410. Bourbon Heritage Month Roundup

How would you think?

Yeah, I'm kind of excited to go grab a bottle of this for Melody. I think she'll really like it. And then I'm going to get her to add a little bit of her screwball to it. Yeah, you're going to have to let us know how that pans out.

It sounds great on paper.

I mean, it's already an abomination, right, with what they've done. So why not? Let's throw some screwball in there. Maybe some cinnamon whiskey just to top it off. Maybe just drizzle it on a toasted peanut butter sandwich or something. Oh friends, and welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon. And I'm your host, Todd Ritter.

We've got a great show for you today. So grab your favorite pour and join us.

Hey roadies, it's Diane Strong with Bourbon on the Banks Festival. We have got a great event planned for you this year. I can't wait to tell you all about it. Hang out for the half and I'll give you some more details. I hope to see you October 5th on the Banks in Frankfort, Kentucky.

All right, Todd. So we're once again in the corner of Rick House here in Frankfurt, Kentucky, home of the Frankfurt Bourbon Society, better known as Studio B. Studio B, yeah. And we've got four whiskies in front of us today. And it's a nice lineup here. Like, I think if I'm correct, only one of these is a non-finished whiskey. So the other three are finished. Correct. And they're not going to be in proof order today just because there's no way to make that work.

Yeah. We're going to start with the one straight bourbon and then we're going to move into three that are kind of a finished thing going on a little bit. So, and then those will be proofed wise.

Okay. All right. Well, I'm excited for this. And that first bottle I've got my eye on here is beautiful. It's a beautiful bottle. Can you tell us a little bit about it?

So this is the James E. Pepper decanter bourbon. And this came out probably about six months ago. And it's taken a lot of reviewers and bourbon folks by surprise. And this is their own distillate. That's it. This is age-stated at five years. That's the youngest. That's the youngest, yes. It does say it's blended. I believe I looked. And James E. Pepper opened back up in two, 2008 maybe.

Okay.

And they're one of those places that sourced from MGP until their stuff was ready and it's obviously ready. And I think this is actually one I've had before and I wanted to see what your, your thoughts on it were.

So I'm excited to try it. I haven't had any of the whiskeys we're drinking today. And so I'm pretty excited to try this one. This is not exactly local to us, but it's, I think, Kind of local. I mean, half hour from here or so. Yeah.

It's in Lexington in the distillery district. And there's a lot of really cool stuff there. If you're ever in the Lexington area, I highly recommend you stop by there. There's a Goodfellas Pizza. There's Ethereal Brewing. You have RD1 has a little tap room there. Or not tap room, but a tasting room. Barrel House Distilling is also there. Across the street is the borough, which has music, an old school arcade where my kids like to go and play pinball and like the old video games that we all grew up with as kids.

Well, fantastic. Yeah, I've been there a few times with my wife. I have popped my head into the pepper distillery there and I've certainly been over to Goodfellas Pizza and had a pizza there. So it's a great spot. Sometimes the parking is a bit tough.

Yeah, it can be a little busy. I mean, you know, it's a very popular spot right now. There's parking in between all those and then The funny thing is when you get down there, you're like, oh, that's an old Rick house that they've kind of converted into some stuff. And yeah, the, the pepper is actually in the old distilling area. So, but there's some parking in behind the Rick house and yeah. So it's.

Well, let's try this whiskey and we'll talk a little bit more about pepper after we get to taste it. Yeah. There's a little bit of proof to that nose. Is this a 105.8 proof? 105.8 proof. Okay. So beautiful bottle, sort of a squatty bottle, very wide, but narrow front to back.

Yeah. It's called a decanter bottle because this is kind of a knockoff of an original James E. Pepper decanter that came out, I want to say, during the 40s or 50s. I'll try to post a picture of this one and what it used to look like back in the day. Cool. Just on the Bourbon-Rhodes page. But yeah, a lot of history there. The Pepper name is also tied to O'Crow. Right. Yeah. So I mean, it's one of those names that just goes way back into history. Ties into Taylor, ties into the beams and everything else.

It's got a great nose on it. Not too sweet. Got a nice spice, definitely a rye kind of.

Yeah. There's a little rye bunch, punch I should say. So it makes me, I couldn't find anything on the mash bill, but I get the feeling it's probably nice little rye content on this one. Yeah. Cheers. Cheers.

Wow. Great texture on that. Yeah. Really nice. Soft. Yeah.

Now I do know they go in a low entry barrel proof. So that can, that can part that soft texture a lot of times.

Yeah. So it's, it's not a super sweet whiskey, but it does have a nice like, um, um, Fruit note to it.

Yeah. It's like a bright berries raspberry type thing.

Like a berry, like a berry, a little bit of a berry note there. And, um, I'm getting the toast to kind of a little bit of, um, buttered toast maybe. Oh, nice. I don't know.

A little caramel drizzle, I think.

Yeah. Go back to the nose. It's got a pretty good alcohol content on the nose, but it's not singe-worthy, right? Right.

It's not going to singe those nose hairs.

It's nice. It's just really nice. It just lets you know that this thing's over 100 proof. Yeah.

And this retails for $56.99, so pretty reasonable price for five plus years.

Yeah. Wow. This is a great whiskey for $50 to $60 range. Yeah. Wow.

Really good. And like I said, the whiskey community has really taken to this one. I know it did well in the Ascot Awards, and a lot of other reviewers have been big fans of this. So it's been kind of one of those like, If you were to find like a list of surprising whiskeys of 2024, this would probably crack a lot of top tens, maybe even top fives.

Yeah, it's really good. I love it when a distillery that birth themselves with MGP gets around to, you know, peddling their own juice. And it's also wonderful when it comes out and it's kind of their own signature. You know, maybe they tried, you know, they tried a lot of times I think the distilleries will try to. not match a profile, but compliment a profile that they were getting from MGP. And so that it's not a big departure. Honestly, I think this is, it's its own animal. It's not, I mean, I would never guess this to be MGP.

Yeah. And I think they even have some of their own single barrels now, their rye and their bourbon. So those are in a kind of taller bottle. So it's funny you should say that, because I think about O'Dominick. O'Dominick's one of those that was getting MGP for years. But they actually kind of distill the recipe they were getting from MGP. But obviously, Indiana and way down in Tennessee are two different.

It's going to be different. Yeah.

But O'Dominick's another one that's kind of like stepped away from the MGP and putting out some really good stuff. And we're kind of at that period where when the boom hit, there were a lot of people sourcing like five or six years ago and they started distilling. Well, starting to get to that sweet spot on a lot of those distilleries.

Right. So they've managed to build their brand and build their name on sourced liquids. And then while that, they were putting up barrels and allowing them to age and now some of their barrels like with. James E. Pepper is five to seven years old and wow, really flavor rich and unique as far as I'm concerned. This one's very unique.

And it looked great on the shelf. Like I said, it's a cool bottle.

Let's talk about the shelf. So, James E. Pepper, obviously you can go to the distillery there in Lexington and you can go into their bottle shop and purchase a bottle when you go to the distillery. You're going to pick this up for around $56, I think you said, but they're also distributed. They have reasonable distribution.

Yeah, I want to say this actually the Cantor series is kind of available on some of the like, you know, the shipping ones like Sealbox and probably Bourbon Outfitter and things like that. But I'd say a lot of folks out there will see might not see this one yet. And it's a shame if they're not bringing it in, but they would probably definitely see some of those MTP sourced source products. I'm a wager.

Well, the flavor profile is clean, well-crafted. I think it has some really good notes that you can pull from it. I think it's a great sipping whiskey. Definitely the cantor's beautiful. It'd look great on your bar.

I'm going to say if you get a chance, 56 bucks, you buy this bottle. Yeah, I would agree.

No doubt about it. And while you're in Lexington there picking it up, if you decide to come to town, go ahead and get yourself a great pizza over at Goodfellas.

Yeah, definitely.

They do make a great pizza there.

Yes, they do. One of the better in the area. And they have a nice bourbon bar too and plenty of beers on top.

Yep. Awesome. OK, I hate to set this one down, but I think we have to, Todd, because we have, well, three more to get through.

Three more to get through, yeah. Some of these were sent to us, which is always nice and we appreciate. And this is one of those. This is the Templeton Midnight Rye. Whiskey. I add that whiskey because this is kind of an oddball. It's 90 proof, but this is rye whiskey, and it's actually blended with port wine.

So that is, so this is really not a rye whiskey anymore. This is a specialty. A specialty. Spirit. Spirit, yeah. And it's almost, I mean, if you want to just boil it down, you could almost call it a cocktail. It's basically whiskey mixed with something. That's ad flavor. Yeah. And in this case, it just happens to be dark port wine. I'm a big port fan. Do you like port wines?

It's not really my jam. Yeah. If I'm having a wine, I'm usually, if it's really hot, I'll do like a Sauvignon Blanc or maybe a Pinot Grigio. Yeah. If it's a little chillier, maybe like a Hardy Zin or a good Cabernet or Merlot or something.

I like the ports after dinner in a small glass. I like, I like tawny ports, but you know, I'm imagining they're calling this a dark port wine. I'm assuming this is a fortified wine. This is probably a Ruby maybe, or even dark dark would have to probably be maybe even a tawny. I don't know. Honestly, they don't specify, but, um, I'm looking forward to it because regardless of what it is, the label is very clear and there's no deception here whatsoever. They literally say American rye whiskey blended with dark port wine. Yeah.

It's 90 proof, so good low proof, $39.99 on the shelf.

Is that a liter bottle? Does it just look bigger than the others? I think it looks bigger than the others. It's a 750. Yeah.

Cause we got the odd decanter and then we have the little sample bottle of the next one, which we won't, spoilers.

All right. This is an Iowa product. It's a rye blended with port wine. I'm ready to taste it. Let's check it out.

Yeah. Now I'm pretty sure they still source, speaking of MGP. Yeah. Pretty sure that's still their bread and butter.

But the crafting that takes place in Iowa, I guess. Oh, wow. Yeah.

This is a different kind of nose for sure.

Definitely a different kind of nose. This one, so we dropped way down on the alcohol scale here. So we, we went from 105 plus down to 90 and I'm not going to say we're finished. We're and let's just call it finished for now. We're finished with, with a little bit of wine finish here. So poor finish getting a real jammy effect there.

Oh yeah.

And, uh, berries for sure. So port wine you would think would lend you to sort of great notes, but in this case, I think it's more like Blackberry notes.

Yeah. Bready. It's a little bready.

It's bready. Yeah. It's a, it's a cobbler. It's a Blackberry collar. Blackberry collar.

I think you nailed it. That's a really interesting nose.

I went ahead and tasted. Sorry. Sorry. Oh, you a cheers.

Catch up. Cheers. All right. Here I go.

This is really good. I almost feel, um, I almost feel bad because it's in a way they've broken whiskey rules here a little bit, right? I mean, this is not really, even finishing is kind of breaking the rules a little bit, but this is going a step further than finishing. This is like pouring wine in the whiskey.

Yeah. Bucking the trend. All the finishing's done. You can't finish anything else, so let's try blending something.

You got peanut butter whiskey. You got all kinds of stuff. I take peanut butter whiskey and I pour Pinot Noir in it. It tastes just like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Wow.

That stays on that blackberry cobbler note, like bready, buttery.

If it was more texture to it, it would be like, yeah, it would be like it. This is dessert. This is definitely dessert.

We talked about that first one being a little deserty, but this is dessert.

Wow. That is really, really good. Yeah. I, like I said, I feel a little dirty, but at the same time, $39, you said 37? $39.99. $39.99 for a 90 proof rye with a touch of port wine in it. And it tastes amazing. It tastes really good. Yeah. I'm torn.

This might be fun with some, like some cocktail creations too.

I think it would be. And also, I think if you've got some friends who you've been drinking whiskeys with and they struggle to pull notes out, this might be one to go. Definitely. It's lower proof. Yeah. And the notes are easy to pull out on this, I think. I don't think you need this big library of tasting notes in your head that you need to pull from. This is just blackberry copper or blackberry jam on buttered toast in the morning. Any of those would work.

You talked about that peanut butter whiskey. Now I kind of want to take this and add a little peanut butter and see if you get, like you said, a peanut butter sandwich.

I bet a little bit of, what's the name of that peanut butter whiskey?

Screwball.

I bet if you took this and put just a little bit of screwball in it, it would be like a peanut butter and blackberry jam sandwich.

Wow. Try to find that. All right. I'm pleasantly surprised by that. I was a little. hesitant once I was like, Oh, it's not port finished. It's port blended. Yeah. Yeah.

This is a, like I said, if you're a purist and you are already a little uncomfortable with, with finished whiskeys, this is probably not your thing because this is like the old finishing game of taking a barrel and leaving just a little bit in it. I don't know how much is in here. It's, it's the proper amount for a good flavor though.

Yeah, it'd be interesting to know the proportions for sure.

I mean, yeah, I'm going to say it's, it's just a little bit. It's not, it can't be too much.

I was going to say, I wonder how far like pork goes flavor wise. I mean, when you finish a ported, you know, a lot of places go long with it. Then there's others that, you know, 45 to 60 days and then others that do for a year, year and a half, two years. And it can be a big flavor.

Yeah, I can see where this would be polarizing. Some people will eat it up. Some people don't care one way or the other. It's just as long as it tastes good and they like it, you know, the price is absolutely right. And I would, I would say, Hey, if you're not, uh, offended by the idea of blending whiskey and wine. Give this a shot. You'd be surprised. Pretty tasty.

Yeah. And I think if you come to Bourbon on the Banks, this is probably going to be on the Bourbon Road Bar.

How about that? Another interesting pour to try at the Bourbon Road Bar.

Yeah.

All right, roadies, take notes. We're not, we're not doing real expensive whiskeys here tonight. So, uh, definitely take your notes. Well, Todd, it's been a great first half. We've had a couple of really interesting whiskeys, both of them in that affordable range, 56, 59, 99, 56, 99, whatever it is for the James E Pepper, um, What do we call that? The Cantor series. Yeah. And then, um, 39.99 for the Templeton midnight rye. Uh, both bargains and both, I'm going to give them thumbs up. Yep. I'm just going to make sure you understand folks with that midnight rye that it's a little caveat. There's a little caveat there. But stick around, Todd and I are going to go back and revisit both of these because they're truly interesting. And then in the second half, we have two more great whiskies for you. Both of these are going to be finished whiskies. It's exciting. Don't go away.

Hey roadies, it's Diane Strong again with Bourbon on the Banks Festival. Thanks for waiting to hear the details about our event this year. I'm so excited. I want you to come into Frankfort, Kentucky on October 5th. We're going to celebrate along the banks of the Kentucky River. We've got over 70 distilleries this year. You get your sample glass and you get to go to town. Here's a real quick rundown of the events we've got going on. Thursday, we've got Mixology on the River with O.H. Ingram and Heather Wibbles. After that event, you can head out to Whiskey Thief Distilling for our official kickoff party. Friday, you can indulge in a bourbon pairing with no other than Peggy No Stevens. Freddie Johnson's gonna join her for the fun, and you're gonna be tasting some buffalo trace. Then get dressed up for our VIP reception and bourbon auction, courtesy of Whiskey Thief Distilling. You have a chance to bid on your very own barrel pick experience from both Whiskey Thief and Four Roses Distillery. And don't forget, if you're bringing your family, you need to head downtown on Friday night at about six o'clock because we have got an amazing free, family-friendly event brought to you by XPRE credit union. We've got fire performers, acrobats. Street performers, music, food, tons of free activities for the kids. The main event of course is on Saturday, October 5th. This year we've got over 70 distilleries to sample from, which is included in your ticket price. We've got bourbon themed merchants, live music, delectable food, and the event promises to be unforgettable. I want you to go to bourbononthebanks.org to get all the details for all the events we've got going on. Some are ticketed, some are free, but I guarantee you're going to have a great time here in historic downtown Frankfort, Kentucky. Bourbon on the Banks Festival brought to you by Limestone Farms.

Welcome back, Rudy. So, we're getting ready to dive back into two more samples that we've received lately. And Jim, this one was sent to you. Do you want to tell us a little bit about this?

Sure. So, this is the Bardstown Bourbon Company Silver Oak, and this is part of their collaboration series or collaborative series. And I think just a week or two ago, we had one of their whiskeys on that was sent to us as well. So from time to time, we do get whiskeys sent to us from Barstown Bourbon Company and from the various collections that they put out. This happens to be their collaboration series. This collaboration was done with Uh, silver oak, California Cabernets. So I think it's a, it's a great opportunity for us to try a cab finished bourbon.

Yeah. And speaking of, we were talking about Cabernets earlier. This is actually, I've had that Cabernet. It's a really good Cabernet.

Yeah. So, I'm not familiar with that, but I think maybe after trying this, if I'm really impressed with it, I may have to get Melody a bottle of wine. We'll sit down and sip it together. But this is a collaboration with that winery. And it is finished in those Cabernet American oak barrels. It's a blend of nine to 14-year-old bourbons, and it's been 17 months in the Cab barrels. That's quite a long time. Yeah, so well-aged whiskeys to start with, right? I mean, nine to 14 years, Kentucky bourbon, and then finished for another 17 months in Cabernet, Silver Oak Cabernet barrels. I think this is going to be something that's full of flavor. It should have all kinds of notes across the palette, right? From oak to fruit, all kinds of stuff. So I'm ready to check it out. And what's the proof on this one? So this is 108 proof, I believe. Yep. Yep. And the price on this is going to be somewhere in the $150 range, depending on where you get it. I think you can find it at Sealbox for $159. I think some places have it at $149.95. Just figure $150 to $160 range on this, if you can find it out there.

Yeah, like I said, this is a collaboration series. So they've done quite a few of these now. Seems like they drop one about every three months or so. I know they did one with the prisoner wine, another winery, and four square rum. They've done one with Goose Island beer, their bourbon stout. So looking forward to checking this one out. Awesome. Let's take a peek. Now I'd be curious to know if like the wine barrels are like those really big wine barrels or like the smaller ones. I would wager with something like Silverill could probably the bigger barrels maybe.

You think so? Aren't the bigger ones normally like the, um, The cognac barrels and stuff are big, right?

Is it cognac? Cognac and brandy.

And brandy are usually bigger barrels, I think. I don't know. I don't know anything about wine. I'm shamefully deficient on my wine knowledge, but I do like to drink it.

That's good to say. And you know what you like.

I do know what I like. I like whatever Milly's drinking.

Whatever's in my glass.

It's got a good, nice nose to it. Nice and fresh, fruity. But this fruit is not, it's not deep and dark. It's more new and fresh. I don't know.

It's like this, like a dusty barrel note to me on it too. Like these were like, you know how when you go into a Rick house, there's like a lot of dust on the outside of those barrels sometimes like depending. And like, I almost feel like some of that dust like trickled into this nose.

We were talking before in the first half, a little bit about that peanut butter whiskey and I'm just getting this light nutty note on it. Yeah. We haven't tasted yet folks. This is all in the nose. Cheers. Cheers. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely nutty. Yeah. Wow. Wow, the fruit is, so cab is normally bold and rich, but dry, right?

Yes, can get very dry, yes.

But this has like a fresh fruit kind of feel to it for me.

Where's that nut coming from?

It's gotta be one of the source whiskies. I'm getting a little bit of a mineral note too. That might, that might be the tail. Yep. I think, I think you're onto something there. By George. By George. I think there's nickel in our barrels.

Could be. But it seems to play well though. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

This works well. I mean, I like it. I would say it's a little bit of tug and war between the wine and the whiskey. I don't know that they're married and playing together real well. I think I'm getting these wonderful, fresh fruit wine notes and I'm getting this nutty kind of whiskey barrel kind of. Yeah. It's not disjointed though. I'm not going to go there, but I'm just going to say that it's not a hundred percent cohesive for me. That's me.

It's good though. It lingers quite a long time on the pallet too. It sits right there in the middle.

Yeah. It, it's got a pretty long finish and it's a fine whiskey. It's just for me, it's a, it's a little, you know, Maybe that's what the blender had in mind, you know, that this sort of playing this dichotomy between the two a little bit and having you think about it while you're drinking it.

And, you know, maybe when you come back the second sip, you get more of the wine influence and then, yeah, I could see that.

Cause a lot of times I think when you finish something, it just sort of becomes this, this one thing. It becomes this one product, but other times I think you, they each have their own, they play their own roles in the flavor and maybe they're, they're dancing, not exactly the same tune, but I don't know. I think it's really good. Yeah. I just, I just, that's my note on it. These guys are such craftsmen down there. They do such a wonderful job.

Yeah. And their, uh, their new discovery just dropped, which I'm very excited about because it's got some Turkey in it.

Yeah.

So I may or may not have already ordered one. Knowing you Todd. Yeah. Those discoveries of late have been really, really good.

Yeah. So what do you think? What do you think about this?

Do you think this is, uh, this is a late night pour nightcap. Um, you know, maybe it'd be interesting to probably not a real robust cigar would go well with this, but a cigar would, you know, cigar and wine bourbon kind of thing going on there. Yeah.

So I have contemplated, uh, revisiting cigars again, just at a very, very entry level because I got out of control a number of years back with cigars and I went overboard. So I quit altogether is one of those things. I think I've told the story on the show before, but, um, but I've had so many whiskies in the last six months that I thought would really go well with cigar, but I'm not smoking cigars anymore. So I'm like, I think I may want to go back and, and, um,

Today's temperature might play into that too. It's a gorgeous day.

It's a beautiful day. Actually, I went out to take care of the animals this morning. We have horses and goats and chickens and all that kind of stuff, but I went out this morning to take care of everybody. I mean, I was in shorts, but it was cold.

I was in shorts to go see my son's soccer game this morning, but I also had a light jacket on because it was cool.

And I kind of like that. I do too. Yeah. It's a nice change.

I love spring. There's something about like, you know, when you start getting that 60, 70 degree things start to green up, but there's also something about fall.

Yeah.

So we're going to taste, because I think it's going to heat back up.

Yeah, but you can have February and March as far as I'm concerned. First half of January is usually not too bad. I'm not a real super cold weather person, never have been, but I'm not a hot weather person either.

I think it's one of those things we enjoy more as a kid because you could go out, you didn't usually, you know, it's snow, you didn't have school. So that's why you like the winter. Now it's kind of like, oh man, I got to shovel snow or, you know, I throw some salt out or something. Snow means work.

So I have to say that Bartstown Bourbon Company is probably there at the top of their game when it comes to media samples. They really do a great job. Their packages that arrive are just unreal. And we'll capture this one for everybody so you can see what it looks like. The last one was really good. This one was really good. They really do a great job.

Yeah, that's fun. It's kind of always neat when they... you know, kind of send you something, you know, not just a sample. It's always kind of cool when they, it's almost like opening a birthday present of some sort. Yeah.

And they haven't just put it in a sample bottle, right? I mean, they put it in a miniature of their own bottle, which is like beautiful. So they, they spared no expense on this.

And that's, that's their bottle. Everything they put out is in that type of bottle now. It's really cool. Just a different color label for various things.

Wow. Big thumbs up on this. Um, just, you know, like I said earlier, I think, you know, this is one, this is a thinking whiskey. This one kind of is a tug of war pulls you back and forth between the, the finishing notes and the bourbon notes. And, uh, but it's an interesting ride.

Yeah, a little high end. So this is going to be one special bottle, special, special pours. You might pull your wallet out, fan through the bills in your wallet and go, eh, not this time.

Right. Or you may just go ahead and say, let's do it. Um, that's your choice. Of course. Um, I, I, I don't know what I will do. I'm still, I like it. I think I want to have more pours of it. I don't want to drink too much of this bottle because I want to make sure it's available to our roadies here in about a month.

Yeah.

Getting closer. It is getting close for bourbon on the banks, folks. Kentucky Bourbon Festival too. So that's next week and looking forward to it. Yeah, that's good. I like it. All right. So what do we have in the next one?

The last one is the latest wood finishing series from Maker's Mark and it's called The Heart. And so it's their 70, 16, 14 mash bill, 70% corn, 16% wheat, 14% malted barley. Yay. This one came in at 111.7 proof. This is the, let's see, one, two. Seventh installment of that wood finishing series. Started with the RC6. Yep. Followed that up with the SE4 PR5, which I'm sure it's some top secret, you know, stave code or something like that. Then you had the FAE 01 and 02, which was the fatty acid ester bottles.

We call them the fairy bottles. The fairies. The fae. Yeah. Yep.

That was followed in 22, 2022 was BRTs, 01 and 02. And then last year's was the BEP, the BEP or the barrel entry proof is what they focused on. So, but this one's called the heart. And yeah, I'm looking forward to this one.

All right. I'm ready to try it. Let's check that nose out. Ooh. Maple-y. So this is 111.7 proof.

Yep. Retails for $68.99. Okay.

So this is 111.7 proof. And I'm going to say, obviously available at the distillery and probably on any shelf in the USA.

Yeah.

Nationwide and probably even across Cross the pond if you will. So you should be able to find this. Um, and the price again, uh, 68 99, 68 99. What a, what a good price. Well, we haven't tasted the whiskey yet, but anytime a bottle is in the 60, 50, 40 range, I'm not, I'm not shaking in my boots.

Right. Peaks your interest.

Yeah. So the nose is a kind of unassuming. Uh, like a little cherry, a little cherry, a little spicy cherry.

I'm getting a little, just a hint of like maple syrup to me. Now for this one, they've gone to a different bottle there for a while. It was kind of rounded on those wood finishing. So this is a little squared off, a little taller on the neck. Yeah. I believe this is the same bottle shape as the seller aged the 13 year.

Okay. Yeah. The, the nose is soft for 111 proof. Yeah. I would never guess it to be that high. Ready for a sip. Cheers. Cheers. Soft up front, a little bit of a bite on the back.

Ooh, that's pleasant.

That's very pleasant. Nice spice release on the mid pallet. Um, caramel.

Caramel. I think that maple is coming through on the pallet.

Yep. For sure.

Very soft mouth feel.

Yeah. It is very soft and it's, it's got a nice silky texture to it too. Really nice. The color is the color on this is a little darker, but you would expect that for, um, you know, a hundred and almost 112 proof.

Yeah. Um, no age statement on that. I don't think.

I love the spice note on it. I love the, it's sort of like a collection of baking spice and caramel. And, uh, like you said, a little bit of cherry, a little bit of maple, maybe settling in with a little chocolate on the back.

Yeah. Just a hint there. Yeah.

This is a well-balanced whiskey. Yeah. It's a nice, nice release. finishes medium. It does kind of drift away a little bit faster than I hope it would, but yeah, I would agree with that.

They always do such a good job on these.

So this would be a BR 22A. That's their code for it. Does that sort of tie in back to the FAAs and Well, there was the BRTs. This is a BR22A.

I'm sure that's all, like, I know they work with independent stave a lot on their, the stave profiles. And so probably, you know, sometimes they will bake their staves and then toast them. And so, yeah.

You know, it's a shame that we don't know exactly what that means. But there may be a document on the web somewhere that explains all that. But you know, sometimes the FAs were very well explained. Yes. Right? And fatty acid esters. So that was the chemical term for those fusel oil, those esters.

Yeah. They always try to emphasize certain things, like that fatty acid esters, that was all about like that oily mouth feel.

That texture.

Which I was really a big fan of both of those.

Yeah, I was too. I was too. And what was the first one?

That was the RC6.

RC6.

That was, I believe, just kind of a toasted American oak type thing. I mean, the thing is, makers like They play around a little bit, but it's not going to go like to, you're not going to see anything like super extreme from them. Right. I mean, things could change as always, but they try to keep it on profile point with just hints of differences or where they accent, you know, accentuate certain things. And I think that's fun. But I also noticed on that bottle, it says first release. I don't know if that's first release of 24. So they're planning on,

Well, the heart release. So maybe three more hearts to come. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Good stuff though. I like it. I like it. I would say, yeah, grab this bottle for sure.

Yeah. If you're a maker's peers, it's no brainer.

Yeah. For me, I think these are all a buy. The only caveat being with the Bardstown is if you're ready to spend $159, $149 for a bottle. Yeah. Always money is an issue. Everybody's in a different place in their life. Everybody has their own wallet and the thickness of it. I don't know that I'll go out and pick up a bottle of that, but I might have another pour out of this sample bottle before it makes it to the roadie bar.

There you go. That's me. Yeah. And then, I mean, again, you don't have to go buy a bottle. Sometimes if a bar's got it, give it a try there. I mean, you could get, I know a lot of places do half ounce pours or... So it wouldn't be too pocket burning, if you will, I would think.

Yeah, I'm kind of excited to go grab a bottle of this Templeton Midnight Rhyme for Melody. I think she'll really like it. And then I'm going to get her to add a little bit of her screwball to it. Yeah, you're going to have to let us know how that pans out. It sounds great on paper, but- I mean, it's already an abomination, right? with what they've done, so why not? Let's throw some screwball in there. Maybe some cinnamon whiskey just to top it off. Maybe just drizzle on a toasted peanut butter sandwich or something. Oh my goodness. What fun this is. Yeah. I love this. So you think that pepper bottle will make it to the roadie bar? Oh, I'll buy one for the roadie bar. You just tell me where they're at.

I was going to say, they'll want a full one, so yeah, they're around.

You think there's one at Kroger? There were some at my Kroger. Right down here on 127? I believe so.

OK. If not, it's then sold out. But I know at one point they were there.

Well, I have to drive right by it on the way out of here. So I may stop in and pick up a bottle of that.

If not, I'm sure there's plenty more out there somewhere.

Total Wine's probably got a stock of it, I'm sure.

Capital Sellers, that's actually where I grabbed Grab that one night.

Yeah. Yeah. Are they open right now?

Uh, yeah, should be. It's Saturday. Yeah. Oh yeah. We're recording. Sorry. We're recording this on a, on a Saturday afternoon. I've got to head out tomorrow, really early. I'm flying out of Lexington to Savannah for a big work conference. So, leaving at, flying out at 6 AM. So, early, early, early. And the fam's going? Just me. Just you. Yeah. Savannah's a great place. They're not even going to wake up to see me off. They're like, my dad.

Hopefully you'll get a little time in Savannah to play around.

We've got some stuff planned. I think, like I said, my We have like 28 employees now. Actually, when I first started, we had about 20, so we're slowly adding on, but I think all but maybe four are going. The funny thing is, since we're widespread, some are flying out of Nashville, some are flying out of Louisville, some are flying out of Cincinnati, so we're all converging on the Savannah airport at the same time.

Well, it sounds like a fun time down there. So I hope you have a great time. Get out and see Savannah. It's a great historical town and a lot of great food. Great food town.

Yeah. I've got a list of a couple of places I want to go eat.

Fantastic. You have to come back and report to us because Melody's been on me to take her to Savannah. So I think we're going to get down there at some point.

Yeah. I was there for a few hours. One time on a trip back from Florida, we just kind of stopped and had lunch and walked around down by the inlet there, the river. I remember sitting there having a beer and all of a sudden a dolphin jumped out of the water about 10 feet away. Maybe about jump out of my seat and spill my beer.

Oh my goodness. Don't spill your beer. Don't spill the beer. It's been a great time. Love it. Love it. Love it. I got another... What kind of glass is this from Bart's?

Copita?

Copita glass. That's right. Yeah. So Bart's 10 bourbon company sent out a Copita glass with their sample this time. And hopefully we can get some pictures out for you guys so you can check things out. All the bottles look great. All the whiskey is really good this time. As usual, Todd, we've had a wonderful, wonderful show. And hopefully we've let the listeners know of a few things they can try.

Yeah. Yeah. I hope they go out and check some of these out. All right.

Well, we'll do this again next week, but until then, wow, lots of fun. Yeah. We'll, uh, we're actually gearing up folks for bourbon on the banks. We've got to get our tent in place. We've got to get all our swag ordered in and piled up and we hope a lot of you are going to show up. We've had as many as 150 roadies show up at bourbon on the banks before to come in and belly up to our tent. I think we're going to have a great time.

Yeah. And we've almost pinned down who's going to be there pouring some, some of their bottles, if you will. Yeah.

So. We should be announcing that hopefully next week. Awesome. I'm looking forward to it. All right. Well, you can find the Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, threads, all of that stuff. Every week we put out an episode on Wednesday. Todd and I will sit down, drink through some whiskies. We'll have a guest on. We'll, uh, We'll do a review or two. Um, you know, it's always fun every single week, lots of information on bourbon and what's going on and what you should, what you should try. Not so much about what you shouldn't try, but definitely what you should try. We hope you'll join us every single week. Just scroll up to the top of that app you're on, hit that subscribe button. That way every single week you'll get that notification saying Jim and Todd have dropped another episode. We hope you'll check out our website, the bourbonroad.com. We've got our swag on there and we've got our articles on there. We've got the, obviously you can go to the podcast on there if you want. It's a great place to call home. Also the bourbon roadies, private Facebook group, all friends sharing whiskey news, sharing what they're pouring and drinking that even lots of fun, lots of pictures, good times. We hope you'll check out the bourbon roadies.

Someone was talking about the stag. Tasting we did and said they never tried it. So I've got him some pores boxed up and ready to go next week. Wow. Fantastic. You know, there's something out there we've tried and let us know.

All right. We've had fun. Yep. Until the next time we'll see you down the bourbon road.

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