380. Casey Jones Distillery

Welcome to another great episode of the Bourbon Road with your host, Jim O'Brien, 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 a unique gift. Blanton's bourbon shop has got you covered. Blanton's bourbon shop.com is your home for all Blanton's gifts. The Bourbon Road is excited to have pintsandbarrels.com as a sponsor of this episode, as well as our official custom apparel provider. Be sure to check out pintsandbarrels.com and browse their ultimate online store for bourbon loggers. Hello listeners, and welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon, and today we're once again in Frankfort, Kentucky. We're at the Frankfurt Bourbon Society Corner Rick House at 121 Bridge Street. We're hanging out, getting ready to have an event here tonight. But in advance of that event, I have the opportunity to sit down with somebody I've been kind of looking forward to chatting with for a while and some whiskies I've really wanted to try. I've got Jessica Martin here from Casey Jones Distillery. Jessica, welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks for having me.

It is so great for you to brave the cold, come all the way up here in the Frankfurt area, and let us taste your whiskeys. I tell you what, with a temperature, single digits, right?

Yeah. At least it wasn't nigh. I think it's like 14 degrees outside right now.

My goodness, it's so, so cold this weekend. But at least we're not in Iowa, right? Because those people, I think it was like minus something there.

Oh, Lord. We have a girl that used to work at the distillery. She now lives in Montana and she would send me photos and it was negative 30.

Wow. You really need some whiskey, don't you?

Mm-hmm. She's been telling us to send her whiskey all week.

Yeah, I kind of feel sorry for the folks in Iowa this week because tonight is the night where they actually have to go out and do their voting or whatever for the primary up there. The caucuses, the Iowa caucuses, so they're all having to braise the cold to go out and I don't know, I don't know what they do. Punch a button, push a chat out on a card, I'm not real sure what they do, but.

Bless their heart, I'm definitely not jealous of them.

Not jealous at all. All right, so Casey Jones' distillery, this is a distillery that's in Hopkinsville, Kentucky?

Correct.

And Hopkinsville's kind of, Kentucky's kind of a short and wide state, so Hopkinsville is West End.

Yes.

So you're from the West End.

Yeah, born and raised there. Oh, yeah? Hopkinsville, if you know where Fort Campbell, Kentucky is, or Clarksville, Tennessee, we're about 20 minutes north of Clarksville.

Fort Campbell, Kentucky, that's Army.

Mm-hmm.

That's the 101st Airborne?

Yes, correct.

The Screaming Eagles. Yes. Oh, yeah, okay, yeah. Well, I kind of like Screaming Eagles. My father was a Screaming Eagle, actually, paratrooper.

Oh, awesome.

That many, many years ago, so I'm already white-haired, so my father is definitely white-haired. He did serve his country though.

Yeah, my husband currently serves.

Does he? Well, thank him for his service.

I will, I'll let them know. Currently he's in Louisiana, so yeah. Wow.

Yeah, they have... Well, he's a little bit warmer down there, but it's wet right now, isn't it?

Yeah, it's wet. And he sent me a photo yesterday. He said, I think we're supposed to get snow down here, too. And I'm like, I don't believe you. Not one bit. I'm like, that feels illegal for it to be snowing in Louisiana.

No, it can't. It can't possibly. But oh, well, the rest of us are getting a wallop. And I think I heard today that they've got an opportunity for the Northeast to get their first snow in like a year and a half or something. So they've been on a snow drought up there. Well, anyway. I think we should get straight to this whiskey. What do you think?

Oh, I completely agree.

All right. So what do we have in our first class today?

So in our first glass, we have our Kentucky straight bourbon. It's a 108 proof. Definitely don't think it drinks like a 108 to me. It definitely drinks like it's about 100 proof. Now, this is a higher rye. For us at least, it's a 16% rye, about 80% corn. And then the rest is going to be made up of malted barley. Now, personally for me, I get a lot of oak on the nose, a little bit of vanilla whenever I'm sipping on it. I get a little hint of a banana note in there. If you actually uncork a fresh bottle, surprisingly, it smells a lot like banana bread.

It goes away kind of quick, yeah.

Now, along with that, again, overall smokiness and overall nuttiness on the palate as well.

Yeah, I was going to say on the nose, I'm getting nuttiness. So you said on the palate, but I'm actually getting a little bit of nuttiness on the nose. I do get that vanilla. It's definitely a prominent note there.

Yes.

And sort of the oak effect from the charred oak is very, very well prominent. How old is this whiskey?

It's a three-year-old.

Three-year-old, okay. Well, it's got a great deal of color for being a three-year-old.

Yeah, and part of that has to do with the level of char that we use. We use a level four char, and it brings out a little bit more color, at least we think it does, and how we age it. Because up until the last year, we didn't have a rick house. We actually kept them in storage containers that sat over the hill on the acreage at the distillery. And whenever it was hot, it really impacted the heat in it because they're in metal containers. So we kind of think that it really pushed the effect of it going into the barrel and coming out of the barrel.

No, I've definitely heard that using containers for storage of barrels kind of got that hot box effect. It really puts them through the wringer and ages the whiskey kind of rapidly.

But yeah. All right.

Well, cheers.

Cheers.

Wow, that's full of flavor. This one's buttery too.

Yeah, buttery is a great way to describe it. And I love the texture of it. It's so velvety.

Now this is 108 proof you said. Yes. Does your bourbon come in additional proofs?

Our small batches do not. We do have single barrel versions, which are going to be castring. But currently at the distillery, it's 128 proof is what we currently have sitting out.

Wow. Wow. That's amazing. So you don't have a sub 100 proof bourbon?

We do. We have a high corn mash bill that's 90 proof. And then our small batch weeded bourbon is going to be a 95.

Got it. Okay. We're trying that one today.

Oh, you have the single barrel.

The single barrel. That's awesome. Well, this is really good and 108 proof. It's amazing that there's that complexity and that kind of texture and viscosity and thickness that this has at 108 proof. Very nice.

It's definitely an easy sipper. It's a fantastic cigar bourbon too. Just because of that oakiness and the smokiness that I had mentioned earlier, we have a lot of people that buy it strictly for that.

Well, I have to say for 16% rye, it doesn't present very spicy on the back of the palate. It's kind of a mid palate, kind of a silky, a little bit of tingle up front, but kind of silky and sits on the mid palate. It's got a great broad flavor, a lot going on there.

You're definitely spot on with saying that shows up on the mid palette. It lingers a little bit. And what I always say with this one, because people always hear the 108 proof and they get a little scared, especially if they're new or the whiskey. And I always have to preface with it. It's not high as like when you drink it. It's just going to give you that good old Kentucky hug that every good bourbon should have, in my opinion.

Yeah, and it does settle in and give you a bit of a hug, but it doesn't like, it doesn't put your mouth on fire. It doesn't, there's not a big, like I said, spice bomb on the back end or anything like that. Just a nice velvety smooth, but complex, buttery, nutty. It is nutty on the palate as well, but I really pick it up on the nose. I'm not very good at saying witch nut. I just got this nutshell, right?

Yeah, I'm definitely still learning when it comes to picking out a bunch of notes, which I'm still a little newer to the game. I didn't get really into bourbon until about a year and a half ago when I started working in the gift shop for about six months, and then they decided that they liked me well enough to make me their sales rep.

So you're repping Casey Jones throughout Kentucky and other places as well?

Just throughout Kentucky. Actually, one of our partners, Cody Turner, he handles all sales outside of the state of Kentucky. So he's a very busy guy. I bet he is. Yes.

So you handle the home turf.

Yes, home turf. That's a great way to put it. So everywhere from Paducah all the way to Pikeville up to very close to Cincinnati. Wow. I do a lot of hours in my prayers.

So what made you want to get into the whiskey business?

So funny enough, I actually used to teach. I taught family and consumer sciences, so culinary, early childhood. And long story short, didn't work out the way that I'd wanted to. Ended up leaving mid-year and I needed a job to pay my bills. And I saw on Indeed where they had posted that they needed someone to work in the gift shop for tours and tastings. I'm like, you know what I can do? I can talk in front of people.

There you go.

So they hired me on and I guess I haven't or I liked it well enough that I haven't left.

So have you always been a whiskey fan?

No, actually before I started working at Casey Jones. Yeah, I would say I did not like bourbon or whiskey in any component. It definitely is something that has grown on me. I have learned to love. My brother jokes, I have a brother that's eight years older than me. He always laughs and he's like, I'm so happy you started working at Casey Jones because now we finally have something in common.

And that commonality is? Bourbon. Bourbon. Yes. Is he a big bourbon fan?

Yes, he at least likes to act like he knows a lot more than he does, which if he's hearing this, I'm just kidding, James.

Well, you have to turn him onto the show. I'm sure he'll love to hear you on air. But this is a great whiskey. This is a really good bourbon. This is kind of one of those bourbons that checks all the boxes. You want a bourbon to be this, and you want it to be this, and you want it to be this. This one kind of checks all those boxes. I love them over 100 proof. So, 108's a great number. Just curious though. Is that 108, does that just happen to be like your barrel entry proof or is there a reason you chose 108 proof?

I'm really not sure when it comes to the entry proof. We actually used to have it standardized at 112. And personally for me, it was still a little hot and they were just messing around with it and they finally settled on the 108 as the, I don't want to say better proof. the more approachable proof. Okay.

So you're looking for a more approachable proof for this particular expression.

Yeah, I would say so.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it definitely is. I can see somebody who is a little nervous of a higher proof bourbon being okay with this. You know, somebody who maybe has made their way up to a hundred proof maybe, but they haven't really ventured into the plus proofs. If they had this, I think they probably would be okay. I would choose this to be above If I was drinking this blind, I do believe I would pick it to be above 100 proof. I don't know if I'd go 108. I might go 102, 105 maybe, but 108. I don't know if my palate's that good or not, but. I think it drinks below itself is what I'm saying.

Yes, completely agree. And I do taste things all throughout the state. And one of my favorite things to do is whenever people come up to me and they're like, okay, I want something that's full bodied, but isn't going to be a lot of kick. I'll take the bottles and kind of hide the proof. And I'm like, I'll pour it and they'll have to guess the proof. And very rarely do they say it's a 108 or anything higher. It's 90% of the time they're guessing around that 102, 100 range.

Yeah. Yeah. So we're folks, we're talking about the Casey Jones, Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. It's 108 proof. It's an 80, 12 and eight multi barley. Is that, is that how the math works out? 80, 12 and eight, 80 corn, 12. rye and 8% malted barley. It definitely is a good drinker. What does this retail at?

This usually retails between about $45 to $50.

I think that's a fair price. I really do. It's got some complexity to it. It's got some viscosity to it. It drinks like a mid-shelf or higher bourbon, so very nice.

I appreciate it.

We'll keep sippin' on this, but in the meantime, why don't you tell me, I mean, Casey Jones is a familiar name. Why Casey Jones to Stillery?

So, Casey Jones was a real guy. Now, not to be confused with the guy from the Ninja Turtles, or the train conductor, or the song from the Grateful Dead, our Casey Jones was actually a moonshiner and a still builder during Prohibition.

See, I was thinking the rail conductor. Yeah. Whatever. Was he a conductor or was he a engineer?

He might have been an engineer.

I think he was an engineer. But yeah, the old Casey Jones tale, right?

Yeah.

But I know, what about the Ninja Turtles? I missed that one.

I've heard that he was like a pizza guy in like the old 90s Ninja Turtles movie, which I'm not really sure. I've never seen it. About half the time I say Casey Jones and anyone's about age 30 to 40, they remember watching it when they were kids. And that's just what they associate it with too. Which is perfectly fine with me. You've already made a connection to the brand without me even having to say anything. I think that's a beautiful thing.

So all the Ninja Turtles fanatics from the nineties are drinking Casey Jones whiskey, right?

That's the hope, right?

Okay, so tell us about the real Casey Jones, the one that is the namesake of your brand.

So like I said, Casey Jones was a moonshiner and a steel builder back in Prohibition. He mainly did a lot of his work around the Golden Pond, Western Kentucky area. And his real claim to fame was that he invented the square pot steel. What that essentially did is it shortened the moonshining process. It shortened it down from about 14 hours down to eight. which was very important when you were trying to avoid the law. You wanted to make or do your run as fast as possible so you could get out of there and not get caught. And along with that, he would put handles on stills even so he could pick it up and fit in the back or put in the back of his truck so he could get away and not get caught. Now, That was one of his many ideas they used to try to avoid police and it led to a pretty impressive career in moonshining. He did it for about three decades and ended up making hundreds of stills that were all throughout Western Kentucky. Now, although he was great at what he did, Eventually, he did get caught a couple of times. The first time he went to Millpoint Federal Penitentiary in West Virginia, he was there for a year. And Millpoint wasn't a horrible place to be. He actually got paid to be there because they helped build the West Virginia Railroad systems. And along with that, Millpoint was typically where all the moonshiners got sent whenever they got caught. So it picked up a little nickname as Moonshiners University. Oh, really? Yep. So whenever he ended up going there, he didn't end up correcting his ways or learning any kind of lesson. He actually got out learning a few new tricks.

There you go. Yeah, and- So there's no rehabilitation there at all. In fact, they enhanced his craft.

At least that time. The second time that he ended up going to Mill Point, he did learn this lesson that time, but that was only because whenever he was leaving, They stopped them and said, Casey, if we catch you again, you're going to go back for life. It was at that point, he said he couldn't do it anymore. It wasn't worth it. So he ended up giving up his moonshining career, but that didn't keep his son Robert from wanting to try it out. And to put it plain and simple, Robert wasn't nearly as good as Casey was and ended up being caught pretty quickly. The only difference is whenever he found out that the police were following him, he decided to join the Marines as a way to escape them. Now, the moonshining career kind of ended for both of them there until about 1967, when the same people that put Casey in jail ended up coming back to him and said, hey, Casey, we need you to make a still for us. Well, if you were in Casey's position, you wouldn't have trusted them. He actually thought it was a joke. He's like, no, I'm not gonna build a still for you. Like, I'm not gonna go back to jail. Like, this is a trap.

Yeah.

Well, they said, hold on, here's how. They were actually building a welcome center in the Golden Pond Lane between the lakes area now. And they wanted to make an exhibit on moonshining. So they wanted his still to be in the exhibit because he was such a big part of the area's history. And at that point, I can only imagine that Casey's ego got a little bit bigger, and he agreed to make it, and that still sat there for 40 years.

Wow. So he thought it was entrapment, right?

Yeah, because he definitely thought that he was going to have to go back to jail.

Well, man, I think that's a really awesome story. So is that still sitting in the museum?

It's actually not. In about 2007, Arlen Casey Jones, Casey Jones' grandson, we know him as AJ, and his wife Peg ended up finding the still in the welcome center and they were putting it in storage because they had changed owners. Well, AJ was very fearful that something was going to happen to it, especially since this was Casey's one and only legal still. Yeah. And he ended up asking if he could have it. Actually led to about a year long battle of paperwork being sent back and forth trying to prove that his grandfather actually built it. Well, he ended up getting it. And whenever he got the phone call that he could come pick it up, when Peg and AJ tell the story, they say that they made this 40 minute drive in about 15. They booked it. And they ended up picking up the still, loading it in the back of his truck and bringing it home. And they set it up in his garage. Well, as any person would do, who has a very cool still now in their garage, he started making moonshine.

Why not? I know, right? I mean, I would.

And his wife, Peg, was up at the house. She's a very intelligent woman. I'm sure she knew exactly what he was doing. But she didn't really get concerned until one day she looked out the window of her house and realized a lot of cars were going to the garage and leaving the garage. They were picking up their moonshine.

Oh my goodness.

And she went down there and caught him in the act and essentially said that he was going to quit or he was going to get the license for a distillery. Now, you can see what happened. I'm here today.

Yeah. So that was the start of this all.

Yeah. And it led to them, or AJ actually making his own still. Casey's still now actually sits above the bar at the distillery. And they officially opened in 2014.

Fantastic story. Amazing. Such a pedigree there. That's really awesome. Well, I really enjoyed that bourbon. That was fantastic. I love it. I don't have a bottle on my bar now, but I'm going to get one really quick. That's for sure. I do have a story about Casey Jones. I went to a bar one time and it happens sometimes. I'll walk into a bar and the bartender or the owner will recognize me or I know them from before and they'll say, hey, pick a pour, anything you want. Pick something off the bar that you'd like to have. and I'll take a quick peek around to see if there's something I'd better like to have because I appreciate that. Everybody loves a complimentary pour, right?

Yeah, of course.

And I said, I've never had the Casey Jones. Let's try that. And he just looked at me dumbfounded like, wait, there's all this top-shelf bourbon up here. Why are you picking the Casey Jones? That's because I've never had it. And that's, you know, I always want to try something I have never had before. So I've told that story before. I've certainly told it on a podcast before, I'm sure. But that was my first introduction to Casey Jones. And when I tasted it the first time, I was pleased with it. I thought it was a great pour. And I think ever since that day, I've always thought that I needed to get Casey Jones on the show at some point. So I'm so glad you're here.

I'm honored, really.

So I'm ready to move on to the next whiskey. What do we have in glass number two?

So what we have in glass number two is our single barrel weeded. This is a little interesting, because this is a four grain. Very rarely do I see four grain weeded bourbons, but it's made up of yellowdent, bloody butcher, wheat and barley. Now, the cool thing about this is that we actually entered it into the Heartland Whiskey Competition last year, and it won best in state, best four grain, and best in show. So it ended up beating, I believe, 17 other states.

Wow.

Yeah, we're pretty proud of it. We like to brag.

So this is a bourbon, this is a four grain bourbon. And what's the proof on this?

Believe it's a 115. Okay.

Wow, the nose is really nice on that. Just a hint of cherries. That's a great nose. So inviting, it's very floral.

I get a lot of citrus up front, kind of like an orange peel.

Yeah, it's got a little bit of an orange note to it. It's fresh. It's very nice. Cheers.

Cheers.

That is super soft on the front of the palette. Oh my goodness. It's almost like it, it just skips right across the front. It just.

I love how you explain that. That's such a good way to explain it.

Yeah.

I think the reason I like this wheat so much is that although it's still sweet, it's a weeded bourbon. I personally find it more crisp and clean and fresh. And that's just why I tend to kind of gravitate towards.

Wow. That is, that's really nice. That is, uh, I mean, my goodness, somebody who's not had bourbon before at all takes a sip of that. They're not going to be thrown back at all.

No.

You get a little bit of white raisin on it too.

I get a lot of cereal grains just in it as well.

Now this one has a little bit more of a straw color to it. It's a little bit lighter, not quite as dark as the previous one, but maybe not a straw color, maybe more of a light amber.

Yeah. And this is a four-year.

And this is a four-year. So why is it a little bit lighter? I'm not sure because they're both getting the number four char. Are they?

Yeah.

Oh, okay.

That's pretty standard. We use number four char for about everything.

Okay. Well, when you say four grain, it's got two corn products. So it is a weeded bourbon. Okay. So it's got the yellow dent and the bloody butcher. You know, sometimes with the bloody butcher, I get kind of a, a little bit of an earthy note from it, and I'm not getting a great deal of that on this. So how much Bloody Bercher's in it?

You're really testing my knowledge when it comes to percentages.

Putting you on the spot.

I know it's in it. The percentages definitely throw me off. I think it's 26.5.

Okay. So it's a substantial amount of that. Okay, wow. So I would have expected a little bit more of that earthy kind of bloody butcher richness that comes out. Four-year-old. And the reason you went to four on this instead of three is because the wheat tends to take just a little bit longer to mature than the rye whiskey still.

I'm definitely assuming. And that's just something that we had batched up already. Probably our masters still felt that it needed to sit a little longer, like you said, in order to mature.

Yeah.

Especially with our single barrels, they're pretty keen on letting them sit until they're absolutely perfect.

Sure.

Which that's kind of the charm that comes with single barrels, is that you don't have to mess with it. You just let it be.

Well, this is really nice. And do you guys have a single barrel program?

Oh, we do.

Okay. So this is something that will ultimately be available in your single barrel program. Awesome. Amazing.

Well, I've really enjoyed this.

This has been a wonderful first half. We've got to taste through two of your whiskies. We have two more. I think in the second half, we're not Yeah, we are drinking a bourbon, but we're also drinking a non-bourbon whiskey as well.

Yes, we are.

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All right, folks, so we're back.

In the first half, we had a couple of great expressions from Casey Jones. Jessica Martin's with us today. And that last whiskey we just tried was their four grain, but really weeded bourbon. And it was a single barrel. And remind me what the proof was on that again.

I believe it's 115.

115. And I want to make sure our listeners get the MSRP on that. What is that one selling for?

The MSRP is generally around $69.99. Okay.

So your single barrel, four grain bourbon is going to be right around $69. And then the one before that, the Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey at 108 proof that was

So the small batch tends to be between about $45 and $49.99.

Okay, got it. And a little bit more for the single barrels, there's a little bit more craft in that, a little bit more, I don't know, they can command a little bit higher price.

Yeah, and whenever it comes to the weeded single barrel, it just tends to be a little bit more expensive just because the price of the weeds is a little more expensive.

And it has an age, an extra year or so, right? So, oh, that's understandable. All right, so what do we have in our glass starting out this half? This is one that I've been looking forward to talking about.

So this is our totally Eclipse bourbon. It actually hit the market this week. Our distributor just got inventory and so it is brand new, very excited. Now this is actually being released for the 2024 Eclipse that is passing through the United States.

And when's that Eclipse coming through?

April 8th.

April 8th. And is that Eclipse going to affect Hopkinsville?

We won't get 100%. We'll actually get, I believe it's around like between 95 and like 99%.

Yeah, I think we're getting like 98% here. I think we have to travel north just a little bit into Indiana, not far to hit the 100%.

Yeah, if you're getting that much here, then we're definitely getting closer to that 98, 99, because we're pretty close to Paducah and it's supposed to be going straight through the heart of Paducah and the lakes.

So you guys secured that name, huh? That's pretty awesome.

Yes. Whenever the last eclipse went through Western Kentucky in 2017, our masters dealer AJ found out about it in 2015. He just thought ahead and he decided that he wanted to trademark the name Total Eclipse Spirit so he could have the drink of the eclipse. And he went and did just that. Now for 2017, we had a moonshine. It went over really well. But in my personal opinion, I am in love with this four grain.

Well, we have to get our bang for our buck here because the next one's in like 2045. Yeah. It's a long wait.

Definitely. Now, what we have in our hand, like I said, is a four grain.

Is this the same match bill as the single barrel we just tried? It is not. It is not.

Okay. Now, personally for me, I get a lot of cedar on the nose. Now, it is a wheat and rye. mash bill. So there's wheat and rye in it. I believe it's about 70% corn. And then there's also going to be a touch of malted barley in there. Whenever I'm sipping this, I get more of that wheat profile up front. It's a lot softer. I personally think it kind of tastes like a caramel apple. And the more I sip, it's going to go towards that rye profile. It's going to become a little spicier. I get a lot of cinnamon. But throughout, even on the nose, I get quite a bit of cedar as well.

On the nose, I'm getting, I am getting a little bit of a fresh note. I don't know that I'm going to call it cedar from my particular palette. I think for me, it's, it's got a little bit more. I do get like the, uh, the cinnamon and apple, but you said a caramel apple.

I think it personally tastes a little bit like a caramel apple, especially on the palette.

It has got that fresh note, something airy about it.

It's a little earthy, which is kind of refreshing.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Yeah, I definitely get, in fact, I get a little bit of like apple peel.

Yeah, that's pretty spot on.

Yeah, not so much like the sweetness of the apple, the meat of the apple or the fruit of the apple, but more like the peel. It's a little bit drier. I like that. Very nice. I love the bottle. It looks like a big black hole in the front of the bottle, but I know that's the picture of the eclipse.

Yeah. And it's really nice because the moonshine, it's the totally eclipse moonshine. It's the silver version of the gold version of the bourbon. So they're like a matching pair. And when you put them together, they're so beautiful. Hats off to Cody Turner again. He's the one that designs our labels. incredibly talented.

Yeah. Your bottles are beautiful. I can remember, I talked in the first half about that bottle of Casey Jones that was pulled off the wall for me at a local establishment. Not the same label, not the same bottle. Things have changed just a little bit. It looks like your packaging has grown up just a little bit in the past couple of years.

Yeah. And that's happened since I've worked for the distillery in the past year. And again, it's just so impressive to see how much they've grown. Cause whenever I started work there, they had just broken ground for their first rick house. And now they're filling it and they have a brand new moonshine and bourbon still that's running now with six giant fermentation tanks that hold about a thousand gallons a piece. So it's really, it's truly impressive to see how they've grown in the past couple of years.

Did you say this one has the bloody butcher in it?

This one, I do not.

Does not. So this is yellow dent.

Yes.

And then rye, and then wheat, and then barley. Got it. Yeah, it's definitely quite a bit different than the other two expressions we had. This one is, and what's the age on this?

It's two and a half.

Two and a half. Yeah, so this one does have some of those more, I would say more floral youth notes, and they're very nice notes. I like them. You know, a lot of times you'll get a youthful whiskey, and two years is not youthful, by the way, folks. You know, a straight whiskey is two years old, but something in the two and a half year old range is gonna have some of those pleasant youthful notes that tend to disappear in an older whiskey. A lot of times when you get a blend, somebody has blended some younger whiskey with some higher-aged whiskey, you'll get the benefit of both. You'll get those more mature notes along with some of the youthful notes that are good. There are some youthful notes that are not good, but this has those youthful notes that are good, and I like that. It's very, very interesting. I wish I could get that caramel apple. I'm just not getting it because you were so adamant about it having a caramel apple, but my palate's not giving that to me right now.

And I've had so many people try it and say that they just cannot get it. And that's just my palate. I work with a girl, her name is Clarisa. She works in the gift shop. She's Filipino. And whenever she drinks this, she gets coconut.

Yeah.

And I have never been able to taste the coconut in it, which that just might be what she's relating it to since that was a big part of her background as well.

Yeah, for me, it's definitely, it's got a little bit of apple peel to it. It's got a nice, it's got just a touch of cinnamon on it. Not a whole lot. It does have that light, airy note to it. Like it's a, you called it a cedar. It's refreshing. Whatever it is, it's kind of refreshing. I can't put my finger on it, but I like this one a lot. This is very nice.

It's a very light, easy sipper and it's a hundred proof. So again, very approachable.

And this just released. So this is just hitting shelves.

Yes. Along with that fun little just like side note, it's a hundred proof because in 2017 we had a hundred percent coverage and we have a total eclipse. Got it. It's a hundred percent. So I just always think that's a fun little tidbit.

Yeah. Did you go outside for the eclipse?

I did. This is definitely going to tell my age. I was still in high school in 2017. I remember we got the day off from school and I went out to my back porch because we had like 99.5% where I lived and I grew up on a horse farm. Everything just went completely quiet. It was almost eerie, but beautiful at the same time.

It's eerie. It's very eerie. People in their cars sort of pull over to the side of the road. People don't continue. It's amazing when it happens. Folks, if you haven't experienced a full eclipse like this, it's worth it once in a lifetime to do it. And I guess the next one for our area, this general, is going to be in 2045. So it's going to be another 21 years before it happens again. Take the opportunity. I think it really skirts across northern Kentucky, southern Indiana, kind of up through Ohio somehow. I'm not sure exactly what the pathway is, but you get that green, eerie tint, and then it gets darker and darker. And then we didn't have 100%. I think we had like 99% the last time too. It just gets quiet and the birds stop and the dogs don't bark and the cars pull off the side of the road. And it just, it's something you have to experience in your lifetime. It's really something. And I know people get together and they get their glasses and they want to see it and all that kind of stuff. But just the, just experiencing the, just the eeriness of it is something else.

Yeah. It's definitely almost other worldly.

It is.

It's something like you said, everyone should have a chance to experience. It's really like a once in a lifetime thing.

And so what's the price on this bottle?

I believe this is supposed to be around $49.99. Okay.

All right. So I think that's a fairly priced thing and certainly definitely something you want to buy a bottle and experience the eclipse. How about that? I know a bunch of people that are going up to who's your national forest and they've got camping spots and they're going to have a great time up there. So that's kind of neat. I guess they're a hundred percent at who's your national forest.

OK. In 2017, we had people camped out all over the facility. There used to be a video that played in the gift shop. And just to see the amount of people that gathered to see it is something that's amazing. Something the Eclipse was able to bring so many people together.

Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about, and we're going to move on to the last whiskey here in a minute, but let's talk a little bit about where people can find Casey Jones on the shelf.

On the shelf?

Yes.

Okay. So you can, of course, find it here in Kentucky. You can find it in Tennessee or at least parts of Tennessee. We're in about 11 states. So California, Atlanta, I believe. I believe we are also in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, believe Minnesota. And then we're also in a couple of provinces in Canada as well. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. But we actually, a couple weeks ago, opened up our online sales. So you can now go onto kcjonesdistillery.com and you can order yourself a bottle.

All right, folks, definitely do that. All right, so what's in our next glass?

So in our final glass, this is something that is definitely unique. I can say in the best way possible, I've never tried anything like this. What it is is a 50% corn, 50% sugar mash bill. It's aged three years in a brand new wide barrel like bourbon. And because of that, it really lets that cane sugar kind of mature. Pulls out some butterscotch, some caramel. And then it's aged a fourth year and you use bourbon barrel. And because of that, it ends up pulling some of those whiskey nuts. Now, this is our double barrel cut, classifies as a distilled specialty spirit, so we just call it a barrel cut to make it easy.

So this is like an other spirit.

Yes.

So this is not bourbon, this is not whiskey, this is an other spirit. What was the official classification again?

We call it a double barrel cut.

Yeah, but what was the official TTV classification?

Distilled specialty spirit.

Distilled specialty spirit. Okay, so it has some cane spirit in it, it also has some, what qualified as bourbon before the two came together, right?

Oh yeah, and it also doesn't have the 51% corn.

It doesn't have 51% corn.

It's only 50.

Got it.

Now because of the corn and the sugar content in it, it's almost as if like a whiskey and a rum combined, it would be this product.

So I have to be clear about this. Todd Ritter and I had this before the show and he pulled out a bottle of this and he called this, I forget what he called it, a boo rum? A boo rum. I don't know if that's a word or not, but it should be, even if it's not. Well, the nose on it, after drinking some, some whiskeys that classify as bourbons, this is one that definitely has that like caramel butterscotch note on the nose.

I get a lot of brown sugar and like hints of cherry on the nose.

Absolutely. Very nice.

Definitely going to be a bit of your sweeter option.

And this is a higher proof.

Yes, now this proof is not standardized. Okay. So all of our small, this is a small batch product and all of our small batches are about four barrels. They are super tiny. So we're just gonna craft them to whatever we think is best and try to keep as consistent as a flavor as possible.

Well, I went ahead and took a sip. The nose was wonderful on this. It is definitely a, it's kind of a caramel butterscotch-y buttery bomb. I mean, it really is nice. I don't really get the rum on it so much. I get more just this, like this extra butterscotch bourbon kind of for me.

I definitely feel like the rum aspect pulls out and like the texture, flavor-wise, I don't necessarily get on it. We do have other spirits that we do a single barrel version of this. I definitely think that one is more similar to a rum, but.

And this is super dark.

Yes, beautiful amber color.

What's the price on a bottle of this?

So we believe we just suggested it to be 45.

Oh, what a bargain. My goodness.

Currently, you could probably still find it on the shelf floating around for about 40.

Wow, that's fantastic. Yeah, folks, so if you can find this on the shelf at around 40 to $45, What an amazing buy, because it's really flavorful. If you're not that ultimate purist, gotta have bourbon kind of person, or you need that, you know, you're not venturing out. If you wanna try something new, something different, something that's outside the bourbon realm, this is nice, this is really good.

Yes, this is something if you're wanting to try something new, highly recommend that you lean towards.

Yeah, really good. So Casey Jones Distillery, Hopkinsville, Kentucky. You guys have a distillery experience there. People can visit you. What's it like to take a trip to the distillery and visit there?

So we're open for tours and tastings about seven days a week. We're even open today and we got a crazy amount of snow apparently, which you can do that whenever the distillery is in our master stillers front yard.

Okay.

Yeah, turned into a hobby and then. some hobby now, right? Well, we do it seven days a week. You come out. We're going to treat you like family whenever you come out. That is the number one compliment we get every single time. We'll answer your questions, we meet you at the door, and we want to know all about you and why you're there. Now, on the tour experience, you learn a lot more about our history. We show you around the facility. We show you our event space out in the back that overlooks this gorgeous pond, which AJ will argue with me and say it's a lake. Apparently, it's just barely enough square footage.

There's some definition between a lake and a pond. If you tried to call him on it,

Oh yeah, he's definitely right, but it is barely alike.

It just qualifies, right?

It just qualifies. And we go down to the... distillery, and we show you the whole process, the bottling room, which for a long time, we did all of our bottling by hand. It wasn't until about past year, about half of that became motorized with some supervision.

Awesome.

Yeah, but it's a very neat experience. And we also do something called the Stateline Whiskey Tour with M.B. Rowland and O'Glory and Clarksville.

Perfect. Yeah. That's awesome that you guys team up on that. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, well, we're all within 30 minutes. So we try to support each other as best we can.

Absolutely. Well, let me ask you this, are you guys part of that Harvest Host thing where people can, are you?

We are.

Oh my goodness. So our listeners are starting to find out a little bit more about Harvest Host and some of them are starting to do it. You are a Harvest Host location, which means somebody can call you up and reserve a spot for their camper overnight.

We absolutely love our Harvest Host guests. They're always so much fun and we park you up by the Rick House and you get this beautiful view that overlooks the distillery and the sunsets are just always gorgeous.

Yeah, Melanie and I don't actually own a camper, but we wanted to do it so much, we joined Harvest Host, and we rent campers and we go do it. So, you don't even have to own a camper, you can still do it. You just need to have a self-enclosed space with a bathroom.

Yeah.

So, hey, lots of fun.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Well, Jessica, it's been a blast to have you on the show today. I want to give you the opportunity to let our listeners know how they can find Casey Jones online, website, social media, all that stuff.

OK, so you can find us at CaseyJonesDestillery.com, Casey Jones Distillery on Facebook, Instagram. We have a TikTok. We post on it occasionally. Sometimes I make appearances on it. I don't know how I always end up in the videos considering I'm rarely there. But yeah, and you can find us all over those platforms.

Well, awesome. Thank you so much again for being on the show. We really appreciate it.

Well, thank you for having me.

All right, so you can find the Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, threads. Yeah, TikTok. We do TikTok sometimes, not very often, but threads, Twitter. We try to do them all. We don't do them all really well, but we try to get it out there. Every single Wednesday we'll do an episode. We'll have somebody on like Jessica, drink through some whiskey, have a good time, learn a little something new. It's always a great time. We hope you'll join us every single week. But until the next time, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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