349. Spring 23 Craft Distillery Spotlight

Welcome to another great episode of the Bourbon Road with your host, Jim and Brian, where they talk bourbon and of course, drink bourbon. Grab yourself a pour, kick back and enjoy another trip down the Bourbon Road.

We're very excited to have Blanton's bourbon shop.com is a new sponsor for the bourbon road podcast. In fact, this podcast is brought to you by Blanton's bourbon shop. Blanton's bourbon shop.com is the only official merchandiser for Blanton's original single barrel. Looking for unique gift. Blanton's bourbon shop has got you covered. Blanton's bourbon shop.com is your home for all Blanton's gifts. You know friends, it's never too early. Start planning your trip to the Bourbon Trail for 2023. We hope you'll join the Bourbon Road crew as we pull out all the stops this year at Bourbon on the Banks. So mark your calendars for October 6th and 7th and we'll plan on seeing you in Frankfort, Kentucky. Be sure to listen in during the halftime break for all the details on Bourbon on the Banks. Welcome back listeners to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon. And I'm your co-host, Brian Hyatt. And we're sitting out on the porch once again. So this is a continuation of last week's episode. We're enjoying the weather. It's summertime. We've got kids in the pool behind us, birds in the trees above us, food getting smoked on the grill. We're kind of making a day of it out here. But today is kind of a little bit of a different show. So if everybody remembers back to our Craft Distillery Monday episodes, we used to review craft whiskeys kind of one at a time on little 15 to 20 minute episodes and we don't do that anymore. Instead, we're sort of bringing them together on a compilation show like today where we're going to have three different whiskies on the show today. These are all whiskies that have been provided to us or we've managed to acquire from smaller distilleries that don't get a lot of light shined on them. And well, I shouldn't say that one of them is not so small. They've been on the show a few times, right? But these are craft distilleries that are doing it right. We just want to do the right thing and give them a little attention and drink their whiskey and talk about it a little bit. But in our glass, first up, we have three different whiskies today, but first up, What do we have, Brian? We've got the Three Cord, right? We have the Three Cord. So this is the Three Cord cast. This is a cast finished whiskey. This is their bourbon and corn whiskey finished in honey and toasted barrels. And the wind is picking up. Oh my goodness. But it's a breezy day out here, but we're drinking a little bit of Three Cord. And for those of you who have listened to the Bourbon Road for some time, you know Three Cord has made it to the show on a number of occasions. They make some really, really good whiskeys. They're out of Michigan. And their founder, Neil Giraldo, is a big music guy. And if you don't know him, he was a lead guitarist many years. And husband to Pat Benatar. They've got a great, great operation going here with three chord. They make some fantastic whiskies. And they were just within the last year, the year before, they were just inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So congratulations to them. We are drinking their whiskey. They had actually arranged a kind of a special event on the release of this whiskey to bring a bunch of podcasts and YouTube's places and writers and things like that. And to sort of celebrate this release, we weren't unable to make it.

I felt really bad about it, but I already had plans those two nights.

But we are going to get it on the show. We are going to get a review online and we'll make sure we give them their due. and we appreciate them sending us this bottle. So this is the three-cord cask finished bourbon and corn whiskey. It's finished in toasted barrels and honey barrels. It is 111.3 proof. This is their batch number one of it, so they're just starting. My guess is this is something they're gonna continue to do. You know, they're saying it's harmony of flavor, structure, and finish. So everything's about the music and the whiskey here. So I want to tell you a little bit about what they say about this whiskey. So this is a new limited edition release. It's a cast-strength honey toasted. It's rested in low char heavy toast barrels. So that's getting to be the thing. So it seems like, you know, the past couple of episodes we've had on, they're talking about the number one char with heavy toast. And I think the idea there is you get that deep toast in the barrel, but you don't burn it all off with the heavy char, you know, the number four alligator char. Instead, you know, you get that number one char, just that light char on the barrel. And then everything's moved to the Fern Valley Farms Honey Barrels for an additional month to create a bold yet balanced whiskey with a sweet honey finished. It's a blend of American whiskeys. It's the perfect addition to your family's collection. Obviously, if we've got corn whiskey and bourbon in here, it's finished. This is going to be some sweet stuff. I'm just going to say this is like everything about this whiskey says sweet, right?

And so, Jim, this is what, 111?

Yeah, right at 111. 111 proof. Wow. All right. I'm looking at it. It's actually got kind of a nice dark color to it.

Yeah.

Gold. Yeah.

Goldish.

Gold color. Amberish. Yep. That's very nice. Check out the nose. Definitely got a sweet nose on it.

But I mean, I'm getting that ethanol from it just like I did on the... I am too.

Clove? Yeah, a little bit of clove.

Surprisingly, a little bit of clove. Yeah. A little bit of pepper on the nose. My goodness. Interesting. I'm thinking this is supposed to be like super sweet, right?

But I'm getting that little bit of clove and pepper on it. I do get the fruit. Let's taste it. Cheers. Cheers.

There it is. There's that sweetness. Oh my goodness. Wow, that is definitely honey. Wow. You know, I've had a number of honey barrels and sometimes they do come off kind of super sweet. This doesn't, I mean, it's got a honey sweetness to it, but the bourbon, it seems like it's got a lot of bourbon sweetness to it as well.

You get the heat with the cask.

You know, when you drink those toasted barrel whiskies, those toasted barrel finished whiskies, they're always got that nice barrel sweetness on them up front that, you know, from the wood sugars. This has that. I don't think it's overpowered by the honey. I think it complements the honey. But boy, if you if you like sweeter whiskies on the palate, the nose did not give this away, did it? I'm surprised. It really didn't. Yeah. I'm trying to pick up some notes that might really describe this whiskey. I mean, there's obviously caramel. A little bit of maple. I think there is maple. Yeah, like maple cotton candy. Have you ever had maple syrup cotton candy? I have not, but that sounds amazing. Yeah, I've had it before. It's pretty interesting stuff.

Now, this is not a lot of- Where do we find that? Well, one of our previous sponsors used to make some. Oh, really?

Yeah. But you can find it at fairs. You can find it at, if you go to a farm and they have a tour and they do maple syrup there, a lot of times you can find their cotton candy.

I was thinking state fair immediately when you said that.

So the first thing you have to get is the maple sugar crystals, right? And then once you have those sugar crystals, then you can make the cotton candy, right? I bet that's good. This is not super maple mapley. It just has a hint of it, but I just got this. I got this in my mind. I felt like that had that maple cotton candy taste to it. So this is definitely a sweet whiskey. It's definitely really sucked a lot of the wood sugars out of that toasted barrel. It's almost like it would have been dry on the back end. Maybe the original whiskey was probably dry on the back end a little bit before this, but that's kind of been taken care of. Then it's definitely not. I've always been a big fan of 3-Cord and every time I end up with one of their bottles I'm always super pleased with it. I think the number one thing out of 3-Cord is you're always going to get a very flavorful whiskey that has sort of a unique profile to it. Something that's a little bit different than anything you've ever had before and I've always been very surprised. They've had some different finishes and some different special releases. The whiskey's are just really, really good. My hat's off to their quality department and their blending department. Well, and their price points aren't bad either. Yeah. Yeah, so this particular bottle's right at $60, but I would say the majority of their releases are in the $40 to $70 range, depending on if it's a super limited special release or if it's a more common release they do have some higher end releases that are ultra rare that you're going to pay well over $100 for but for the most part you're going to find their whiskies in that 40 to 70 range which is a nice spot to be right especially for high quality whiskies that are finished it always costs an extra barrel to finish a whiskey right so you got to even if you're buying a used barrel like a say a bourbon barrel that was sent off to a honey farm to age honey and then it comes back to get bourbon introduced it again you got to pay for that it's not cheap so you know original barrels are anywhere between three hundred and five hundred dollars a piece so you figure if a new make barrel of whiskey is worth a thousand dollars 40% of that cost is going to the barrel. Sometimes up to 50% of that cost is the barrel. The other half is the white whiskey that went into it, right? So it's always a big deal when you say, I'm going to double my barrel count. Especially when, in this case, a new toasted barrel, they're not cheap.

They're not cheap at all.

they have to charge more for them and that's just the way it goes and you know if you like toasted barrel finished whiskeys you're gonna have to pay a little bit more for them in this case 60 bucks you know I'm not worried about it no I think it's a great great price point for this I would say if you like if you like a honey finished whiskey if you're a big fan of you know, Garrison Brothers or the other honey finished whiskies that are out there, I would definitely say give this one a shot. It's not too sweet and it's not, it's not like they left a bunch of honey in the barrel.

I like the texture. I like the way it feels on my tongue. I think it's solid.

So for me, just personally, I'm not kind of, that's not my profile. So my thing is not the heavy, the syrupy heavy sweet kind of whiskeys. Now I do like a candy rye that's 10 years old that's got that, you know, that sort of that crystallized orange flavor to it. I love that. But for me, you know, the sweeter bourbons, the I mean, there's a few that kind of get my attention. I've always loved kind of the 1910 out of Old Forrester, just that secondary barrel effect on that, that extra sweetness you get. I do love the Buzzard's Roost whiskeys. We had them on like a couple of weeks ago. It's just not my daily. It's not what I'm reaching for every day. What I'm reaching for every day is that spice and that kick and that burn. I just love it. The hot sauce guy.

Are you a hot sauce guy? I love hot sauce. I love it. So typically, whenever I get a fried chicken sandwich, I have to put hot sauce on it. Any time I eat rice, I think that goes back to Navy days. Going back to the Navy days, when we were on the aircraft carrier, Safest thing to eat was rice and best thing to put on it was hot sauce.

Yeah hot sauce and rice. So do you prefer like Korean hot sauces or do you like like just like Louisiana style or?

I really like a lot of it. So I like hot sauces that have come out of India as well.

Yeah. Okay. I've been on this kind of Asian trip lately, so I've been using a lot of fish sauce and a lot of like out of Korea gochujang sauce, you know, that chili paste. Yeah, yeah. I've been using that a lot. I was making some burritos the other day for myself because I can't, nobody else is going to eat this stuff, but I was making some homemade burritos the other day and I put gochujang on it and a little bit of kimchi. Oh my goodness. What a great burrito. Love some kimchi. What a great burrito. Love the kimchi. Melody won't get within a mile of me if I'm eating kimchi though. It's so garlicky.

Yeah, there's some great, great hot sauces out there. Actually, right this second, I'm looking for this one so I can say it. Perry Perry. Have you had Perry Perry? I haven't. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard of it. So I have to, I have to show you a bottle of it. Um, definitely has a little kick to it. And typically a Superbowl party that I go to make some, some barbecue meatballs and we take that peri-peri and we put it on there and it's, uh, awesome.

Well, you are. Barbecuing today. Well, you're not barbecuing. You're smoking. I typically just smoke all the time. So you made us some bacon and this is a kind of a smoked bacon with brown sugar and your special rub mix.

That's right. Every time I get the smoker going, there's bacon on it. 100% of the time, I will smoke eggs on there. Yeah. Raw eggs. You put those on and in the shell. And just like you would do when you're hard boiling, you put that on the grill. and get them cooked all the way through, open them up, slice them, and make some deviled eggs with kind of a different spin on it.

Yeah. Yeah, so you've got some jalapeno poppers on there too. Bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers. Some ribs. My goodness. Now I've got a couple of pork butts going back at the house on my Green Mountain grill. I feel kind of bad right now because it's there, I'm here. I only set it to 225, but I've got my phones connected to my grill, right? Right, right. But for some reason I can't connect to it right now, so I just hope it's still on program going forward.

A little bit of a panic mode right now. Well, I think it'll stay at 225, I just don't know where the meat temperature is.

That's right. I don't think at 225 I'm going to ruin anything though, right?

You're hoping for that stall. You know, if anybody smoked much, they know there's that stall phase where it's kind of like, what's going on? It's not moving.

And I probably have 16 pounds of pork butt on the grill right now. So that's a lot for that little smoker. I don't know. We'll see how it goes. All right. So what do you think? Final verdict on the three-cord honey toasted. This is corn and bourbon, corn whiskey and bourbon.

I really liked this one. I don't know, we talked a lot about the finish yet, have we? We haven't. What do you think about it? I mean, I feel like it sticks around long enough for me to really enjoy it. I know we've, you know, had some recently that were a little bit on the shorter side. This one, this one's sticking around long enough for me to, to really pick up on it. But, you know, I think again, It's not overpowering or anything and the honey is not taken over and presenting itself too strongly.

I like the fact that they're using that lightly charred barrel. I'm going to guess that it's a number one char. It didn't put too much of that burnt marshmallow flavor into it, which I think wouldn't really help the honey a lot, right? Old Forester 1910, that's more that it's darker. It's got more of that burnt char in that second barrel. You get a little bit more of those toasted marshmallow flavor to it. You don't really get that so much here. The honey gets to shine through a little bit. That's right. The sweetness from the toast, but you get the compliment of the honey. I think it's a good pairing. I do too. All right. So we've got two more whiskies to get through on this episode. What do we have next?

So Jim, now we have the Midway Lot 25 Rye Whiskey Finished and Vermouth barrels.

So this is from Bluegrass Distillers. That's right. And we've had them on the show before, but they're actually building out or moving to Midway. Still bluegrass distillers, but they've got an expression now called Midway. And you picked this bottle up where? I picked it up at Total Wine.

I believe the price point was $57. Okay. And they have a pretty decent selection of other offerings as well. You know, they have the Colonel Francisco, which is finished in rum barrels. They've got the reclaimed and recharged, which is finished in oak barrels. And then they've got a Dudley and Gratz, which is a Salter barrel.

Yeah, so we've had them on the show before. You know, they do make some pretty excellent whiskey. They're out of Lexington, Kentucky, but relocating to nearby Midway. I've always been a fan of their whiskeys there. Our friend Sam Rock, he's going to be coming on the show again, probably here in a week or two, and we can dive deeper into their full line of whiskeys that they have. I'm kind of excited for Midway, right, because that is such a great little town. It is. It's kind of, I'm not going to say it's halfway between here and Lexington, halfway between us and Lexington, but it's

It's about three quarters. Three quarters of the way.

So yeah, I mean it's just off the interstate, 64, and what a great little town of shops and restaurants and bars and distillery.

Wow, won't that be great? It'll be awesome. And I actually have a lot of family in Midway and I grew up working on a tobacco farm. just right down the street from Midway. My parents lived in a little neighborhood there in Midway. So super excited to see, you know, something cool going back in there. And we've spent a lot of time there at the different restaurants and the bistro and all that good stuff in the shops. And, you know, on the weekends when you see all the folks lining the streets and just a super cool little place.

And when you come, to visit bourbon country and you're from out of state or you've come in from a ways away and you bring your spouse with you and let's just assume for the moment and this is not always true but let's just assume you're a guy who likes bourbon and you're bringing your wife with you. Maybe she's not the biggest bourbon fan in the world but she does support you so she comes with you and you want to treat her to something nice. Midway is a great way to treat her. If she loves to go to little curio shops and nice little restaurants and sit out on the street in little chairs and have a nice meal and just spend sort of a couple of hours in a great little town, Midway is the place to go.

And it's so relaxed. Yeah. It's very, very relaxed.

It's literally between Louisville and Lexington on I-64, closer to Lexington as we've already established. Definitely take your spouse there, whether they be male or female, and let them enjoy a day there. We had such a great time the last time we went. The restaurants there are fantastic. The antique shops are great. Just so much.

I'll say this because I have a different perspective. There's a little gas station on the corner when you're going through there. It's a unique little place. I used to eat lunch there every day when I worked on the farm and they've got some good food and it's just good old folks and they're so welcoming and friendly and fun. So there's a lot of different takes that you can get in Midway.

Horse country. Yeah, it's definitely in the heart of horse country. Yeah, the wind's picking up a little bit here. We're still sitting out under the trees. The birds are chirping. Thank goodness the kids have taken a break from the swimming pool. That's right. But you just recently wrapped the ribs. You added a little butter inside the aluminum foil. I did. So it introduced a little more fat, right?

That's right.

You've got to have more of that. Yeah. So we're going to be chomping down on a little bit of these ribs here tonight. But in the meantime, we've got the Midway. And this is finished in vermouth barrels.

That's correct. Wow. So you're probably going to, you know, it's going to be similar to a Manhattan. Yeah. To a certain degree. You know, you're going to get some of those, some of those flavor profiles coming out.

I don't think I've ever had a vermouth barrel finished bourbon before, so I'm pretty excited for that. I'm excited. All right. Let's check yours. Cheers. Well, you know, the nose definitely has a different take on it. It almost smells a little bit more like, and I'm sure this is the vermouth influence. It smells a little bit more like a kind of a white grape. Yep. Influenced whiskey, maybe. There is a hint of chocolate, right? And we saw that in the tasting notes. I don't want to pretend like I'm picking that up, but we saw that in the tasting notes. And then immediately both of us looked at each other and said, yeah, of course I get it. And that happens sometimes, doesn't it? It does. Yep. We've got Clayton here with us. Clayton, what do you think, buddy?

Delicious.

He said delicious. Delicious. Yeah, this is not something I've had before. This is not a profile I've ever been exposed to before. Thank you Bluegrass Distillers for just thinking out of the box and trying something totally new. Very unique. I'm ready to taste it because I think I am going to get the main one. You might have some cherry jam. Cherry jam? On the nose, huh? You haven't tasted it yet, have you?

I haven't tasted it yet. I mean, Yeah, a little bit.

I mean, I get a little bit of cherry on it. More like a cherry cream.

I'm ready to taste it though, Brian. Cheers. Cheers. Let's taste it.

Wow. That is sweet. It definitely, definitely reminds me of a Manhattan. No doubt about it. spice, a little spice on it. Yeah. It definitely has that sort of sweet cream effect. And, uh, you know, it, it definitely brings a little bit of the chocolate in on, on the taste, but more the cherry now than anything. I think the kind of a cream cherry, cherry cream. Yep, I think so.

I mean, it is sweet. It's sweet, no doubt about it. There's that winery finish, you know, it's good.

Yeah, it's almost like when I'm sitting here tasting it, it's almost like I get this hint of like an Irish whiskey being in it instead of like a malt whiskey, right? Right. It's got a malt whiskey taste to it. more than it does a bourbon taste. I just think it's that vermouth just playing with us. It's just, it's tripping us, right? We just don't know what's going on because we've never had anything like this before.

Wow.

This is a thinking whiskey. No doubt about it.

I mean, it's not overpowering by any means. It's light. I feel like it's a lighter You know, as we talk about summer, I feel like this may be a good summer sipper.

What caused you to pick this bottle up?

Well, you know, obviously I said I worked on a farm in Midway and I have family there. And even in full disclosure, you know, I have, my first son's buried in Midway, Kentucky. So every time I see Midway, I'm a little bit drawn to it. You know, I saw the name there and then I started looking through the different selections that they had available and I am a big Manhattan fan. I love Vermouth, so I felt like this was the one that I needed to give a shot to.

You know, a lot of times there are so many new expressions out there. You go down the Bourbon Isle and you're going to see stuff that you You don't know what to think. You don't know it's going to be good. If it's not going to be good. I mean, it's kind of a roll in the dice. It seems like a lot of times. And it's like, well, that's going to be $57 well spent or maybe it's not. And you spent $57 on it, which is a good sum of money for an unknown whiskey. That's right. If you rolled seven.

That's right. I feel like this was a really nice surprise. Didn't know what to expect, but You know we've had some pretty cool whiskeys and bourbons that have been finished here recently and I think this is another pleasant surprise.

So we're going to keep sipping on this and sort of exploring how the flavor changes as we go through it. Take a short break when we come back. We've got kind of a special whisky to try. What do you think? We do. Looking for a unique gift? Blanton's bourbon shop has got you covered. All of their handcrafted wood products are made in their in-house wood shop with authentic bourbon barrels. Specializing in barrel-age potent treats, they use Blanton's barrels to age their own maple syrup, honey, and coffee. Find the most unique gift ideas for your golf lover, cigar connoisseur, avid coffee drinker, and Blanton's fan. Want to win an authentic Blanton's barrel head? Make sure you sign up for the giveaway on the home page of their website. Blanton'sBourbonShop.com is your home for all Blanton's gifts. As we mentioned earlier in the show, we hope you'll join us this fall on October 6th and 7th for Bourbon on the Banks. The festival itself is from 2 to 6 p.m. on October 7th and you can pick those tickets up at bourbononthebanks.org for $65. They also have an early access ticket for $75. It'll get you in an hour early and definitely get you access to some special pours. But if you always like that VIP access, this year they're bringing in the VIP access tickets. We'll give you access to their VIP tent and all the great things that go along with that for $175. Be sure to check out bourbononthebanks.org. You'll get all the details on this year's event. All right, so we're back from the break and it's kind of nice. We continue to sip on that vermouth finished Whiskey from Bluegrass Distillers from Midway. Oh my gosh. Very cool. You know, I never stopped being surprised by the links these craft distilleries will go to to introduce something new that you haven't had before. I never even considered Vermouth as an option. Did you? I did not. It's pretty darn good. I have to say, if you're a Manhattan fan, that

I mean, that's a finished whiskey that will definitely remind you of a Manhattan. That's right. And we've had a couple of, uh, you know, whiskies and different things that have been finished here. And, uh, you know, peerless came out with one a while back with the, uh, the absinthe finish. You know, there's some, some really cool things, but I agree. I just never even thought Bermuth. I'm just wondering who's going to come out with the first tobacco barrel whiskey, right?

Aging tobacco. That'll be cool. That'll be cool. Oh my goodness. Like I can't wait for that.

You know, I like that old musty like tobacco leathery.

All right. All you craft distilleries listening into this, I just gave you an idea. We need a tobacco barrel finish. That's right. Now, tobacco has been aged in bourbon barrels and it's not an uncommon thing. But has anybody taken those barrels and introduced whiskey to them again? I don't know. Maybe somebody's done it. Maybe. And if you have, send us a bottle. If you know, yeah, send us a bottle for sure. All right. So next on our list is a whiskey that is new on the marketplace. It's been out for a few months. We're kind of late getting to this bottle. But this is the Hemingway Rye. This is the first edition Hemingway Rye. And this particular whiskey is coming out of Hemingway Whiskey, we highly suggest you go to HemingwayWhiskeys.com and check out what they have to offer. But this is their first edition straight rye whiskey and it is finished in a rum seasoned Oloroso Sherry cask. So this is batch one, 100 proof. We didn't get a lot of it. They sent us a 100ml bottle of it, but you know what? I think it's about a $110 bottle. That's correct. And they do have an additional version of it or a new expression of it out now that you can pick up. This is an operation that is tied directly with the Call family. So if any of you remember Jacob Call, he was the master distiller at Green River Distilling. But now he's making this Hemingway rye and the Call family is tied heavily with, I guess, the Hemingway family. And they're putting out this whiskey, sort of calling it the Hemingway rye. It was really neat. I don't think we've ever received a package like this before.

Absolutely very very very very very unique and I've been excited we we've looked at this one a couple times and you know they they sent the notepad with the pen and the letter and It's almost like Ernest himself pinned everything incident.

That's right I mean it really did a really great job of putting this together and I was just going to say, job well done. You got our attention. Absolutely. I wish we could have got it on earlier. It just didn't work out. But folks, I definitely want you to check out Hemingway Rye. But we're going to tell you our thoughts on the whiskey itself. So this is a rye whiskey. Like I said, it's 100 proof. It's in our glass. Let's check it out, Brian. All right. Cheers. Cheers. Oh, that's a sweet, deep sweetness, right? Very rich, kind of buttery.

I mean, I don't, I don't want to be so generic, but vanilla.

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, the heavy vanilla, but kind of a cream vanilla, buttery vanilla.

Very pleasant on the nose. It doesn't sound like we're talking about a rye, does it? Sounds like we're talking about a bourbon, but this is a rye. That wind keeps picking up. It's kind of nice out here, though. Yeah, it does have a little bit of a spicy kick to it on the end of the nose there, but I would say more than anything, I want to say this is a buttery kind of I get the butter. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Are you picking up the Ursula Sherry? Are you getting the Sherry finish on the nose? Not a ton on the nose.

I bet that's going to kick in a little bit on the palate.

I bet it does too. Let's check it out. Cheers. Cheers. Oh, that is really, really good. Oh, it's got plenty of spice. It's got meat on the bones. I mean, it's kind of almost like a It's almost savory. And I would agree with that. Savory, but savory at the same time. It's got it's almost like a ossobuco. You know, a rum. Oh, yeah. Does that remind you of that a little bit? Absolutely. That is really fantastic. 100 proof. That, I've never had anything like this. No. No. I mean, this is way, way out in left field. I mean, it's funny how it's got that kind of savory meatiness to it. But at the same time, you get a little bit of a nutty character to it. I mean, it just doesn't scream rye to me.

It really doesn't. And there was another rye that I had that was finished in Oloroso barrels. Clayton's here with us today, one of my really good friends. And we actually had it for the very first time down at Angel's Envy. And I very vividly remember picking up that barrel and just kind of wondering what it was going to be like. And it was good. And I got to tell you, this has taken it up a notch.

I wonder, I wonder what a run seasoned Oloroso sherry caskies.

Some, some specials go on there. No, it's, I mean, it really is special. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm just going to go to their website real quick and I'm going to read a couple of things to us and see if you pick up on them, Jim.

Okay. Sounds good.

Um, so on the, on the pallet, it says that the ripe cherry booms through the toasted oak. It's creamy. It's definitely creamy. I'm not getting the cherry, but that's okay. We don't all get the same thing. That's right. Caramel and cinnamon. Yeah. A rich round mouth filled burst with fruit flavor, leading to a soft sweet and warm finish.

Okay. So it's definitely soft, sweet and warm on the finish. Absolutely. I'm getting more of a savory mint palette from it. You know, it could be kind of an overripe fruit maybe. Yeah. But very, very nice. I'm not getting like the clove or mint or any kind of a traditional rye note from this. I'm getting more, I think I'm getting more bourbon notes than I have rye notes. I am too. I like the finish. The finish is solid. Well, I wish I could put my finger on exactly what I'm getting on this. I think the best way to explain it is if you were to if you look, you're a big fan of Asabuco, right? So if you get Asabuco and you get that just that that wonderful gravy that comes with it, it's got the wine in it, you know, it's just I'm getting that. It's like a savory, deep, rich, super rich flavor and just It's just very nice. I mean, no way have I ever had anything like this before.

I can say at the price point of 110, I don't like to pay 110 for my bourbon whiskey. I don't like to pay 110 for much of anything. It's well worth the money on this one.

So this is a blend of nine-year and four-year whiskey. So, I mean, I would say that it was a nice, it definitely was a nice choice to pull in that extra aged probably into this. The casks have done a fantastic job finishing this. It's not overdone. It's not, it's not like jutting out in one particular direction too much. It's not, it's balanced. It's good. I don't, you know, I hate that I've said savory because, you know, some people are gonna say savory. Why savory? I just get that. That's my impression of it, you know.

I agree. That's a great rye. And it's not what you would expect. from Arai and I can say it took us a little while to get to it. I wish we had gotten to it earlier, but I'm so glad we're drinking it right now. Yeah, absolutely.

All right, Brian, it's been a great show. We've had three tremendous whiskies on the show today. One in particular just really caught me by surprise, and that's that Midway. I have to be honest with you in saying that before we started, I wasn't 100% sure about the Midway, hadn't tasted it before, I didn't know anything about it. And I was wondering if we were gonna have a... We even took a moment just to make sure. Yeah, I wanna know if we're gonna, like they say on Shark Tank, was it gonna be a hero or a zero? I didn't know. I think it's a hero. I agree. I had a really good time with that one. I'm not going to pick one over the other. I think the all three brought something special. The three chord honey finished was very nice. Very nice. We've already said that the midway vermouth finished whiskey and here we are talking about finished whiskeys around every turn. The Vermouth finished whiskey from Midway from Blue Crest Distillers was just something fresh and new. We've never had it before. Very unique in its own way. And then this Hemingway ride, Jacob Call and family from Hemingway Whiskeys just knocked it out of the park. I'm going to go check it out. Did it again. Yeah, did it again. They always do it, of course. So folks, definitely check out these three whiskeys. We'll make sure we get them up on the website. We'll get our reviews out on them. But all three of them are exceptional choices for your bar, I would say. So I don't think that there's any losers here.

I agree. All right.

Well, Brian, where can they find us on the internet, on social media?

Yeah, as always, you can find us on Twitter. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook. You can even find us on TikTok. We put a few videos up on occasion here and there. We even have our own private Facebook group, the Bourbon Roadies.

That's right. And on the Bourbon Roadies, we're about 3,500 members strong, and it's kind of not a huge group, you know? But, you know, I guess if we weren't as vigilant as we are at keeping the riff-raff out, we'd be at 30,000, but we're very careful about that. We probably boot nine out of 10 members for trying to sell bottles and trying to... Or just not being nice. Not being nice. Telling other members they're drinking the wrong stuff, right? So, yeah, if you want a safe place, you want a place to come to have a good time, just talk about whiskey, share what you're drinking, and not have anybody come back at you and tell you you're an idiot. the bourbon roadies is a place to be.

Jim, I'd never tell you to put your pappy with diet coke, but if you want to do that, go for it. I mean, that's your whiskey, right? That's right.

You paid $2,000 for that bottle. I mean, if you paid $2,000 for that bottle, you might as well put it with whatever you want. That's right. But that, yeah, I wouldn't do it either, but that's okay. You do what you want with your whiskey. Every Wednesday, we do an episode. We usually have a pretty good sometimes we'll have a guest on, sometimes it's a music artist, sometimes a author, sometimes a chef. It's always a lot of fun. We hope you check us out every single week. Brian, what do they have to do not to miss one of those episodes?

Yeah, you just need to go to Spotify. You need to go to Apple Podcast. You need to go to Google. You can go anywhere that has podcasts. You want to click the subscribe button and you're going to be notified each time we release a new episode.

Yeah, because that way you won't miss one and you'll be able to check us out. We really appreciate our listeners. We'd love to hear from you. If you've got an idea for a show, if you've got an idea for a bottle we should have on a show or a guest, definitely let us know about it. You can always hop on our website, the bourbonroad.com. We've got a contact us page there. You can type out your request or your information, send it to us. Brian and I will get on it pretty quick. While you're there, we do have all our swag. We got our t-shirts and hats and glasses and all the good things that we love to sell with the bourbon road on it. We also have our bourbonista t-shirts for the ladies. They've been pretty popular lately, flying off the shelf. I was going to plug it one more time, but you beat me to the punch there. Yeah, so definitely if you've got a lady in your life or you are a lady and you would like to have a Bourbon Road Bourbonista t-shirt. Make sure you jump on the bourbonroad.com and pick one up.

And I'll say we actually had one of our celebrities recently profiling one of these shirts.

Absolutely. So yeah, they're getting out there and you know, they're proud to have them. I don't know if it's about the Bourbon Road or it's just because Bourbonista is a pretty cool saying. I think it's pretty cool. It's all about Blame the bottle, right? I'm not responsible for what I did last night because I was drinking bourbon, so it's the bottle's fault. It's not mine. That's right. But anyway. It's kind of like that country song, tequila.

Tequila.

All right. Well, you can always reach Brian and I at team at the bourbonroad.com. That'll get to our email inbox and we'll get back with you for sure. We're glad you joined us again this week. We hope you join us again next week. But until the next time, we'll see you down the Burbank Road.

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