416. Nose Your Bourbon

Hello 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.

All right, listeners, welcome back. We're excited to have a guest on the show today. It's Todd and I and Chris Walters. Chris Walters from Nose Ear Bourbon. Chris, welcome to the Bourbon Road. Thank you so much. I appreciate you guys having me on. It's great to have you. So we're all coming together from different parts of the kind of different places right now. We're actually on StreamYard. This is a remote recording. Normally, sometimes it's hard to tell. We do such a StreamYard has gotten so good that sometimes it's difficult to tell whether you're live in person sitting across from each other or actually different corners of the U.S. But Chris, you're from calling in from Marietta, Georgia, right? Marietta, that's right. Marietta is what about 30 minutes northwest of Atlanta? That's right. Yeah, not too far at all. And we've each got bourbons in our glass today. We each are going to drink. I think we're drinking separate stuff. We haven't really chatted about it too much. But Chris, what do you have in your glass?

So I pulled the Four Roses Small Batch Select. I was really excited when this product came out. I thought it hit a really interesting proof point, being at 104. And the fact that it's non-chill filtered, it just has a really nice oily mouth feel. And it just hangs around forever. Four Roses can do almost no bad in my book, so I'm a huge fan of most everything they put out.

Well, fantastic. I've always been a fan of that pour and I kind of felt the same way when it came out. It was a really high quality bourbon at a fair price and widely available, so definitely. Todd, what about you?

Tonight, Jim, I've got a James B. Beam Distiller Share. This is batch five. This one is the Extended Fermentation batch and it's a underneath proof, six year. And yeah, I've had it before and it's kind of like a free to your knob Creek, if you will. So, but that'd be a nice one. Nice one to give a, give a whirl and get some, ideas from Chris about how to nose this bourbon maybe even more than I already know.

There you go. All right. Well, I'll be sipping on a little Luca Mariano. I've got a single barrel here. This is 103 proof and this is a Kentucky straight bourbon. I've always been a big fan of Luca Mariano. I think they have a very high quality bourbon and, uh, it's, it's been a while since they had, we had their product on the show. I think the last time we had the product on the show, I do believe they were, they were sourcing their, their liquid from wilderness trail. I'm not sure if that's still the case though, but this is a single barrel 103 proof and what a beautiful, beautiful deep amber color. Yeah. Look at that.

So Chris, give us a little bit about your background, what you do in real life, and then what led you down this bourbon nosing path.

Yeah, absolutely. So my full-time gig is I work in the SAS space for a software company that creates software for pro photographers. So if you photograph families or weddings, that type of thing, we create a solution for you. When I got into bourbon, it was actually in college. I didn't quite know the difference between bourbon and all other whiskies, but I went to my local Total Wine and I asked them for something that I could just crack up in the bottle, pour into a glass and enjoy without mixing a bunch of different ingredients in. I didn't want to have to go the whole cocktail route. I was like, just something simple, something easy. I believe they recommended an Irish whiskey and I don't recall which one, but I remember really struggling to enjoy it. And it took me a long time to finish that bottle. And I kind of was like, man, if this is what whiskey is all about, I'm not sure that I'm that I'm in like, maybe maybe I need to find something else. Maybe it's, you know, tequila, maybe I'll go that route. But thankfully, I came back to the whiskey category years later and it was actually a bottle of bullet bourbon that I saw on the shelf. And that packaging just really spoke to me. It just leapt off the shelf. I was like, that looks like a cool old bottle. I'm going to pick it up. And I'm so glad that I did because I didn't have the vocabulary to describe it at that time. But it was all those brown sugar caramel spice and fruit notes that I was like, this is incredible. I'm so glad I came back to this. And that set me on a journey to understand why is this different than what I had before? Why does it taste so different? What is bourbon versus whiskey? And all those questions that we've all kind of, you know, gone through. But that was my journey into bourbon. And like most things for me, if I go to a restaurant and they have a chance to try, here's our most popular dishes, but small bites of those, I want the appetizer sampler or the beer flight or whatever that is. So I started building my own bourbon flights and kind of set off on a journey to buy everything under $30 and then everything under $40 and everything under $50, which those things are becoming much harder to find these days. This was back in 2015, so you still had a lot of things available in that price range. But that was kind of the start of the journey for me. And That's where the whole idea of nosing came in for me was I started to read other professional bourbon writers that were reviewing bourbons and leaving such detailed and beautiful tasting notes. about what they were trying. And I remember going like, these guys are either completely full of it, or they've somehow developed their palette in a way that they can really taste the things that they're writing about here. And I need to figure out which is which. And so I asked some friends that were really into bourbon and had incredible palettes. I did some research online and came across the idea of a nosing kit. And most, if you've seen these before online, many of them are almost little vials of clear liquids that are artificial scents that are supposed to smell like cherry or leather or earth or different notes. They're relatively expensive, $150 plus. I was like, it's artificial. I don't really love that. I bet I could just make my own and use real ingredients. It would be more authentic. It would be way cheaper for sure. And it's kind of cooler because it's the real thing. And so I made my first kit for myself. I never intended to launch a business or a brand around this. It was just something, a tool that I was using for myself. So I started posting pictures and sharing on Facebook what I had built for myself that was helping me. And I started to get some folks messaging me saying, hey, this is really cool. Is that something you're thinking about selling? And honestly, I was like, I don't know. Let me get back to you about that. I'd have to think about what I would charge, and I'd have to think about packaging and putting together a label and branding and the whole thing. So that sent me off on a journey. It was probably about a year later where I really came back and had a finished product, something that I was proud of that I could say, I think I could actually sell this thing. and ended up setting up a store on Etsy. Little did I know what a perfect marketplace that would be for something like this. Painting with a broad brush, many would probably say still most bourbon drinkers are men. Most shoppers on Etsy are women looking for creative gifts for their guys. It's just kind of lucked into that, but it's a highly giftable product and got on Etsy and it's been a wild ride since then.

Well, fantastic. I'm kind of curious. So you said you started your kind of whiskey journey in 2015. When did you end up on Etsy? So what was that timeframe between your first whiskey and showing up on Etsy? Yeah.

So 2015, I got into bourbon. It was 2019 before I sold the first kit. I had started working on it in 2018 from a concept standpoint. I wanted to make sure that the aromas were were strong, that they represented the notes that I was trying to hit. Because if I say right now brown sugar or dried cherry or vanilla, you guys have a cent memory of that and something is coming back to you right now. But when is the last time you stuck your nose in a bag full of brown sugar or a bag full of clove or something like that? It's probably been a while, maybe never. But that's what's been so cool about the kit and this concept is It's a quick reference point to say, you know, what is that note? Oh, it's definitely more fruit than it is spice, but which fruit or this is actually it's very sweet. But can I get more specific? Is it is it honey like sweetness or is it chocolate kind of sweetness? And so using a kit like this, you can dial in and say, let me actually pull out my little container of honey here. I'm going to smell honey. I'm going to go back to the glass and I'm going to smell. Is that actually the note? Oh, no, it's not. OK, let me pull brown sugar. OK, go back to the glass. Oh, you know what? That's totally brown sugar. And so it gives you that quick reference point to be able to say, like, right now I'm smelling between these different types of sweet and able to more quickly pin it down to one.

Is there ever any fear that your wife's going to get into your nose kits because she's out of spices or anything like that?

I never have a lack. It's funny. We were cooking something the other night, and I was like, I have that downstairs. I totally have that. It's just like, name a spice that I don't have. And I actually tested a number of other ones that didn't end up making it in the final kit, either because they weren't shelf stable on their own. That was a big thing, is if you're going to launch a nosing kit with natural ingredients, like they have to stay fresh for a long time. They have to smell strong. That's one benefit that using a synthetic aroma has over a natural ingredient is that their shelf life is arguably much longer. But what I found is when I filled my first kit, or I should say I have a kit that I filled over two years ago that I keep going back to as my personal kit, Both to kind of see like what's the shelf life of this thing? How long is it going to run? And I'll be honest, most of the aromas are very, very strong still. There's some that the ones that started a little bit more faint, like I have toasted oak chips. That's a faint aroma even when it's fresh. And so that one starts to fade over time. You look at something like cracked corn, that's going to fade a little bit faster over time. The good thing is many of these ingredients, maybe not toasted oak, but many of these ingredients, if your black pepper goes stale, which is probably a bad example because black pepper is very strong, if one of these spice grade ingredients goes stale, you can run up to the local grocery store and just get a fresh refill of that. But that's actually something that I'm working on and thinking about for the future is the ability to purchase a refill kit, just a fresh set of ingredients for your entire kit. And then that way you don't need the new case, you don't need the new containers, you just need fresh ingredients. And so maybe even thinking about putting that on a subscription where you might get fresh ingredients every year or something like that.

Oh, that's pretty cool.

Yeah.

So as you were training yourself to use your first kit, what kind of progress do you feel like you made? Because you were starting from a place where maybe you didn't have a lot of memories of tastes and aromas. And you had to build that. And that's what we all do over time without those of us who work without nosing kits, basically build it from a library of whiskeys that we've tried and foods that we've tried over our life. And we build these memories and I don't know, it's kind of a refined art that you do on your own, but how did the kit assist you in that? I mean, how did that, how well did that work to help you?

Yeah, it was kind of the moment of truth, right, is if you go off and you build a kit like this, you hope that your ability to detect these notes improves. Otherwise, it's back to the drawing board or like, OK, so even for myself personally, how do I progress? Is there some type of sommelier level designation or something I can take or a course that's going to help me train on that? Luckily, it absolutely helped. And the more time that I spent with each individual ingredient, you build a stronger scent memory to that one ingredient. And so you'll find that you'll either go looking for that in other bourbons or it'll just become more present in the glass when that note is there. And that's a question I get a lot is like, well, isn't this kit just kind of tricking your brain to think that all of these 18 different things are in every glass of bourbon? What I found to be true is no, is if I take three different bourbons and pour them right now. And I go through and I smell and I think, oh, this one's spice, this one's fruit. As I hit specific ingredients in the kit that are present in the glass, it's like someone took the volume knob and cranked it up to 12. And that one element just leaps out of the glass. And I go to the very next pour and I smell it and it's, it's not there. It falls flat. And so that's what tells me that like, wow, this thing actually works. And it can help you kind of not only train on one particular scent, but start with categories and then be able to get more detailed as you dive in.

So you kind of have like a starter kit for folks that has six cents in it. And what are those six cents happen to be?

Yeah, so the bourbon nosing sample kit, which is my six count kit, has six aromas. It's caramel, brown sugar, black pepper, oak, cherry, and corn. And how I landed on those six was Going back to the concept of a bourbon tasting wheel, there are probably hundreds of versions of these online. I found one that resonated with me. And this is really where the concept for the first 18 ingredients came from was, can I start with something like a bourbon tasting wheel, which if you've not seen one of these before in the center, it's kind of the five major categories. You have a wood category, grain, sweet, spice, and fruit. And then out from there, it gets a little bit more specific. So if we talk about wood, we might be talking about oak. And then you go out from oak, and it's new oak versus toasted oak. And you can take that same concept with almost any category on there. With the six count kit, I wanted there to be at least one element from every of those five categories. And then I just doubled up on the sweet, because I have a sweet tooth. And I think there's a lot of sweet notes that come in bourbon, too.

Oh, fantastic. Yeah. We had Chris Morris on the show from, uh, well at the time he was at Woodford reserve.

Now he's, uh, now he's emeritus.

Emeritus. That's correct. And, uh, of course he, his claim to fame is that he developed the very first, uh, flavor wheel for bourbon.

Is that right? I hadn't heard that.

Yeah, so he told the story about it on the show. It was an interesting thing. And of course, you know, Woodford Reserve is known well for their 200 and some odd flavor notes that you can pull out of that particular bourbon. So very interesting. So of all the flavor wheels that are out there, the hundreds and hundreds of them, and there's a lot of them differ, they all have their roots in one kind of place. And that's kind of neat. A little tidbit of information.

Chris, just out of curiosity, you are a bourbon aficionado, if you will. What are your favorite scents? We probably each all have our own favorite scents. What are some of the ones that really tick your boxes being ideal?

Absolutely. I love to find fruit notes. Usually it presents in the form of cherry. I find a lot of cherry on Buffalo Trace products. Big fan of that. I also, anytime there's like a stone fruit, like an apricot or a peach note or something, it's a little bit less common, but I absolutely love to find those too. Actually, one of the Thomas Handy that's up behind me, there was one year where it was just absolutely like, like a peach turnover with ice cream on top of it. I'm just like, what is this thing going on right now? And, you know, I might say that and people go, oh, come on, man, you're not tasting peach Alamode, but you start to pick out the notes, right? Like you get the dough, the kind of bread, the bakery notes, you get a little bit of vanilla and sugar, and then you get the peach note and it doesn't take long for your brain to put those together and go, Well, gosh, what food have I eaten before? Have I had something from the fair? We just got back from the North Georgia fair, so that's top of mind. But have you had something in your past that has all these ingredients together and it takes you back to a scent memory, like you said, of like, oh, I had that, you know, that specific food together once and all of a sudden I'm right back there. It's transported me back.

Yeah, I think Todd and I just had a, a blackberry cobbler with buttery crust. Uh, what about two weeks, two, three weeks ago? I was amazing. So yeah, you can, uh, And I notice that when I'm tasting through whiskeys, I've got those scents that I have a hard time picking up. And I think I've mentioned to Todd before in other shows that I have a hard time picking up banana for some reason. It's just not one of those things that I pick up easily. Uh, and I have a hard time discerning between like peanut and peanut shell. So those, those have always been a couple of things that are kind of tough for me. But, um, but there are other things that just jump out at me. And so do you find that to be true for yourself as well, that there are certain notes that are just sound loudly to you and others that may be a little bit harder to pull?

Yeah, a black pepper spice note is the most common way that I experience spice on my palate, especially when it's kind of tip of the tongue. It's like, that's black pepper. That's one that I go to a lot. Also, you know, less common to find, but probably one of my favorite is if you get something with a little bit of age on it, you start getting up into 12, 13, 15 year old, bourbon, um, you start for me, I started to get some of those leather and, you know, pipe tobacco notes, and those are just so much fun to find. I'm definitely a little bit more rare and, and, um, I have not personally found them on a, on a younger bourbon. It does take some time in the, in the barrel and the age to get that.

Right. Well, Chris, this has been a fascinating journey. This first half I've really enjoyed sipping on this Luca Mariana. I hope you two have enjoyed your bourbons as well. Any, any final notes on the whiskeys we're drinking before we break for the half?

Now, on this four rows of small batch select, it does have some spice on it. I think this one may be more like a cinnamon spice, actually, as I think through the different spices that it could be. But also, I'm getting this milk chocolate note, which is really, really nice. So you get this kind of spicy chocolate. I love those kind of play. that kind of play on words or play with food where you've got a spice and a sweet and something savory all coming together.

I was going to say that four roses, that could be a really fun, you know, if you could get some of all the recipes, you can have a lot of fun and talk, you know, talk about really trying out your kit with like four roses because it's, you know, each recipe has its kind of own thing going on. You can get anywhere from fruit to spice to, yeah, it's all, those are awesome. It's all over the place.

It took me about three or four years, but I finally got a barrel-proof version of all 10 recipes. And then they launched the 10 recipe sampler, the little mini bottles. And then they announced two new recipes. I'm like, guys, I can't keep up. But yeah.

Those marketing guys are always at work.

All right, folks, we're going to take a short break. And when we come back, more nosing your bourbon with Chris Walters and we've got three new ports coming up in the second half as well. So don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

Welcome back to the second half, roadies. We're here with Chris Walters of Nosure Bourbon and we're digging deep into the to the sense of our bourbons and rice tonight. So let's continue on with this great great chat.

All right, so Todd, I selected a larceny barrel proof as the bourbon I'm just going to drink in the second half. I was drinking 103 proof Lucca Mariano in the first. I thought, well, let's raise the proof just a little bit. So I'm drinking the 125.8 proof A123 from larceny. So that's what's in my glass. How about you, Chris?

Well, funny enough, I also pulled larceny barrel proof. This one you might notice on the video here that this is a little bit of a different looking label. So this was from the Heaven Hill bourbon experience. If you're not familiar with that, it's a chance to go in and taste through three or four of their barrel proof offerings, depending on what they have that day. And whichever one you prefer, you actually get to pick up the bottle that's completely unlabeled, walk over to a station, fill it yourself, literally pull the lever and fill the bottle with bourbon, handwrite your own labels, which you don't want to see my handwriting. But once those labels go on there, you put a security tag over the top and they meet you in the gift shop and you get to walk away with a bottle that you've actually filled and hand labeled. And it's not a batch number that you can buy off the retail, so it's a complete you know, special single barrel. Fantastic.

I love those experiences where you fill your own bottle. And there's been a number of them out there. I think Michter's does it. I think bluegrass distillers in Lexington kind of paved the way on that, didn't they? They were early on. Them are whiskey thief, I would say. Yeah, absolutely.

And then the Pursuit guys- It's so much fun, yeah. The Pursuit guys have kind of gone that way and theirs is a little different. It's a lot of fun. So I've got in my glass, a New England barrel company, Single Barrel Rye. So this past weekend, we're recording this on a Monday evening. This past weekend, Friday night, I went up to the Mashing Journey, Bardstown Blitz in Bardstown, where those are some good friends of mine there. So they had a big gathering of a bunch of their Patreon and fans of theirs. So a good friend of mine, Derail Stewart, has been wanting me to try this. So he brought me a sample of this. So this, she's a big girl, 131.04 proof. So, but it's 11 and a half year MGP rye. So. I bet that is delicious.

So we're all drinking the fire in the second half. How about that? Yeah. Up in our game.

up in our game just a little bit. Yeah, just a little bit. So Chris, you talked about your connection and starting the Etsy and things like that. Has there been some other ways you've tried to move your products?

Yeah, I got really fortunate early on. I was discovered through my Etsy store by a buyer for the company called Bespoke Post. If you're not familiar with them, they're an online retailer. They sell a lot of different things, everything from fire starting equipment to camping. hunting and coffee making things, just some really cool products. They have an entire bar and kitchen section. They thought my product would be a great fit for their online retail store. They reached out and said, hey, have you thought about wholesale? I didn't even know what the term meant at the time. They were so kind and gracious to walk me through what that meant and put together our first wholesale order of 40 kits and they sent an email blast to their subscriber base and in two hours they had sold out. And so I was like, okay, yeah, so I guess there's some interest there. Just blew me away. I had no idea that the interest would be so high and they've been just the best a recurring wholesale partner of mine. They've continued to place orders in the hundreds over time. And I actually worked with them. They have another side of their business for subscription boxes. So you can have a subscription box for barware or for coffee making equipment, whatever your interests are. And they wanted to pair my nosing kit with a couple of whiskey glasses and some crackers to actually use as a palate cleanser in between pours. And I thought it was a really cool idea. But at the price point they were looking to offer everything for, I just couldn't get my costs down low enough to make the original 18-count kit work for it. So we kind of put our heads together and said, well, what if we created a smaller kit with a lower price point and a smaller footprint in the box? And so that's what kind of set me on down the path of creating the bourbon-nosing sample kit. So we worked together on that. And I asked them, what size order are you thinking about for the subscription box? Because we did 40 for the first one. They said, oh, our minimums are 4,500 units on the subscription. And luckily, I wasn't on video. But my eyes lit up like, oh my gosh, how am I going to fill 4,500 kits? This is just me. I've got some help, some temporary help as needed. But like, what am I going to do? I didn't let them know that at the time. I just said, yep, no problem. Sounds good. When do you need them? And luckily we had like a two and a half or three month runway. And I called everybody that I knew that was looking for work and said, look, I've got this project. I need all hands on deck. I need some help. I was having 50-pound bags of brown sugar delivered to my door. My wife was looking at me like I was crazy. I promised her it's going to be fine in a few months. Just let me get through this. And we did. We met the deadline. We got it out the door. And I swore I would never do an order of that size out of my basement again, because it was just completely bonkers. But I learned a lot. And it actually set me down a path where they've been reordering We had a 9,000 unit order that came through last year. And I was just like, this is incredible. So I found a partner out of New York that does co-packing. I wasn't even familiar with that term at the time of what does that mean to have someone help me assemble this thing. But at that scale, there was just no way that I could put my hands on every single kit. And so I found a great partner up in New York that does dry spice blending and things. So if you want to create your own dry rub for barbecue or something like that, they can assemble it for you. And so I was like, this is pretty much the same thing. Just don't mix anything. I need everything to be separate. And so if you haven't seen my kit, it's 18 screw top containers with individual ingredients in each one. And the idea is that you would smell one at a time to try to really get specific about what is it that I'm nosing and tasting now. So yeah, that's, that's been kind of the, the most surprising part of the journey was just how well it took off through partners like, you know, bespoke post. I've also been on vintage gentlemen, um, seal box, uh, Flaviar just to name a few. So it's, it's been, it's, it's been so much more successful than I ever thought possible. And I'm just so grateful.

So that, that's pretty amazing. I mean, the numbers are tremendous. I mean, how many, You might not know the total number, but how many kits have you got out there? How many customers do you have in this? in this country or in this world that have received one of your kits.

It's funny. I was looking at this the other day. It's over 30,000. I don't have I don't have an exact number, but over over 30,000 kits have been sold since the first one in 2019. So and it's it's always amazing to me when someone is, you know, will just show up on social and post it or in a random group. It's like, hey, I found this cool nosing kit. I'm like, whoa, where'd you get that? You know, I'll play along for a minute and be like, yeah, I created that.

That is so cool. That is cool. So proof of concept, check.

Yeah, no doubt.

Well, that's fantastic. Yeah. So I've got one of your 18 nosing kits here right now. And can we talk a little bit about the 18 kit and what people can expect from that?

Absolutely. Back to the bourbon tasting wheel, I wanted to find for the original kit, which is what I refer to this as, it is for me the most common 18 aromas that you will find. The way that I actually figured out what the most common were is I ran At the time, AI wasn't really a thing much to say, hey, let me go run this through some AI assistant. It was a fairly manual process, but I ran through hundreds if not thousands of professional bourbon writers and the notes that they were using in their reviews and said, what are the most common things that are coming up? How many times is brown sugar mentioned? How many times is black pepper mentioned? That informed, okay, these are the ones that are most commonly found by pallets that are You know light years better than mine so probably would make sense to make a kit around those so what you can find in here is for the sweet category you've got you've got vanilla caramel honey chocolate and brown sugar and then in the spice category you've got mint cinnamon black pepper clove allspice leather and tobacco In the wood category, peanut and oak. For the fruit category, I chose cherry. And then for the grain category, the final three rounding out is corn, wheat, and rye. And so all of these ingredients are natural ingredients, they're shelf stable, they don't need to be refrigerated. They have an extremely long shelf life for what they are, especially because this is for nosing, not necessarily for seasoning your food or something like that. So I feel like they even last longer than they might beyond what it might say for an expiration date to use on your food. But yeah, those are the 18 that I chose for the first kit.

So I do notice that there are 18 screw top containers in there, but there's also this clear liquid tube. What is that?

So when I first started shipping my kits, I filled every ingredient on here. And if you caught it in the sweet category, one of the elements is honey. Well, they are screw top containers, but they are not waterproof, leak proof containers. And so the first few kits went out with honey in them. And I got a couple of customer emails saying, oh my gosh, my kit is a complete mess. And I was like, that is not good. And so it's funny, like back to scent memories and things, when I was younger, we used to travel to go see family out of state, we would always run through Cracker Barrel. And Cracker Barrel has these little honey sticks and there's, you know, traditional honey, there's flavored honeys and things. So that immediately was like, I need to just include a honey stick in here. And that'll solve that. That way, when someone receives that, they can just kind of pop the end of the honey stick and fill their own honey container versus having to worry about it leaking in transit.

Chris, you talked a little bit about how you procure some of your spices and since you were talking about the large bags of brown sugar. Is that something that you just buy in bulk for a lot of those? For the oak, do you toast your own oak? I guess for some of the ingredients, what ways are you getting those to get in the kits?

Yeah, I've been fortunate to find everything as a finished product. So nothing that I'm having to alter or do anything with once it comes in. I've found basically a different partner for each ingredient where I just find that that aroma is really strong for that particular one. I've even gone through, I remember when I was trying to figure out on the caramel note because an individually wrapped caramel, obviously when it's wrapped up, has almost no smell. You open up the wrapper and there's the smell. But I bought six different individually wrapped caramels and I labeled them one through six. I was blinding my entire family. I've got a wife and three kids and I was like, which one smells the strongest? I took down notes. It was a total bourbon experiment. but with caramel for the kids. It was great. So it was things like that that I've done over time to try to say like, what is the best representation of this particular ingredient that I can put in the kit?

Well, I did crack open a couple of these and I apologize to the roadie who wins this kit later on. But I did open a few of the containers and smell them and I thought, How many times have I actually gone to my own spice cabinet and pulled something out to smell it just to check myself? Because I give a lot of tasting notes over the years doing the podcast and it's not very often and I've never done that with allspice but I have called out allspice a number of times in my tasting notes because I'm familiar with it. But when I nosed your allspice, I'm like, oh my goodness, have I really been getting allspice correctly all these years? Because it really is a little bit more a nice than I thought, you know, that's interesting for me. And I was like, oh my goodness, I was feeling like this was a little bit more baking spice than allspice, but. So I think you can maybe use this kit to also correct some. maybe some misconceptions you might have, where you might've been calling out a particular note, but it's not true.

100%.

So is there a preferred glass that you use, Chris? for you yourself?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I get this question a lot. I've actually, because of the nature of the business that I own and the work that I'm in here, I've tried a lot of different styles of glassware. I even kind of did my own, you know, I don't remember if it was blind or not, but it was definitely like which glass, like really trying to identify which one brings out the nosing, which one brings out the tasting. I know that the neat glass is very popular with the spirit competitions. It's like the mini spittoon style glass. I really struggle with that glass. When I go to tip it up to actually drink, I feel like it sloshes and ends up splashing me in the face. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but And on top of that, I don't feel that it's a better nosing vessel than the standard Glen Caron glass. And so that's been my go-to. I do have some cool branded Glen Carons available on the website, if you guys are interested in those. But I think the tulip shape of that is, if you're used to drinking out of a rocks glass or something, what you're losing, especially on a lower proof bourbon, is so much of the aroma and the alcohol vapor is escaping through the sides of the walls of that glass and not able to be concentrated into a smaller section like a Glencairn where I can really get my nose in there and pull out those notes. So something as simple as upgrading from a rocks glass to a Glencairn, especially on your 80 and 90 proof bourbons, you are going to be in such better shape to start to pull out these notes. Because that's something that's like, OK, Chris, I got your kit. I'm trying to figure this out. I still can't pick up these notes. What's going on? And so I'll have to do a little bit of diagnosing. What kind of glasses are you using? Are you adding water? Are you adding ice? Because that's super popular. Put a big rock on there. And I'm not one to tell you how to drink your bourbon. I think you should enjoy it however the heck you want to enjoy it. But if you are sitting down with a purpose of dissecting and pulling out notes, I think that room temperature neat in a Glencairn is the best way. There's nothing wrong with pouring it over a big rock and watching the big game. Totally fine. But for really trying to pull out nuances and notes, for me, it's room temperature in a Glencairn.

Yeah, I've got kind of the, I think I'm the eyeball here. I've got the, I guess you would almost call it the, Miniature Glencairn, the Coppida.

You got a stem. Yeah.

So the Coppida for me is a close second to the Glencairn, definitely.

I've got one that's got the little lid on there, the little hat for it. So if you have a really low-proof bourbon or something, you know you're going to be an hour or two, and you want to just put a hat on it, put a little lid on it, and trap some of that aroma in there. It's nice.

So Chris, what's, what's the future bring for, uh, nose your bourbon? I mean, you've got, uh, quite a following. You've got, uh, 30,000 plus kits sold. You obviously have proven, uh, proven the point that nosing kits are something that many people not only want, but need. What's next on your list? What, where are you going from here?

Yeah, I mentioned earlier the concept of the refill kits. I think there's something to that for customers that have bought from me in the past that believe in the product and have enjoyed it. It's just eventually over time, you might need a fresh set of ingredients or it might just elevate that experience if it's been a couple of years since you purchased it. So I think there's something there. Also, as far as retail partners, you guys get the exclusive on this. You're the first person I've told this, but my first shipment of kits out to be fulfilled by Amazon went out in the mail this past week. My kits will be on Amazon in the coming weeks. I think it's about a two or three week turnaround process to get on there. Really excited to be there. I can't think of a bigger online partner. If you're going to be online, you should probably be on Amazon too.

Um, so how does that work? You ship them a pallet of kits and then they fulfill out of their warehouse.

You have some options, right? You can do, you can, I could have chosen to fulfill it myself, um, and just have the listing on Amazon. But the downside to that is you don't get the benefits of prime and it. looks like the shipping lead times are much longer than you might expect. And if you've ever shopped on Amazon and seen like, oh, this is by a different seller, if you filter things that are only prime, my product wouldn't come up at all. And so the benefit of going fulfillment by Amazon is that they handle all of that. Obviously, they get a bigger cut of the pie there. But for me, I think it makes sense. I'm starting with a pretty small order just to kind of test the waters. But As we lead into the holiday season, it's obviously a very giftable product. I can map my sales for the past four or five years. Father's Day is a little spike. Christmas is a massive spike. And so leading up into that giving season, I think it's the best time for me to test that. The other side of the business I'm really interested in growing is the experience side. And what I mean by that is, whether that's virtual or in-person tastings, I've started to offer these through my website, where if we're separated by physical distance and we all want to hop on a Zoom call together and walk through, what are the tips and tricks for getting the most out of your bourbon? Why does glassware matter? What happens when I add water versus ice? Can you walk me through exactly how you know? How do I use this kit to get more out of my glass? That's exactly the type of training and course that I'm providing. So I think that all the things that COVID brought, one of the things was it opened a lot of people up for virtual events and things online. So there's a benefit there. And that's something that I'd like to lean more into.

And can we expect to see you at in-person events as well?

That is, I love being in person. I love going to events. That's something that I have a lot of experience with in my real job, my full-time job. But it's something that is definitely on my radar. I want to make it out and have a physical presence at some of these shows. So if you guys have recommendations on which ones would be best to attend, I'm all ears. Yeah, definitely point me towards the ones that would be great.

Absolutely. Chris, can you give us some prices for starting with your smaller kit on through to the bigger kits and even talk about your guided tours, if you will?

Yeah, absolutely. So the bourbon nosing sample kit is the least expensive option of my kits. It is $29. That includes free shipping. That's going to be your six most common ingredients. It's a great place to start if you're just kind of curious about the category. My best seller far and away, probably 50 to 1 over any other product that I sell, is the original bourbon nosing kit. That retails for $74. also including free shipping anywhere in the US. And the expansion kit to kind of grow on that. So the expansion kit we haven't talked about a lot yet, but really where that came from is returning back to the bourbon tasting wheel and saying, OK, we covered the first 18 most common aromas. Are there 18 more that I can find shelf stable quality aromas that represent 18 additional notes that are on the outer spokes of these bourbon tasting wheels? And the answer was yes. And my answer to that was the expansion kit. So here you'll find I really focused more on the fruit notes, kind of beefing that up. So you'll find notes like rose, plum, and coconut to represent fruit. As we go into spice, you'll find things like coffee, red pepper, and nutmeg. As you get into the sweet notes, butterscotch and white chocolate and graham cracker. I know toasting bourbons is a big trend and I find a lot of that graham cracker, chocolate, almost that s'mores note going on with toasted bourbons. It's been a really fun kit to bring to market. That one retails for $84. I do also have some bundles that include everything from a leather tasting note journal that has lined pages that are a template that are ready for you to fill out to say, what distillery is this from? What proof is this? What's the age? What did I think about it? Is this a five-star bourbon? Is this a one and a half-star bourbon for me? And then jot some general tasting notes. Included in those bundles, you'll find a whiskey barrel pen. So it's an actual pen made from a barrel stave, which is really, really cool. And a couple of Glen Cairns to go along with that. So you can find those bundles on my website, as well as a free PDF download with those bundles that is a blind tasting sheet. So if you're trying to evaluate up to six different bourbons at the same time, maybe you're putting together a flight for yourself. It helps you evaluate the different nose, taste, and finish and come up with a scoring system that helps you say this one was actually a 35 point out of 50 versus a 25, for example. And then finally, the guided virtual nosing and tastings that I've started doing. If you're just looking for access to the experience, those are $75 just to jump online. And we can talk through everything from how to get more out of your bourbon, glassware, nosing and tasting tips and tricks. the science of, we even cover like, what is bourbon? How is it different from other whiskeys? How is bourbon made at a very high level? And then if you'd like a version of that guided nosing and tasting that includes a nosing kit and three Glen Caron glasses, that retails for $179. So that's a really fun way to get the kit, get a few Glen Caron glasses if you don't have any in the mail, and then access to the online event. If you are a bourbon group or if you represent a bourbon group or a barrel picking group or a bourbon society and you're interested in giving back to your members, I think this could be a really cool way to provide some value back to the members, whether that comes in the form of a group rate or everybody kind of getting a discount, definitely reach out to me if that's something you're interested in. I'd love to do more of that.

Well, awesome. So Chris, I think it's a good time for us to let our listeners know where they can find you, social media, your website, online. Obviously, you mentioned Amazon so that they can reach out to you.

So the best place to find my products and place an order is knowsyourburban.com. And I actually have a special promo code for the Bourbon Road listeners. It's TBR for the Bourbon Road, 10 for 10% off any order placed through the end of November. So that's TBR 10 for 10% off. And on the socials, I'm basically at knowsyourburban on Instagram, Facebook, and that's where I hang out.

That's awesome. Thanks for doing that for our listeners. Of course.

Well, Chris, it's been exciting to have you on the show today. I think I've learned just a little bit, actually quite a bit. As I nose through your kit, I definitely got put in my place just a little bit. I think I've neglected visiting the spice cabinet often enough. None of us have a wide variety of fresh spices that are always available. And it's not just spices, of course. It's things you don't find in the spice cabinet as well. So I think this kit offers something great for people who are just into bourbon. People that have been here a while as well who may have formed opinions on aromas and tastes that maybe are a little erroneous and need to be reset from time to time. So it's great to have you on the show.

Well, thank you so much. And I think just kind of as we as we close something I'd like to leave everybody with is I want everyone to know there are no wrong answers when you're nosing and tasting. If you experience clove on this bourbon or white chocolate and your neighbor is like, no, I think that's dark chocolate. Nobody's wrong in that equation. What you experience is accurate for you. And even down to those scent memories that have nothing to do with specific flavor profiles, but it's maybe a point in time. It's a memory of growing up. It's something that you experienced as a kid at your grandparents' house. Those are all completely fine and accurate ways for you to describe what you're tasting right there. And don't ever let anybody tell you that you're wrong for noting what you're picking up.

Yeah, I can tell sometimes when Todd and I are tasting bourbons and I come out with this crazy note and he just looks at me with his raised eyebrow, you know, this Spock eyebrow that goes up and you're like, yeah, right, Jimmy. I can only do that one side.

And there's something to be said about the power of suggestion too, right? Like if I throw a crazy tasting note your way, all of a sudden everybody in the room is tasting that thing I just said because you're like, yeah, you know, oh my gosh, like you just planted that seed in my mind. So I guess that's maybe a word of warning of caution. Like if you're If you are ever leading a tasting or nosing, let the group, if they can, come up with their own notes first. If they're really struggling, help them out. But the moment I say cherry or black pepper or tobacco or walnut, everyone's tasting that because the quote expert has named it first.

I think this is a great product for those that are just a little intimidated by it all because they see people, oh, I get this, this, and this. This sounds like a great source to work on those and be just as snobby as the rest of us.

Oh, I know. And like, let's don't take it too seriously, right? This is bourbon. It's supposed to be fun, you know, so like enjoy it, drink it how you want. When you some nights you want to sit down and drink one pour for an hour and a half and just really pick it apart. In other notes, you don't want to think about it. You just want to sit down and sip on something that you know you're going to love. And that's totally fine. Like be be OK with that.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, again, Chris, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. We hope you'll come back and visit us again sometime in the future. Uh, we really, uh, encourage our listeners to check out a knows your bourbon.com, uh, check out his products online and, uh, be beyond the watch that we're going to be giving away one of these kits. And, um, the TBR 10 discount code can be entered on knows your bourbon.com website to get 10% off your order. So don't forget that. Again, Chris, thanks again for coming on the Bourbon Road. It's been a pleasure. We've learned so much from you today. And like I said before, I hope we get a chance to sit down and have a pour in person sometime in the future.

Guys, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure. I hope you guys have a great evening and we'll chat soon.

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. Yeah, all of those. You'll find us releasing an episode every single Wednesday. Sometimes we'll have a great friend on like Chris Walters. Sometimes it's a distillery or a musician or an author. We're always having a good time. We're always drinking whiskey. We hope you'll join us every single week. The best way not to miss a show, 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 that Jim and Todd have dropped another episode and I can go cut the grass and just chill out. So we hope you do. We hope you check in with us every single week. Let your friends know about us. Also check out the bourbon roadies on Facebook. It's our private Facebook group. Just search out the bourbon roadies. It's all our friends, 3000 plus of them that like to hang out. Sip on bourbon, talk about what they're drinking, share pictures, share stories. It's a lot of fun. Come join us. You can also go to our website, the bourbonroad.com. We have our swag on there, our t-shirts and glasses and all the good stuff. Whenever you purchase something like that, it helps Todd and I get down to the road to that next interview, helps cover the costs of running the bourbon road. We appreciate when we're out in town and we see somebody wearing one of our t-shirts or Or we run into you at a, at a liquor store and you, you want to walk up and down the aisles with us and try to pick out something good to drink. It's always fun. We hope to see you around. We do enjoy it, but until the next time we'll see you down the bourbon road.

you