well, Mike, a lot of times if we try to guess things like what distillery actually made this whiskey, we can just fall flat on our face, right? We could. We could. Because it is blind. We don't know that. And we're tasting this and we're trying to say, for me though, I think it It looks like nickel, it smells like nickel, and it kind of tastes a little like nickel too, doesn't it?

You know, the nose on this, Jim, I think is... I give a little bit of that mineral note to it.

Yeah, I do too. It does have a nice sweetness to it, a nice caramel sweetness. It's kind of a little bit of a...

sugary caramel sweetness. Yeah, I could get that. I was gonna say a little to me a little southern sweet tea. Yeah, there you go. With just a zest of lemon on it. But it does have that kind of that mineral note, that wet limestone kind of. For only being three years old, in the glass it's a little bit of a I would say golden honey in the glass. In the bottle, it's a little bit darker and it's got this, I would call that a kind of a old Forester bottle with that tulip neck on it, that whiskey style bottle. Exactly.

Which is different than some of the bottles of the past. They've always had that kind of a square bottle before.

Now they've got this more rounded bottle. And there was that glass shortage last year. So, you know, this is probably what they ended up with. Yeah, and the note is I'm not getting a whole lot of in there. I'm not getting a whole lot of oak. I'm not getting a whole lot of leather. Just that sweet tea with a lemon on it. That little bit of spicy zest. Like you said, a little bit of caramel in there, but not a whole bunch. Yeah. That mineral note is hard to pick out. Like you said, that water that's been filtered through limestone. Now, I'll tell you, as a kid, I grew up on a creek called Bennett Creek that flows into the land past this river in the Hill Country, Texas. And it's all limestone. And as a kid, we'd go down to that creek. Probably not the best thing you could do, but we would get right down in there. Get a drink of that. And get a drink of that.

And there's 300 head of cattle a mile upstream. Probably.

It was a filter through limestone rock there in the hill country of Texas. And it would be nice and cool because there'd be springs popping up all over that creek and stuff. And we had one of those springs on our property. The whole creek could go dry and that big deep hole there would always have cold water. And it could be 115 degrees outside, but you get down to that water and it'd be nice and cool.

I see when you were looking for land back in the day, back in the 1800s, you were back in Texas. Look, you were looking for a spot like that.

You were, because you needed not only water for yourself, you knew there was probably some kind of aquifer near that spring, right? That spring's coming up out of, but the other thing is you were looking for was water for your cattle. So, well, Jim, let's go ahead and sip on this thing. Cheers, Mike. Cheers.

Yeah, I want to lean real heavy towards dickles. But that's okay. They make some fantastic whiskey.

Yeah. Some people don't, they, they harp on it so bad. Cause he said it has that Flintstone vitamin taste. It does. But that kind of takes me back to my childhood a little bit. Yeah. You know, um, that chalky Necco candy. Yeah. It's in here. But that sweet tea is in here too.

Yeah. And Neal, I apologize for guessing wrong, my friend. You know, we just do what we do. We try our best and we can get blindsided sometimes. But I feel pretty strongly that this is some quality liquid out of... one of the most notable distilleries in Tennessee, probably the second most notable distillery in Tennessee.

They sell a little bit of whiskey.

They do.

People, you either, you have a love-hate relationship with it, right? You love or you hate it. But a lot of people love it. That's right here. I think it has its category. A little bit bitterness on that back end. Now being that this is 85 proof, that wateriness you get, Could that go away at a higher proof? I totally think it could.

Well, yeah. And 85 is meant to be a little bit easier on you. It's meant to be a little bit more, we keep using this word lately, sessionable. Yeah. 85 proof is meant to be a little more sessionable. You can sit down and enjoy a number of glasses with it. I would say that you and I could probably make it through this bottle in a long evening.

Yeah, if we started out three o'clock in the afternoon and set my fire and fall, yeah, this bottle will be gone in no time and we'd be laughing and having a good time. I like it. It does have that lemon zest. That's that spiciness. I know people are saying lemons aren't spicy, but I'm talking about a zest you get from a lemon or a lime or orange, it does have a little spice to it.

Yeah. You can get to really focusing on what you think it is and you stop paying attention to the notes. But I think this does have a little bit of a citrus note to it, kind of a lemon, but it is more of a lemon in tea.

Lemon in tea, oh certainly. When you squeeze that lemon in there good and you got enough sweetness. Now this has that caramel sweetness to it, you know, almost sweetness maybe even of some sorghum molasses.

So my three chord available in 21 states, you can also get it in a number of online retailers. Do you remember a few of those that this is available through?

Casters, Drizzly, there's several other ones out there and stuff. You look on their online top in three chord, Tennessee straight whiskey. It's going to pop up anywhere from in the $30 range to the $50 range. I mean, you were talking about online retailers and why the heck are they more expensive than it would be going to your local store?

I don't know what the answer to that is except that maybe the whole business around supplying to multiple states and all the laws and everything that go into it makes their business more difficult. I don't know. No brick and mortar. No brick and mortar. Not a whole lot of employees. Yeah. Well, they probably got some place. Well, maybe someplace that the bottles are stored, let's say.

They've got to have a fulfillment center or something. But fulfillment center, but not a whole bunch of like Total Wine. There's a lot of overhead that goes in Total Wine. Absolutely. They also have how many different brands? Yeah, a lot. A whole lot. Well, I would think this has a medium finish on it, Jim, even at 85 proof. It's not long at all.

No, definitely not. But you know, it does stand on its own. This is a good whiskey. There's nothing wrong with it. It's good and solid. I think the price point is pretty fair for it. 3 Quartz is a respectable brand. They've got a number of expressions that will blow you away. And this one in particular is just meant to be a little bit more of kind of a traditional 85 proof pour.

Yeah. I think it's a buy for me. If you could get it, I saw some lower prices at $32. I'd be just fine with that paying that much for it. That's not a bad price. I stopped at a liquor store on the way over here and I'm looking at whiskeys and I saw a whiskey that you had over here that was for sale. And I didn't know the price of it because somebody handed it to me and said, here, take this and drink it. Somebody else at your house had drank it over ice. I looked at the price of that thing and it was $100 and I was like, Oh my God. I don't know if I'd pay $100 for that or not. And I'm not going to bring up who it was or what it was. That sticker shock to me was overwhelming or $32 for this is not overwhelming.

No. In fact, I think that's a pretty fair price for any, you know, if you like Tennessee whiskey, if you like exploring some craft brands. whether they're producing it themselves or if they're sourcing a bottle, it doesn't matter. You can still get good liquid inside. I think this is good liquid inside and I think it's worth the money. I'd say give it a shot. Put one of these on your bar. It's definitely a great story behind it. If you're sitting at your bar, got some buddies over and say, hey, let me let you try this three-chord. This is for a musician. married Pat Benatar, I don't know if you remember the song, this, that, you know, it's just good conversation, good whiskey.

Or if you threw on some of her music and you hear some of those first guitar riffs, you know that's her husband just welding on that guitar. So that goes along with this and his idea of what's good in life and, you know,

I love it. Well, definitely check out Three Cord Whiskey. You can find them at ThreeCordBurban.com. And the reason I said whiskey is because now with this tendency of whiskey, you need to make sure you work over on all the bases. ThreeCordBurban.com. Great website. A lot of information there about the history of the company and what they have going on. You can certainly find out whether you can purchase their their expressions that we highly recommend that you give this company a shot, give them a try. At the very least, you know, spend $34 and have a nice bottle of Tennessee whiskey. Yes, sir.

Mike, where can people find us on the Internet? We can find us on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok. That's about all. I said TikTok twice. We're getting serious about TikTok. We are trying to do some more videos. Well, I have a video about this one. Jim just doesn't know it yet. We are going to shoot a video though. So make sure you check out our TikTok. We're trying to grow that audience there with some videos, just no nonsense videos and stuff. It's just straight to the point. Not too long. We're not going to bore you or anything. Come on there and let us know what you think and then give the podcast a listen. Obviously, if you're listening to this, you're listening to it, but Give us a follow. We'd appreciate it. Our main place you can find us though is on Facebook the bourbon roadies Check us out in there Come and join that group easy rules To follow to get in and be a common member Got to be 21. You got to love bourbon because everybody loves bourbon or some of this Tennessee whiskey Maybe and you got to agree to play nice because we don't tolerate any rudeness in there

Yeah, so every week we do two shows. Every Monday, we'll do a short episode like today's with three chords Tennessee whiskey. Every Wednesday, we'll do a full-length episode. We'll have a guest on. We'll explore more than one expression. We'll deep dive a topic, something interesting, and we'll take about an hour. Two 30-minute halves, we'll get you to work. We'll get you home. Every week, two episodes. You don't want to miss one. Mike, what do they got to do to make sure they know about them?

Well, you want to go ahead and scroll on up, hit that check sign, that plus sign, that subscribe sign. The app will let you know, hey, these two jokers got a show that's coming out today. Then we need you to scroll on down, hit that five star review, leave us some comments on Spotify, Apple, whatever you're listening to us on, Amazon Music. Pretty easy. You know what's going to happen if you don't, though? The big bad booty daddy of bourbon is going to come to your house, dragging this Tennessee straight whiskey from three core. You're going to drink it all night long. And then you're going to leave five stars of comments, I guarantee you. But seriously, the comments, those reviews open up to stores to this open up. But seriously, those five star reviews, those comments, open up doors to distilleries, get great whiskey in our hands like this three quarter Tennessee straight whiskey. One last thing. We do have a giveaway on one of our three hundredth episode at the gym.

Yeah.

Yeah. So we're going to be. at Bourbon on the Banks on October 1st. And I got two tickets to one lucky listener. Plus, if you come to Bourbon on the Banks, I'll hand you the rest of this three-quart Tennessee whiskey.

There you go. It's just a neck pour gone from it.

Yeah, not very much. It's full bottle pretty much. You'll get that. You'll get free entry into it. All you gotta do is put hashtag Bourbon on the Banks Follow us. Follow three cord whiskey and tag three people. That's it. Comment hashtag bourbon on the banks. Tag three people. Nine o'clock tonight. I'll announce the winner. I think that's a pretty good giveaway, two tickets.

Sounds pretty good. Enjoy the day and get a free bottle.

Those tickets are $65 each, by the way.

That's a good giveaway.

Awesome.

Awesome, Mike. Well, we love to hear from our listeners. If you've got an idea for a show, if you've got a distillery in your hometown that's doing it right, make sure you let Mike and I know. We're very approachable. You can hop on our website. We've got a Contact Us page. jump on there and leave us a message. We'll get back with you. You can always send us an email. I'm Jim at TheBurbinRoad.com. He's Mike at TheBurbinRoad.com. Like we always say, probably the best way. Hit up our DMs on Instagram. I'm Jay Shannon, 63. I'm Big Burbin Chief. And we'll see you down. The Burbin Road.

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