388. Limestone Farms Morgan Family Collection

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'sBurbanShop.com as a new sponsor for the Bourbon Road podcast. In fact, this podcast is brought to you by Blanton's Burban Shop. Blanton'sBurbanShop.com is the only official merchandiser for Blanton's original single barrel. Looking for a unique gift? Blanton's Burban Shop has got you covered. Blanton'sBurbanShop.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 lovers. Hello, listeners, and welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon, and today we've got a special guest on the show. It's been a while. We've been waiting for this to come about for some time now. We did get our samples in just a few days ago, and we're excited to have this guest on the show. And I think listeners, you're going to be just as excited as I am to listen about these new whiskeys that they have. So today on the show, we have Barry Downing. Barry is the chief operating officer, partner, master blender and crafter for Limestone Farms, Limestone Farms out of Georgetown, Kentucky. Barry, welcome to the Bourbon Road.

Thank you, Jim. Glad to be here.

But we are very excited to try your whiskeys. These whiskeys are definitely well respected and well revered in the industry. You're kind of making your rounds now with podcasts and YouTube channels and certainly getting your word out about your products. But we're super excited to have you on the show today. You're introduced to us by a very good friend of ours, Diane Strong from Bourbon on the Banks. Right. Darned excited to have you here on the show.

It's a great honor and it's great to be recognized by so many people that have such a great palette and a passion for what we do. So thank you.

So today you've brought three different whiskeys for us to try, and they're all part of the Morgan family collection. Correct. But we're going to get straight to that first bottle today. And can you tell us what's in our very first glass?

Absolutely. Our white label, for lack of a better word, is our select batch. And this is our entry into the luxury price point range that we have here in the three of them that we currently represent. We'll have some others that'll be the sub $100 range. in the premium super premiums coming out here in the next quarter and through the summer and into the holidays so but these are kind of our our flagships that we want to set an icon around and this is going to be mostly nine year old juice in here it's all kentucky juice as our label says we're georgetown kentucky kentucky proud and it's something that we hold near and dear to our hearts so this one. And as you go forward from here all my products that we want to make sure you want to make sure they're bright clean delineated flavors but then there's richness and. No gaps if it needs to start and finish with extreme complexities seamlessness about it higher proof but crafted so that the lack of The burn is not there should not you don't have to sacrifice flavor for smoothness and richness is our is our theory behind it and that's part of what our mission is is to take bourbon to the next level which is crafting and blending and not just a single girl pick or taking road G you know floor five from rick house. K1 and go dump it and put it in a bottle and prove it down and get a label on it and get out to the market. Nothing wrong with that. Just that good stuff. I drink them almost every day myself. But what we're trying to do is to try to develop something that's going to have that little bit more complexities for the fish and auto or the person who is trying to get into it i approach it as layering flavors like a chef does. Adding flavors to it more culinary school guys so can i came second nature to me. So here we're trying to make sure this is a mid-rai. So you're 78.13.9 is the mash bill. The mid-rai will add some richness there, but without too much interfering spice. Seems to be one of our tells on the back end is usually going to be a little bit of cinnamon stick and the notes as well towards the back. So you should have some stone fruit, a little bit of brown sugar, sometimes a nice leather component, especially when you start getting into the upper ranges.

Well, fantastic. I'm already nosing this thing and it is, well, let's just say it's 110 proof to start with 110.8. So it's, uh, it's not, uh, it's not light on the proof. So when you go to nose it, you're going to get a little bit of that.

I'm not going to charge you for the water. I could, I could water them down. I'd rather not. I'd rather let you add your own water. It's your money. If you want to make a cocktail out of it, light it up.

It has a nice rich nose on it. It's very pleasing. You're getting a little bit of that ethanol, but you're going to at 110.8 proof. You know, you're going to get a little bit of that, but it has a nice spicy aroma to it. It definitely has. kind of a subtle fruit sweetness, just very subtle, but you are picking up the, uh, the extra age notes. The, you say this is nine year, it's got a nine year component to it. Yeah. And it's a, you're getting those extra age notes, a little bit of that, uh, leather, not so much tobacco, but a little bit of leather in there, I think, for me.

Yeah. And some of my barrels will, at this time of year, especially coming out of the winter, some of them picking up some really pretty tobacco notes in some of them, even a pipe tobacco on a couple barrels right now that I'm excited about what I'm blending for probably for a May introduction into the market. But yes, I think you're absolutely on it, Jim. And that's what we're after. I want those richness. I want those uplifted aromas. And maybe a little bit of ethyl. There's about 8% of six-year-olds of the same match built in that. And then a little bit of eight-year-olds, but over 85% of that is nine-year-old juice. So I don't want barrel fatigue. I think that's the sin in our industry that so many people think that older is automatically better. Um, most people out there that are great tasters know that magic happens between that six to 10, eight to 12, depending on the mash bill and how so much of it's about the quality of the coverage, you know, you cannot understate that.

Well, I'm ready to take a taste. Cheers.

That sounds good.

Wow. It's got a nice texture to it. And I am getting that stone fruit you mentioned. It definitely is. It comes across upfront. It's not real soft, but it does have a nice subtle fruit sweetness to it. Um, I think that, I think that I feel it upfront when it comes in, it gives a good impression on the mid palette. It's there. It's got a nice round flavor on the middle of the palette. And then that spiciness starts to come out on the back. And that's what you're talking about. Like no gaps, right? It's not like it's not falling off here or falling off there. It's just kind of giving you that. that experience you want on all areas of the palate.

Right. Thank you. And it's where that second and third rewarding sips usually get those secondary and tertiary flavors that come back and revisit. And that's when I noticed that you can really pick up long standing note flavor profiles for several minutes on your palate after swallowing. Which is great for relaxing evening, celebratory, anything, but it holds up again to ice if that's what people want to put into it. I actually like dropping a small little rock in there and it opens up that mid-palette like a flower, get it down to the old Pappy adage of about 106, 107 proof and just opens it up and adds a whole other layer to it.

I'm starting to get a little bit of the tobacco on this now. On the nose, it was more leather for me, but now I am getting a little bit of light tobacco on the palate.

Yep. Should be just really soft, almost like a Connecticut shade wrapper on a cigar or something. The oils are there. You should have some really nice legs on it. And that's one of the keys in blending and crafting, especially on the blending side, is to get your balance between your ethanol and your fuse oils. Fuse oils can burn you just as bad. So if you don't, It's about barrel selection at the right time with the right barrels for the right reason. It can take me a month to come up with the right batch on this between the barrels because I don't dump the whole barrel rarely. That one right there is 22 different barrels in it and we released made about 840, 856 somewhere in there with our sampling bottles. of that batch of that release. But I had, you know, two gallons from one barrel, 22 from another, 32 from another, 17, eight. You know, I want to layer the flavors. Kind of the key is to find, you know, three to five barrels that really play nice together. Sometimes your best barrels don't want to play nice with the others. So you just have to let them set and you come back to something later. or I use it into my next level, my small batch, which will be, for lack of a better word, the best of the best of these barrels.

I tell you, the nose and the palate really do mutually agree, I think, very much so. And I find that when I sip on it the second and the third time, it sort of really envelops this well-rounded. It's a little bit drying on the back. Like I said, there wasn't a lot of sweetness up front. It's a little drying on the back. But at six to nine years, the components being six to nine years, you're not going to have any lingering corn sweetness to kind of come in there. and give you that real sweet upfront that you get to your palate. I love it. I think it's really good. I think this is more of a sipping whiskey. Of the Morgan family collection, this is kind of your entry-level bottle. It's going to get more bold and more pronounced in flavor profile as we go forward with the next two bottles.

If I did my job correctly, absolutely, Jim.

All right. One more sip and then we can be on our way. Alrighty, sir. Not a problem. I'm enjoying myself. That's really good. So, well, tell our listeners a little bit about Limestone Farms and the formation of the brand and the idea and the philosophies of the company. I'd love for you to tell us how you came into the mix and how things sort of got to where you are today.

No, I appreciate the question. Yes, it was founded by Darren and Bethany Dillow in Georgetown. And the Morgan family farm is where Bethany was born and raised. She's fifth generation. Her children are on the farm now raising it as well as the sixth generation in the cattle farm. And then our other farm is the Jennings family farm where our distillery is being built just down the road, about five minute drive away, still in Georgetown, closer to downtown. right down by Summer Wind Farms, which is where American Farrow was bred and the like, so right off the highway. And that's a sixth generation cattle farm as well, expansive, 268 acres. So they had an idea to do a leather-based, you know, that icon on that label is shaped like the international symbol for leather and coming from cattle. So they had this idea and they developed it and sort of bringing the brand around and Started asking around for somebody that would to blend and craft with and we met up and after a couple months we decided we're like alright we want to partner together and next thing you know is going to be a nice boutique crafted bourbon brand and started working on sourcing on some barrels and doing what we're going to do and Next thing i know other partners came in like bobby sturgeon of meiko labs and lexington a very successful businessman as well as the couch brothers tim and greg couch came in over the net just start snowballing the next thing you know. Oh, Jed's a millionaire and we're building a 33-acre distillery campus to become the second largest pot still distiller in the state in 2024 and producing upwards of 22,000 barrels a year of all pot still. And that's what we're going to do. And even after we come up with our own juice going out there, getting up to six, eight, nine years, And that's where the Limestone Farm brand here, I want to make sure we keep in there six years and above. Then I'll continue to buy other people's juice. And I want to work with other really great distillers and houses with their juice if they're willing to sell it to me, because I want to play with it. I want to experiment. I'm going to mess up a lot. And that's quite right, because we learn and we fail forward in this industry if we really pay attention and listen to our barrels and listen to what our customers want. We can craft and truly blend a single one time distilled product like bourbon you know the rest of the world scotches so largest selling volume whiskey in the world and you know over there the blunders make. Three to four times more than the distiller you know because that's what their business is built a lot of Japanese about it obviously Canadian is irish is it a lot of these great world class bourbons are. blended and now they craft and finishing and I think finishing is great. I just think it's one arrow in the quiver of a crafter. You know, I mean, you can, and after three to four months, really it's, you know, the barrels, depending on what you're using, aren't really going to imbue too much more into your whiskey. The whiskey is going to start overpowering that barrel. And that's where, again, it's one quiver. So have some fun, get around blending. When people come out to do a blending experience with us at our, at our trade, Blending House on Swords Road at the Morgan Family Farm. It's usually an experience like they've never had before. You're not going to go in and say, oh, there's three, four barrels you get to go drop a thief into and take a dram out of. No, there's 40, 50, 60 barrels that are all open and ready for you. Let's go have some fun. Oh, wow. And so that's what we like to do. We want To engage with people and let them engage and said not every consumer wants to know how the sausage is made and that's fine you know they can get disneyland wherever they want in our industry and many others and that can be a really great time. What the next level the evolution we think of the bourbon industry is going to be about crafting and blending and getting that personal. Get it in your DNA. Get your fingernails dirty. You've never had dirty fingers until you've been blending for a couple of days and it just, all the oak and the sugar and the, you know, everything kind of gets in around into your cuticles and stuff. It's addictive.

So, I kind of heard you say, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I kind of heard you say that you prefer not to draw, like color within the lines. You really want to experiment with this business and you want to try things that are new and innovative, but you're dealing currently, primarily with Let's just call them well-aged bourbons, right? Right. Mature barrels. Mature barrels. Very mature barrels. And do you think that that limits your ability? to experiment when you're dealing with barrels that are in a very tight range of what, six to 12 years is what you're saying?

Yeah, correct. And so that's where, great question. And yes, if it would, if we were doing that, but we do own some younger barrels as well. And we will continue, we will introduce other brands at a i'm really excited about my bloodlines range coming out here in may which would be mostly six years old juice a little bit of the nine year old didn't into it but it's crafted and again when i say crafting and. Are barrels in the rick house but before they're gonna for months before i ever gonna put them into a bottle i'm gonna stand up on their heads integrate all those states back into the whiskey sitting in the rick house drying out with the angel sure evaporation. You have dry staves on the top of your barrel. You got 33 to 35 barrels in there or staves in that barrel. They may come from five or six different trees, let alone what part of the tree. You don't know where it came from in the Cooper Chalice, nor can the Cooper track it. So those may be the best staves. in the on that barrel but they're not dry nor contributing to the whiskey so i stand them up there are more volatile some there's there's there's the given the ying and yang when it comes down to crafting there's no perfect example otherwise everybody do it'd be too easy and that's why you feel like but you gotta incorporate that and then i use those six year olds to play with but that's going to be a ninety four ninety five proof it seventy five dollars on the shelf and the prototypes we're doing right now will start polling next month and bottling in late April, early May is absolutely fantastic. I'm going to work with some three and four. I've got some young wheaters that we're playing with and stuff for some really nice, very notable distillers. Yeah, you're absolutely right. We've got to have it. That's why we've got some really nice I've got some good support staff with me. Andrew Isaacs is coming along, working with me side by side. I use him as my tasting bench. And he's a young man with an excellent palate and a good little excitement to him about blending and crafting and what he wants to do. And so those next generations will learn and will work. And just like the barrels, us old codgers can't keep doing this forever.

Yeah, Barry, it sounds like your knowledge is deeply rooted in the industry. It sounds like you've got some great experience. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Yeah, sure. I've been at this 32 years in the alcohol industry, the adult beverage space. So I've worked on five continents, lived on three. I've worked in wine and on many front as well as brandy's and cognac and different things and i moved him grew up in west michigan my family was originally from here and we moved up there that way my grandparents moved up from illinois southern illinois into michigan and i'm just gonna bring the family back when i brought it back to back down here in two thousand and ten so and i've been working in the bourbon side of things and crafting and blending and ever since then, but I've lived in Australia and South Africa and, you know, been around three million airline miles.

So home today is in Georgetown?

Yes, sir. Yep. Yep. Yep. In Georgetown right here in where The new ad campaign is coming out. That's going to be the birth town of bourbon where Elijah Craig made the first bourbons down here in the Royal Springs. And, you know, we're quite proud of that at the moment. So, and the water's beautiful. I mean, our distillery has on that farm, we have two open live limestone wells that come right up out of the water and we will be using real limestone water in our stills. That's fantastic. Love it.

Love it. Yeah. Georgetown. And we've got, obviously got some listeners out there that maybe haven't made it to Kentucky yet, or they have made it to Kentucky, but they've only been in, you know, Bardstown or Louisville or Lexington. Great places. Maybe they haven't ventured up to Georgetown yet, but I just, let's just give them an idea where Georgetown is. Georgetown is kind of a sort of the Northern sibling to Lexington, sort of the North western a little bit, northwest of Lexington?

It can be downtown Lexington in 20 minutes or downtown Frankfurt in 20 minutes. So, there you go.

So, pretty close to everybody and, you know, there's a number of distilleries and people doing...people that are in the whiskey business that are in the Georgetown area, but you guys are doing it right. I think I love the whole idea behind the, you know, sort of the farm-based distillery. I mean, that just... It really gets me. It sounds like you're building something magical there. We'll, we'll get into the details later, but.

It is exciting what we're doing. It's daunting, but it is about heritage. It's about bringing heritage home to where Kentucky brought its bourbon out of with Elijah Craig. You know, he founded the town. He founded the little college here, you know, so it was, that's what we're doing. So we're always going to pay homage to those who came before in the heritage of what bourbon's about, but we want to push that envelope. Like you said earlier.

And you recently found out that you've got some heritage to an old whiskey man himself, didn't you?

I did, I did. I mean, my brother's always been quite the genealogist on that when it's ever since back in the 70s when roots came to the airwaves, you know? And he's been tracking things and then he dropped a little nugget on me right after the holidays that George Washington is our cousin, and his grandfather is our grandfather. And so his dad and our grandfather were brothers. So that was kind of a nice little thing that came along through the Morgan families that we're married into here in Kentucky as well. And that's why we're trying to bring it together. We're about two generations off. We're Bethany Dillow. That's her family's the Morgans and the Morgan family farm. And we're within 20 miles of each other. We're most likely related. So we're trying to draw, connect those things together. But there's a little, little blurbs there that we can't quite figure out. But there's a downing, a little small downing cemetery here in Georgetown as well. So the family's trumps around here since 1785.

Well, if George Washington's in your lineage, I would have to say that you're more or less required to put out a Rye at some point.

You will be very happy to hear that we are. Very good. Yes, sir. I love Rye. I absolutely love Rye and it's probably my favorite thing to blend. I love how you can play with the serial components once you get to five, six-year-old Ryes. When they're young, they get that dill pickle and then into the mint, and there's nothing wrong with mint, but my personal viewpoint on rye is if it's the dominating character, you're missing out on so much beauty in a whiskey that can just, yeah, and it's the spectrum of the flavors you can get out of rye is fantastic.

And then it magically becomes this candied orange at 8 or 10 years. Oh my gosh, isn't that cool?

Yeah, I could. Yes, absolutely. I love the burnt orange rind on it and things like that and the candiness that comes up out of it. Yeah, it kind of depends. Obviously, that will play out if they're using honey or the old school way of distilling with honey, malting on it to get that initial ferment going quicker, breaking down those proteins. Some great guys like Tyler Wood out in Lewisburg does make some amazing distillate, you know, just amazing small, small stuff, but he's doing it the old-fashioned way. I love what he's doing.

So all of your spirits are coming from Kentucky at this point. Correct. Everything you're blending is coming from Kentucky and you're bottling at Kentucky, so it's a Kentucky product. Do you think that'll ever change?

Never say never, but on the limestone farms range, no. We don't have any plans ever to deviate from that Kentucky proud heritage and bring in that lineage and keeping it right as close as we can. We do have some friends in Virginia and they would use the same pot stills that we are putting in, you know, big monsters. And some of those juices, absolutely fantastic, three, four year old stuff. So we're gonna be doing some, Join operations there we're talking about other other locations that we can bring kentucky ingenuity and know how into even some of the states of north you never know what land so far is always be based right here in georgetown kentucky. Like it has been for six generations already.

Well, fantastic. Well, I've really enjoyed sipping through this first whiskey. You know, this being your kind of introductory base level whiskey for the Morgan family collection, I can't wait to try the next two. They're going to blow me away. I'm sure. So folks stick around. We'll be right back. We're going to take a short break when we do come back. lot more about limestone farms and we've got two more expressions to drink through and you're not going to want to miss this so we'll see you in the second half. Cheers! 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. If you're a bourbon drinker, and I bet you are if you're listening to this podcast, you need to head over to pintsandbarrels.com and check out the ultimate online store for bourbon lovers. Pints and Barrels Company was started by bourbon lovers for bourbon lovers. From spices to t-shirts, you'll find the perfect bourbon gift. Pints and Barrels proudly supports the bourbon road and invites you to visit pintsandbarrels.com. You need a custom apparel or swag for your bar, distillery, maybe even your bourbon society. They can do that too. As a matter of fact, they print our apparel. We're so happy with the quality and fast turnaround, pintsandbarrels.com, the ultimate bourbon lovers gift shop and branding specialist. All right, listeners, welcome back. We had a great break there where we got to you know, continue sipping on the select batch of limestone farms, part of the Morgan family collection. I have to say, you know, when you drink that, you don't think about it being kind of the the entry level bottle for the collection. It seems more like a premium bottle, but that's the entry level. So we're stepping up. We're getting ready to step up just a little bit.

It's still triple digit price, but yeah, it's making less than a thousand bottles at a time.

Well, let's talk a little bit about price. I mean, that first bottle we tried is on the shelves. You can find it. What's the price ticket on that?

Normally ranges anywhere between $115 to $125 depending on the state. Kentucky is right in the middle, you can find some retailers playing it for less depending on their prerogative. Tennessee has a great price, Georgia has a great price. Michigan, we're launching Ohio here shortly. We're in Texas already. California launches in another few weeks, Oregon, Colorado were already launched last year, and about a dozen other states that we'll be talking about coming on board in the next couple.

Okay. So let's sort of summarize that first drink. That first drink we had was the Select Batch Morgan Family Collection. This is a Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. This was 110.8 proof. It's the white label and it's available in all the places that you mentioned and you could find it at or around $120 a bottle. Yep.

That's about the national average.

Okay. We always say there's always a saying that is about, uh, you know, 110 proof. You're looking about, uh, uh, $10 per 10 proof points, right? That's kind of the general rule. You're right there. You're right in that correct range for that. Uh, this is a premium product. This is a well-aged product. This is a nine year, a six to nine year on the shelf. I think in Colorado, they're getting all nine year, right?

Uh, they had, they did get some, yeah, I did a special batch for them that they wanted. They, they blew through the first couple pallets real quick on the on the original and uh so yeah they wanted they asked for it and we might say no.

Those Coloradans, they like that high-proof whiskey. They like that well-aged, high-proof whiskey, don't they? They do.

So do the Texans. I mean, Texans... Yeah, so do the Texans. Mojado mobera. Mojado mobera, they say.

Yeah. All right. Well, let's start off this second half with a great pour. What do we have in our glass?

So that is our mahogany label, and that is our small batch. So small batch, obviously, it's always going to be a blend. of these, for lack of a better word, my best and my best barrels out of the nine-year-old eight-shame and stuff. So that's the same mash bill as what you just tasted. I don't like to cross my mash bills very often. I do want to be able to have these products to... If people want to turn them into dusties and make them 25-30, keep them around for a while, I want them to be rewarded. And that's just, again, my theory is that cross mash billing blends have a tendency not always to bond. It's like overcharging, you know, too much extra charred in your crafting staves or the like. I can make a brownie in a barrel if you want. And two years later, it's just falling apart. I mean, it's they just manipulate too much you get these homogenized flavors and we want clean bright delineated so I do craft my barrels I craft them with you know only four things you can do water humidity which is the same thing air oak and that's it time so Not everything is going to have an extra bunch of staves in them, that's for sure. And I treat my staves a lot differently than most.

This is a pretty minimally treated whiskey. This is basically you selecting barrels that meet certain flavor profiles and then blending them to get the right outcome. So let's recap the mash bill on this one more time.

That's 78 corn, 13 rye, and nine malted barley.

78, 13, nine. And are you are you able to share the the source distillery this with us?

Yeah, we don't have an Indian disclosures for them. And we like really like this producer. They've been around a long time, one of the icons. And this mash bill has been around since 1870s, I'm told. So with Claremont Springs is where this comes from, is the distillery. So that is a very storied property and very storied mash bill. And I just ask people to, or when I'm presenting it, I don't tell them what it is first. I want them to experience the whiskey first. I don't want them to be, oh yeah, oh my God, that smells like XYZ brand. And that's nothing wrong. I have my bars covered with 100 different brands. I appreciate them all, their expressions. But I don't, this is about crafting and blending and turning it into a limestone farm product. And so if it smells like or tastes like, where the distiller came from, I failed. And again, nothing disparaging about them. I love their stuff, but let them make their style and we make ours.

Well, we all know that the oak plays a big part in the master blender. The master blender is, and I may get some pushback on this, but the master blender is just a little more important than the master distiller. I'm just going to say, because I think that blending the whiskey plays a bigger role The maturation and the blending of the whiskey plays a bigger role than the distillation, just saying.

You can't make that proverbial silks purse out of a salad here with bad juice, but if it goes in, if you have great juice and put it into a bad barrel, you're not going to have good product at the end to work with. There's a lot of examples of it. comes out just smelling like muck and moss water and stuff like that sometimes. And it's kind of funny, but you can actually, if you drop one, 2% of some of that stuff into some of the other ones to blend it out, you get a whole nother layer down in the mid palette sometimes. And you can use those things that taste like muck, but I'd rather not. I'd rather not.

All right. Well, the Morgan family collection, small batch from Limestone Farms. It is 113.6 proof. It's a nine year old whiskey.

Correct.

And let's check it out. Cheers. Cheers. I'm hitting the nose first.

It'll hit you too.

Oh my goodness, that's really something. I'm getting kind of like an earthy cherry.

Yes. I love the cherry. All three of the small batches we've released so far. And that's what I'm kind of looking for because often cherries in a weeder, you know, it's kind of... And that's what, again, what we're trying to do here is to craft things that break a little bit, but you're right. I get this.

It does have that kind of earthy note to it. It's kind of grounded. It's very grounded. And I like that. I'm going to taste it.

Oh, wow.

Thank you. This is definitely, um, climbing the ladder a little bit from the last one.

It's got some rungs on it, doesn't it? It does. It pulls right out.

Yes, it does. So this is cherry and oak and baking spice. Lots of baking spice, yes. Wow.

Almost some Moroccan spice in there, the baking Moroccan. I just love it. It's sassy.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm getting like a little bit of a faint root beer note in the background, but you know, It's more complex than the last one we had, no doubt about it.

And you're stepping up, you know, 40 bucks on the shelf. So it should be, it has to be.

All right. So the last one was around $120. The price on this small batch is?

It's going to run about 160 on the shelf. It ranges from 150 to 165 across the country, but the average about 160. Now we make on that batch there, that was only, that was about 640 bottles made, about 640 bottles of that one. It's made from 15 different barrels. That's the third batch.

Wow. I don't think I would change a thing on this. I'm not sure that I would alter the proof, although I wasn't part of the blending process on this. I don't know what your thoughts were.

You drop a rock, and it'll actually burn you. You get that down in the wind. At about 90s, in the low 90s, it sings beautifully, but that spice comes up even more. And again, for a mid-rai, it's singing beautiful spices. And that's, again, finding the barrels that want to play with each other. I'm glad you picked up that little bit of root beer note. I always like a little bit of a sarsaparilla kind of thing, because it has an earthy. And then it has little notes of sweetness in there. But again, it finishes dry and it came out, it cast strength on this was at about 119, almost 120. And it's saying really, really well at 116 too, as well. But I thought under 114, I think it's stout enough for most people to say, okay, I'm going to step up for a couple bucks. But then other people aren't scared away that it's going to be a nuclear bomb going off.

That's kind of the craft in it, right? I mean, finding that perfect spot, you know, where it just, it just performs. And I'll tell you what, This is, uh, I wouldn't change a thing. This is a delightful whiskey. This is really, I won't call it a cherry bomb, but I will say that cherry is ever present in the palette and in the nose on this. And, uh, it might not even be the prominent note. It's just the one that, um, comes to mind for me as I'm sipping it.

Yeah. I love nuances and layers. Again, if I have one thing as dominant, If it's going to have one Domino flavor profile on it, then that's $90 or less to me. It can be delicious. Absolutely. I mean, you can go out and enjoy a killer bottle of $45, $50 juice. There's good ones out there. If you're going to drop a little bit more, you're going to sit down like you're doing right now and just enjoy it. It tells you a story. Enjoy that if you can pour enough and then sip on it and enjoy it over the next hour, hour and a half. It's like reading a book. It will open up into another chapter.

Yeah, this is definitely got that whole bourbon ball kind of flavor to it. I really like it a lot. It doesn't have that intense sweetness that you get with a bourbon ball, but that, I don't know, a little bit of like a cherry background. And like you said, nothing is like super prominent jumping out saying, I'm a cherry bomb or I'm a spice bomb or whatever it is. It's just, everything's sort of playing on equal field there. And It's really nice. I think that's what makes it like a thinking whiskey, right?

This is one of those that you just step on. Life gets in the way of so many good times, so this sometimes can help us.

I enjoy that. I love going out and I've got a small room on the back of our house. It's a Four Seasons room and it's kind of a quiet place. It's a secluded place. It's a place where I can go and be by myself and I can take a dram with me out there and just sit down in a chair and and enjoy a pour. I love doing that with a whiskey like this one, where it's got a half a dozen competing notes that are just... They're all trying to sing a little bit louder than the other, but nobody gets to be on top. They just get a moment in the spotlight and then they have to step back and let the next guy in.

That's right. I don't want... Exactly. It's like a, it's a good cast, you know, depending on what people have, you know, a good cast of a play, they have to work together. You know, instead of having one, one big superstar on stage at all the times, you know, they're going to more than times flop on their own. They don't have a great supporting cast and it's, uh, there's how the barrels kind of come together that way. And sometimes it happens. In one day, sometimes it takes a month and a half to get the right ones. And then the weather's always going to work with you or against you.

And so you're telling me we're going up from here, huh?

What you're about to experience is a tater hunter's dream. People call them unicorns, whatever you want to call them.

Oh my goodness. Before we get to that third pour, I've got just a little bit more of this one in my glass and I want to savor it. Let's talk a little bit about Bourbon on the Bank. You were introduced to us by Diane Strong. Yep. Who's the executive director at Bourbon on the Banks. And, and she told us, Hey, Jim, she said, Hey, Jim, you've really got to, you got to talk to these guys. They're doing it right. So we reached, we reached out to you and this is how the show came about. Tell us about your relationship with Diane and Bourbon on the Banks.

Right. Yeah. I mean, Diane actually used to live in Georgetown, um, up in the community where my wife and my mother-in-law lived for a while. So, uh, they had known each other there a little bit. And when it just kind of came about that I'm like, I want to be involved in that. that festival this year. It's just too good of a festival. It speaks to the heart of what Kentucky's about in our bourbon industry. It's not just a, you know, there's nothing wrong with going to a big concert, you know, and having a great time, but my product isn't about that. My product's not doing a shot and moving on to the next stage. I want a place where people that came in from all over the country and other countries as well, they came in to learn about the heritage as well as what's new. What a better place. And so we reached out to her and she immediately responded and we're like, okay, this is what we've been doing. We've sponsored a PGA event, you know, the PGA in Lexington last year. I've been on TV numerous, she was like, absolutely. And we got together and it just, and she said, well, what do you think about being our title sponsor? I was honored it was just Florida was you know it was awesome just to be part of the VIP 10 on you know the first night was gonna be a great honor for me when she said that. Yeah we won't let you down we're gonna do everything we can so it's it's gonna be a fun really fun fun weekend our distillery will be full Full operations by then, our visitor center will be going for the summertime visits, tasting a lot of our different expressions over here in Georgetown, and we're just looking forward to having a great time in Frankfurt.

Well, fantastic. Yeah, we're big fans of Bourbon on the Banks. kind of premier show every year that we go to. Now we go to a number of things, but Bourbon on Banks is kind of our, that's where the majority of our listeners love to migrate to Kentucky is during that particular event. And it's just a big deal for us. We have a big, you know, 20 by 40 tent and it's just packed with people and we have such a great time. So we're looking forward to it. And we thank you very much for being a main sponsor of Bourbon on the Banks.

Anything we do to help Diane in that event is just fantastic. Giving back to the White Oak community and everything else of the programs that they put back into Kentucky is just fantastic. All right.

Well, fantastic. Let's move on to this third and final sip of the day. This is, uh, this is a big bottle for you. This is, uh, this is your private stock. Can you tell us about it?

Release, uh, those a couple of times a year. So it is that specific one that MASH built. Whenever we come across in our business dealings, somebody who has access, you know, accessibility to something really cool and unique, we try to grab it, you know, if we can. And this was one of them. We're talking with an old buddy of mine who was with Brown Forman exec who knew Mike Safai, who was one of the original two founders of Rabbit Hole. And he wants a large coffee company now as well but you never saw a rabbit hole come to come to the market and his partner split up and never saw the 275 million dollar payout that came down the line so he wanted to get his brand out there and we'll start working with him as well as my old buddy from brown foreman and. helping Mike bring his recipe out. It's a very unique mash bill. This was made off of one of Ken Lewis's... I think it was Ken, his third customer that he did up at New Riff. This is all eight-year-old juice in here. And it is a 70% corn. It is 10% honey-malted wheat, 10% honey-malted barley. And then the high protein malted barley, another 10%, which is called distillers malt. And that gives a, gets the cook going a little bit faster and controllable. You don't have to cook as hot a temperature from what we understand. And it should be just extremely, only 89 barrels of this ever made.

What was the coring content?

70%. 70, 10, 10 and 10.

Correct.

Wow. Yep. Super great barrels selections on this. I believe they're all at least 18 month old age staves before they were crafted. The barrels are in tremendous shape, but should just jump out of your glass and showcase all kinds of oils and I'll let the whiskey speak for itself. It does a much better job than I do.

So this is a four grain, but the, the, um, wheat and the malt are both honey malt. Honey malt. Yeah.

Yep.

Trans.

Yeah. Very expensive, difficult to work with. Um, but we, I've had people taste this and they're like, Barry, what is this going to be $800,000? And I'm, and I'm like, no guys, no. So I don't believe anything's worth 300 or should cost 300. I think things are worth what people are willing to spend for it. I have over, you know, overspent in some people's eyes on products over the years that I just wanted. Um, and other people have done the same that I'm like, why would you ever? So the individual consumer is empowered here, but we don't want to judge on our stuff. So this is still sets out the national average price at about 225 a bottle. And I truly think it drinks at 500 plus and so. All right.

Well, let's check it out. Cheers.

Cheers.

Wow. The nose is definitely got a softer, softer effect on it. That must be that wheat given a little bit of softness on this.

And I think the distill, I've not worked enough with the distiller's malt juice before to, I mean, I know it's a high protein malted barley, so it adds a whole nother layers to it. But I think it might also have a little bit in there because it definitely adds some richness in the color. The barrels are just three plus chars and the color content out of this stuff is just magnificent. But it's not, it should not be over woodsy, which a lot of weavers can be, you know, I mean, too much wheat. My theory is that if you put too much wheat in it, then, you know, it takes forever for the barrels to mature. I mean, you can have seven, nine year old stuff and I think Willett does a great job with theirs. Um, you know, that who's going to ignore that purple cap these days, but. from what I've heard is they struggled quite a bit to get to that point, uh, with the early readers, but the mash bill, uh, what they're doing now is fantastic. So, and obviously Buffalo Trace does a great job with the readers too. So.

All right. So I'm getting, I'm getting a very nice, um, soft nose on it. And I did taste it already, but I'm going to go from the nose to the palate real quick here, my analysis. And I'm going to say that this has got kind of a, uh, a cereal. Kind of like a cream of wheat. It's got kind of a cream of wheat nose to it. A little, like a little bit of cherry, a little bit of sweetness, like a honey sweetness. I don't know. It has anything to do with that, that honey roast, that honey barley or the honey wheat. It does have like a honey, almost like a cream of wheat with a honey on it. And, uh,

A lot of those barrels get honey, honeycomb, you know, some of them pick up. Yeah, like a honeycomb. Almost that waxiness but just the unctuousness of honeycomb versus the sharpness of some honeys. So, yeah.

Wow. This is really different, really an outlier. This has, this, this one has nothing to do with the other two. We just completely different. I can see the similarities in the last two, but in this one it's, it's a different animal altogether.

Right.

And, uh, wow.

And that's what we're, when we, again, when we come across, really unique rare stuff. I mean, I think I was not able to get all 89 barrels. You know, Mike's keeping quite a bit of them, but we got the lion's share of, I believe, of what he sold. And I'll have enough of this to be able to put it out for the next few years from this buy. And I'll have other stuff working that we may do in between, but I'll come up with, you know, a little different label expression to delineate them and separate them.

Man, I tell you, I was going cream of wheat with honey on it, but now that you said honeycomb, I'm throwing my tasting notes out the window and I'm all on honeycomb right now.

It definitely is honeycomb. Yeah, it is. In the Med Pal that I pick up, like mulberry cobbler kind of thing, that richness that, you know, the baked on it or, yep, sometimes it's plum on some of these barrels that you're just picking up and you're like, oh my gosh, these things have so much fruit. But then there's the layers of complete, I mean, these are kicking tobacco notes. So right now the barrels at the, at my crafting barn are just beautiful tobacco, sweetness, ripeness. Some of them i wouldn't i can drink one and that would be it for me as a consumer you know some people would just drain the whole bottle. What is the tree it's it's just one of those things you want to treat and you drop take this down i'm a scotch van i love scotch too i like my mccallums and like i think. You take this down to about in the low nineties and. It's really, as bourbon would go, it's really close to being a 23 year old McCallum as you're going to get that I've tasted. And I don't say that lightly because I would like to be buried with a bottle in my casket of 23 year old McCallum and a couple other things. Cause you know, we're going to try to have a party wherever we go, but it's, it's really a fun, fun and it's. It's tough to blend. That one is, that mash bill and those barrels, they are so expressive to each other. They don't always play nice. But when they sing, I get it pulled and get them bottled. I'm not mucking around. I'm not going to wait tomorrow. We are going to get that batch pulled, get it over into a tank, hold it, and then get it bottled and, you know, go proof down. So, but that was 492 bottles in that release there. I'll be working on another one this month.

I feel very blessed to have a bottle of this. I'll be honest with you. This is really good. This is something that is, well, when you have a collection of whiskeys, as you can imagine, a podcast host has, right? There's a few bottles that sort of elevate themselves to that very top shelf, right? There's a few bottles that make it to that top shelf, that one that you share with only those cherished guests. This is going to be one of those.

Oh, thank you. That's the greatest compliment I could ever have. So thank you so much.

Amazing. And I, you know what I want to do? I want to take a little bit of water. I want to take this bottle. I'm going to go sit out in that back room I was talking about before. I want to play with proof a little bit because I'd like to find that 23 McAllen.

Yep. That batch I have not tried it with, but the previous one definitely did. But I'd try it with a lot of the barrels and I proof them down. I like to take them down. I would call it challenging them. so i change them all the way down below eighty just to see what they fall apart with people gonna experience if they do drop a rock and they take it too far. I'd rather waste my bourbon and you know before consumer does but yeah that one there should drink real close to them account when you get it down to low nineties. Wow, fantastic.

So, I'm just curious. I've never actually been on that journey that you're talking about. So, this particular bottle is at 113.6 proof. And if I were to take this bottle and a little bit of proofing water and go out and sit in my back room, How long would it take me to venture down from 113 down to say 85? Yeah. What's that process? What's that like?

Yeah, it's actually quite a simple mathematic equation. It'll get you a ballparking without taking your hydrometer out. But say you've got 100 gallons of 120 proof juice and you want to take it down to, well, So you say, I got 120 gallons, 100 gallons. I'm going to add 20 gallons to that. What will it give me? So you're going to take your original volume you started, 100 gallons, divide it by your end result by adding 20 gallons of water. So divide that by 120. That'll give you that number. Then you multiply that times your proof, your cast strength proof. And that will give you real close. I believe that right there was probably going to put you at about 96 proof. that recipe right in that ballpark and so you can just add it you know I always keep a graduated cylinder around and I whenever I'm taking it down I'm pouring it back in there getting my measurement all right now let me take my eyedropper and I'm going to add one, two milliliters into that. And then I'm going to proof it down again. And then, you know, it's going to give me my ballparking before we go to bottle. Obviously then we're going to get real finite with finding the true proof, which is what the hydrometer is reading at that temperature. And then, you know, putting it into the whiskey systems calculator and it'll tell you what your true proof is.

Wow. And there's 40 drops per milliliter, right? Correct. Wow. So my problem is, is that as you're working your way down from 113 to let's say 85, math starts to get real hard. Around 92, you're like, you're scratching your head, right?

The FFA probably want to make sure of that too. Little disclosure, but wow.

This is just, this is phenomenal. This is a phenomenal pour. This is a great bottle of whiskey. It's something that I'm going to cherish. I'm going to share with as many people as I possibly can. It absolutely has been a walk up the ladder from each of these three expressions. Each one stepped up in the, in the first one, you know, the select batch was delightful. I mean, it was really good.

Your palette will probably be coated up a little bit with that weeder. It happens to me all the time in the tasting room and when I'm doing it in my blending room, if I go backwards, I'm like, oh my God, this thing is so good. Man, I've got to get the nerve. I proofed up my palate a little bit, got a little coating on it with that weeder there, and it's a little misleading.

So we've got all these listeners around the world that are hearing this podcast right now, and they're like, okay. You're talking about this stuff, but can I get it? Where can they find your products in the market? What states are you available in? Are you available overseas? Can they mail order? Can they get it online? What's the story there?

Yeah, I mean, right now we're not available overseas. We've only been selling our product in market for about a year. So we are in Kentucky, obviously. Kentucky, Tennessee, statewide. Knoxville is coming on, fleshing out in the next few weeks. And then Georgia, Texas, Colorado. California, Oregon, Michigan, Ohio have all our licensing done there now. So that's we'll be starting to ship out there in this next quarter. We are talking with we should be launching Nebraska here a little bit. Barring a couple of things they committed this this this month in talks with Kansas and Illinois and Massachusetts and D.C., Maryland, Delaware, North South Carolina. Um, Oh, West Virginia, of course, Mississippi, Alabama. Um, so it's. not going to say no to people, but we just want to make sure that we can always support our wholesalers and our retailers and our restaurateurs effectively. So we are hiring people. We just hired a person in Georgia and close in Michigan, but Kentucky, Florida, working backwards, they're going to put somebody in place there and find the right wholesaler fit there for it. I'm interviewing people right now, just started this week in Texas. So, for a couple positions there. So we'll continue to expand to be able to get expressions and partake in as many of the bourbon festivals and events that we can. And then we just get to meet the consumers and they'll tell us what we're doing right or doing wrong. we ever lose our humility about listening to the end consumer. Otherwise, why the hell are you doing this?

Absolutely. I agree with you completely. So you're building a facility in Georgetown, Kentucky on the farm. Big campus. Where are we at? When's it going to be out there and available and ready for people to uh, start charging in and, and, and demanding tastings.

Yeah. Well, my partner Darren is in charge of that and he is, uh, he's given me that our first still should be operational, you know, right in that May to early June, depending on, you know, the weather, you know, goodwill, you know, good Lord willing in the Creek don't rise and the weather has been kind of, inclement, we'll say, for this winter. And then our visitor center will open right that same time. Then we'll daisy chain in our other big pot stills over there so that by the time October or November comes around, we'll be finished off with all of our stills going live and coming up and producing. So we'll be able to take visitors here this summer and looking forward to as many people as we can. Love to put liquid to lips. That's what it's all about. Awesome.

We talked a little bit about new projects. You kind of mentioned that there's a rye on your horizon. Is there anything else that you'd like our listeners to sort of keep in the back of their minds to keep an eye out for here coming soon?

Soon, the rye would be probably the first. We'll have some other brands we'll introduce at some ranges and some different match bills. The Wheaters, of course, at lower prices and lower age statements. But I'm also a big fan of what American Single Malts are doing. And so there's some really great producers out there. I love Virginia. I love what North Carolina is doing. Tennessee's got some really solid stuff. I think Kentucky can do it too, of course. And we are looking into that. We are looking at other alternative productions from that. Darren has his PhDs in food safety, securities, and chemical engineering. He's a bit of a mad scientist if he wants to start playing, and he's doing it right now, playing with some clear liquids out at the distillery right now with his benchmark, his bench testing. So he's having fun today while I'm doing this. And I'm having a good time too. Get to enjoy some whiskeys here with you all. So yeah, we're going to have some fun with it, but the Rye's are... Oh, light whiskey. Love some great light whiskey, you know? Yeah.

Absolutely. I think it's great, especially with George Washington in your lineage. I mean, you've got to put out a white rye, right? I would think so.

At some point. It would behoove us to do so, I think, you know? Capture a little bit of something on it, you know? But again, there's so many great expressions, and there's just only so many days that you're on this earth. So we try to... Why not? We don't want it. We're not going to be jack of all trades and masters of none. You know, we don't want to throw everything out there, not focus on certain things. But Darren will have pot stills that he can do custom runs for people. So if people want to come in and do it, everybody can do come into barrel picks, you know, for groups and stuff. We had a conversation with California this morning.

Let's do a still pick.

Come in and do a still pick, take the last 50 gallons off the still or something on one of his recipes. You know, find out which one, you know, I'll have 48, 60 cookers going at any given time and we'll have a smaller, you know, thousand gallon, which is big for the most people. They are by far our smallest pot still. We can shut that down and start it up and run some fun stuff.

No, there's something that I've, I've thought about many times in the past. I'm like, okay.

Yeah.

I mean, like, let's, let's, let's, let's, let's bring, let's bring like tasters in to try the white dog off the still and pick and pick a, uh, a section of whiskey that's come off the still and say, I like that. Put that in a barrel for me.

It's so, it can be so fun.

Isn't it? It can be. I mean, that's just like, yeah, that's taking a look at what the master distiller does and saying, I like exactly what you produced today. Let's put that in the barrel and see what happens.

That's right. And that grabbed the best of that heart. So. Absolutely. Yep.

It's been a pleasure. Well, it's been such a, Barry, it's been such a great time. I've had such a good time drinking through your whiskeys tonight. And it's, it's just, it's so refreshing to have a new distillery come on with a very clear. focused mission. They know exactly what they want to do. And the market's out there. We know the market's out there, but you're very strict about what you're doing and you want to make sure that you adhere to your principles and your vision. And if your vision includes what we just tasted tonight, I'm going to say you're going to be very successful. Thank you, Jim.

That means a lot because once you sell out, you sell out. That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah. We never got my partner Bobby talks about one of his favorite sayings. It's become kind of a mantra around here is that you never get rich by being greedy. And so that is that's one of our one of our missions.

Well, I'd like to give you a chance to let all our listeners know where they can find you on the internet, on social media, TikTok, and I don't know if you do TikTok, but Instagram and Facebook and all the others. How they can find you guys, how they can learn more.

There's been some reviews on us out there on the TikTok that a lot of people are blowing up and getting a lot of messages from, but Instagram, obviously with Limestone Farms, Instagram, our personal ones as well. And then our website is www.limestonefarms.com, plural on the farms. So limestonefarms.com. It's pretty interactive. We're going to be introducing our new page on there shortly, which will help you find retailers and restaurants near you that carry our products. So that search engine is coming live shortly. So especially kind of timing most things as our distillery opens up here. And again, everything goes well. June will be able to host some really, really kickass stuff.

Awesome. And you listen to a number of states that, uh, that you're in now, but people can also come to your website in order. And there's a few states you do deliver to.

Yeah. And they, it'll take them right over to, uh, Kentucky bourbon direct. It'll link right over there to their sales platform. Uh, and they'll handle all the fulfillment from there. But yes, we're approved in the Nebraska and Arizona and Alaska and North Dakota, New Hampshire and DC and Kentucky, which are the seven states that we can legally ship to. So.

Fantastic. Awesome. Well, thank you, Barry. Thank you so much for providing your whiskeys to us to review and to share with our listeners. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to come on the show and talk about your product and your brand. It's been a blast. We've had such a great time. And I have to say, just a general statement here. These are exclusive and premium whiskeys. There's no doubt about it. These are not everyday little shelf bottles. These are bottles that should be in high demand and people should be looking for on the shelves.

Thank you. That's all we could ever ask for. Thank you so much, Jim.

Awesome. Well, you can find the Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, all the social media outlets. You can find us wherever you are on social media. We do put out a show every single Wednesday. You'll find us interviewing somebody like Barry Downing from Linestone Farms. We always have a great show. We're always drinking whiskey. Sometimes, you know, sometimes it's a A music artist sometimes is a chef or an author or something, but we're always drinking whiskey. We're always having a good time. We hope you'll join us every single week. But you can also find us on our website. We have our swag on there. We have our t-shirts and glasses and all our swag. We hope you take time to visit the website, theburbanroad.com and check us out. But until the next time you hear us, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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