421. Lost Lantern Whiskey

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.

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All right, folks, welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road. This is Todd. I'm flying solo today. Jim's on vacation in Florida. I'm sure he might have some sort of drink with an umbrella in it or something. I'm a little bit jealous because the cold chill has hit the East. Central Kentucky. I'm here with Adam Polanski of Lost Lantern Whiskey. We're going to sample through four of his products, but Adam, welcome to the Bourbon Road.

Thanks so much for having me. Excited to do this. I'm the co-founder and the head of whiskey sourcing for Lost Lantern, and we are what's called an independent bottler of American whiskey. which means that we're not a distillery. We never will be. But instead, we source whisky from small distilleries all around the country and release them with total transparency of where they come from. So for everything, the front label says exactly where we got it. And the idea for this is modeled on an old Scotch tradition called independent bottling that I learned about when I worked for Whiskey Advocate magazine a number of years ago. My co-founder, Nora, worked at high-end wine retail in New York. We both knew this model and saw out there almost 3,000 distilleries around the country now. Some of them are making really amazing whiskey and people just don't know about it or can't get their hands on it. This model is a way to showcase that. What we're tasting today is our new 10-year collection of 10-year-old or almost 10-year-old whiskeys from four distilleries in places you don't normally see whiskey that old from. I think that's a real sign of how much the craft industry is maturing.

Yeah. And this is considered your fall collection. Is that correct?

Yes. This is our fall 2024 collection launched online and on Sealbox in early November. Some of them are sold out online, but still available in retail in some markets and a few that we still have online too. We sell primarily through our website and on Sealbox, as well as in California, New York, Massachusetts.

Okay. Well, one of the things we'd like to do is get right to the whiskey. So you want to tell us about the first from our get ready sample?

Yeah, let's do it. First up is Thomas Foolery, 10 year old Ohio straight bourbon. And myself some and I'll show you the label again because as you can see it says Los Lantern on the top, then Tom Spoolery right under it, Ohio 10 year old bourbon. So no secrets for us on where whiskey comes from. So this is comes as a single cask, cask strength non-shield filter of course from a small Ohio distillery which is Even though it's only one state over from Kentucky, it's quite a different climate. So they're nearly on the shores of Lake Erie. And it's really in the snow belt, a climate more like Buffalo or Rochester, New York than like Louisville. So it's much cooler than where you are down in Frankfurt. And I think that's reflected in the whiskey where you get, I'm not going to tell you tasting notes, but you get a lot of depth to it that is less overly oaky than it would be in a hotter climate.

Yeah. I'm noticing a little bit now I'm getting like some nice maple notes. Some green apple.

59.7%. So not too shabby on the proof. This is a 63% corn, 10% rye, 27% malted barley. A lot of vanilla. We chose this because Tom's Flurry is exactly the kind of distillery that we love to highlight where they're only available in Ohio. Like if you're not in Ohio, you can't get it unless you know a friend who's there. But they're making amazing whiskey and we can help get it out to a much wider audience and hopefully get people excited about what they're doing.

I'm ready to give it a whirl. Cheers. Yeah, cheers. Oh, that's really nice. Some dark fruits coming on.

I agree with you about the maple.

Yeah, that maple still lingering around. So when you approach one of these craft distilleries that you're interested in, what's the process of, hey, we'd like to feature you as one of our own products kind of thing.

Yeah. When we got started, it was an interesting conversation because a lot of bourbon places in particular were not familiar with the Scotch model we're based on. And it's kind of a big ask to say, hey, nice to meet you. Can I buy some whiskey from you and put it in our bottle with your distilleries name on it? Since we launched in 2020, we've now worked with more than three dozen distilleries around the country. And the conversation has gotten really quite easy because they see that we're just another way to get their whiskey out there to people. And we're not, especially for a single cask program like these, we're not really changing it. We're just bottling it as it is so people can discover this place and the way they do things. And that's a way people can find things they don't know about otherwise. And one thing that's always really helped is that we decided early on that we would only work with distilleries that we had visited in person wherever they were in the country. We started the company with an eight-month road trip around the US to visit distilleries and still get out to all these places as often as we can. And we'll never buy whiskey unless we've been there. And I think that shows them that we're very serious about understanding what they're doing and why they're doing it, that we're going out to, whether it's from Cleveland or Seattle or New York, the ones in this collection are pretty easy. They're also places we've worked with in Arkansas or Northern Nevada or very rural places. And not that many people go out to some of them unless they're local. And I think that it shows that we're really interested in what they're doing when we do that, and that helps get them to trust us.

Yeah, it seems like, you know, being the small guy, like just in craft that, you know, they tend to focus on their immediate area. So it's nice that you guys are, you know, kind of broadening their horizons and, you know, kind of like, hey, look, this is something you can find here. We've got this. But, you know, if you like this, then hey, maybe the next time they're in that state or something, they're going to go check it out. So you're almost, you're almost like a great commercial.

That's sort of the hope is that it's basically a way to just another boost for them, just like being on a podcast or getting reviews or awards or working with Los Lantern, another way to get your name out there. And some of them are, like you said, are very small and local. And some of them are for now, but have broader ambitions and eventually intend to be bigger national brands, maybe not like not the size of something you would get from Kentucky, but still big enough that people will know about them. Even for some of the bigger name crowdplaces we work with, we find that a lot of people still don't know them and not that they necessarily know us either if we're all relatively small, but every extra touch point of someone talking about you can make the difference.

Yeah. Myself being in Frankfurt, one of the things that most people don't know is they think Castle & Key, of course they think Buffalo Trace. They might even know the Glens Creek Distillery, which is a fairly small one that's in the Old Crow Distillery now. There's even a fourth one here and it's called Whiskey Thief. We're big friends with the owners out there. Actually, my bourbon society, they allow us to come out there and distill our own mash bills once a year. We've got 24 barrels, I think the oldest being almost six years, aging ourselves. That's always a lot of fun.

That's super cool.

Now, you said you came from a bourbon writing background. So what kind of got you first into bourbon itself, and then maybe segue that into, well, I'm enjoying bourbon so much, you got into writing.

Yeah. I started out as a journalist. So I originally was writing for Newsweek magazine and their website, but not about whiskey. I was writing about video games, like Nintendo games. computer games, a little bit of Game of Thrones and other pop TV shows. But I started to fall in love with cocktails and holding fancy cocktail parties in Brooklyn or Williamsburg aloft and just really started exploring the world of spirits that way. And then when I had gotten what I wanted to out of writing my video games, I said, well, I love these cocktails. Why don't I start writing about the spirits business? I got a job for a magazine doing that. And from there, fell even more deeply in love with whiskey. Originally from the cocktail lens, then in its own right, Scotch really was the first whiskey that I dove really deeply in. And then came into bourbon a little later, as I think a lot of people did. So probably about 2014, 2015, started writing pretty seriously about bourbon. When I started writing for Whiskey Advocate, I really made my beat these new craft distilleries all over the country because a lot of them were doing things that were distinctly different than what had been done before. And some of them at that time were still in their very early stages, still exploring their processes. But I saw that they were doing everything they needed to do to eventually be making a world class whiskey. And I think we've now reached that point. So it's kind of fun to now be on the other side of having done the writing and then moved on to having our own whiskey brand and be able to highlight these distilleries in this way.

Now your partner, Nora, how, I guess, how did she kind of get involved and how did you guys meet to say, Hey, let's, let's start a whiskey company.

Yeah. Well, we're married, first of all. So my wife and my co-founder, we met when we were in New York. She was working at a wine store. I was working for the whiskey magazine. And we talked for a long time about how, like, there are so many craft distilleries and nobody knows which ones are good. And not only that, but especially back then, there were a lot of places that were saying this whiskey was theirs, but really it came from MGP or something. Nothing wrong with sourcing whiskey from somewhere else. Everything we do is sourced, but we tell you about it. And as long as people do that, then that's great. But there was a problem back then of saying, oh, here's my great grandfather's whiskey recipe. But really, it just came from the big factory distillery in Indiana. And that kind of, it started with us griping about how there wasn't more transparency in the industry and that we couldn't get a hold of the whiskeys we wanted. and that ultimately decided someone needed to do this and then decided that we need to do this. Laura comes from, before the wine and spirits world comes from a startup and business background. So she has some pretty hard hitting quantitative chops and was able to put the business side together. So it's been a good partnership. She also has an amazing palette and together we taste every barrel we buy and we have to agree on every one before we buy it.

This first pour is outstanding. Like I said, a lot of dark fruits. That maple just keeps hitting. And some nice dark chocolate notes.

Absolutely. And it's been really satisfying to see the response to all the single casts that we've done from Tom's Flurry so far. Because it's really a story that I think we've introduced a lot of people to. This is our fourth single cast from them and the first 10-year-old one. And a lot of people just didn't know them, but have really fallen in love with what they're doing. It's one of the smallest distilleries we've worked with. It's very deliberate and slow paced at how they do things. Very old school style distillation, not at all industrial, just basically in their farmhouse distillery and their barn.

Yeah. So this being the fall 2024 single cask, how many previous single cask, I guess, collections have there been?

These days we're doing three different single cast collections a year. They all have a distinct theme to them. So the fall was the 10 year collection. Summer was called the summer of bourbon. It was a collection of bourbon from all across the country showing that great bourbon comes from all across the United States. We did that last year, which also included our first Kentucky bourbon. Talking to you, you're in Kentucky. I fell in love with bourbon through Kentucky bourbon as just about everyone did and always will love Kentucky. But there's also a lot of other great stuff out there that is different. And the best bourbon from outside of Kentucky is bourbon that is not trying to do what you're trying to do down there because Kentucky bourbon will always be the best at making Kentucky bourbon. But if you're in Nevada or Ohio or South Carolina and you're doing something that makes sense for that climate, for that area, not about the limestone water, not about the same kind of things that Kentucky always talks about, you can make something that's really different and unique and exciting and a little bit different kind of flavor profile. I like seeing the bourbon world expand like that.

Yeah, I've got to agree. Being in Buffalo Traceland, everyone thinks that's all I'm about, but I've experienced Texas whiskey. I'm a big Driftless Glen fan out of Wisconsin. I enjoy it because I think they're doing some very original stuff. Sometimes the funny thing is you'll see them do something and then suddenly the big guys are like, let's do that. You know, it's kind of like, so I really think the craft side is like they're pioneers in a lot of cases. I mean, Alan Bishop had formerly experienced a French lick. I think he's like this mad genius. I've had the pleasure to talk to him a few times and I'm looking forward to what he's going to do at his new distillery. But yeah, I think it's awesome. You guys are going out of your way to like, yeah, spread the word about craft. It's, it's really amazing.

And we don't work with the big distilleries because we don't have anything to add there. Like we could easily buy whiskey from MGP if we wanted to, but the people we're talking to who are whiskey lovers, they already know about MGP and they know whether they like it or not. So this will highlight something different.

All right. So I think I'm gonna, I'm ready to dive into port number two. You want to tell us a little bit about it?

Yep, so number two is a 10-year-old rye from Spirit Works Distillery in California. Our labels are all color themes, so red is bourbon, green is rye. This is the highest proof of the ones that we're tasting, 69.6% ABV. California straight rye from Spirit Works Distillery in Sebastopol, California. It is one of the few female-led distilling teams in the United States. It's also a husband and wife team with the wife is the head distiller, head of production. The distillers are mostly women too. You don't see that in the industry very often. They're up in a wine country. This is 70% rye, 10% malted rye, and 20% malted barley and aged for 10 years in New Oak.

And for the record, I did save some for Jim, so when he gets back from vacation, because he's a big rye guy as am I, so I'm very excited about this.

Yeah, I was gonna say there are two ryes in the collection. It'll be very interesting to see whether you both agree on which one you happen to like better or if they're about the same. So, they're up in Sonoma wine country, about an hour north of San Francisco, really right in the heart of wine country. So, it's kind of a fun detour from if you're doing wine visits to stop by Spiritworks and do a whiskey flight at the end of the day.

So, this is a really light, like I'm getting like some floral, like lemon, meringue kind of thing going on?

I always get a lot of citrus from California rye.

We've had some of the Corbin casks or Corbin cash out there. It's really unique stuff too. And Portero.

We've worked with a couple of times in California, Central Valley, and we've actually done a number of distilleries in California. And it's such a big state that they're really striking climactic differences between places. Like the Central Valley is really, really hot. Nora was there a couple of weeks ago in early November, and it was quite hot even then, whereas Sonoma by then is comfortably cool. much more maritime influence. So, California is basically the size of like half of the entire East Coast, if not more. So, you get huge variations just within the state.

Wow. This is nice. This is like that citrus is carried through and there's like this nice spearmint bite going on, man. That's delicious.

Yeah. And I think it's a little different than a Kentucky rye. It's spicy, but it's less about that oak spice. It's more about the grain to me, which is why I think it reads as minty.

It's not overpowering considering that proof. Yeah. Oh, this is delicious. I don't know. Maybe I won't save this for Jim. I'm kidding, Jim.

Oh, I dropped that one. Sorry. Yeah, they're one of the first ride of stars we ever worked with when we first launched, did our first ride for them in 2021. So it's fun to have them back for collection. You started in 2021? 2020, and we did our first race in 2021. And you guys are based out of where? We're in Vermont. So I'm in our Vermont tasting room facility right now. So we do all of our blending and bottling here. We buy the barrels from distilleries. They get shipped to us in Vermont. And we have a tasting room, which has probably the widest variety of whiskey in the whole state, which is pretty fun.

That's cool. Now, do you guys have like any kind of tasting room there itself or are you just pretty much a facility? Okay. You do? Okay.

Yeah. We have a relatively small tasting room. We do whiskey flights. You can taste flights of four whiskies and we have a variety of different themes. Like you can do a bourbon flight, a big and bold flight of things that are mostly high proof or some things that are more entry level if you don't know as much about whiskey. And it's fun because we both get people from Vermont who have never done a formal whiskey tasting before.

Then we get people from wherever in the country who happen to be visiting here and maybe even know us already and come in and they say,

Okay, I want these four whiskeys that some of what you released years ago and are sold out everywhere, but here, just go grab them out of the back and make me a whiskey flight. And that's, it's kind of fun to be able to do that.

Yeah, I bet. Oh, this is delicious.

Yeah. We say that this is a rye lovers rye.

I gotta agree. So when you guys go and pick these single barrels, is it just you and Nora? Or do you have like a team that goes?

Yeah, we have a relatively small team. But for now, it's just the two of us on the tasting panel. And we do a lot of research beforehand before we visited distillery. And I think one other thing that makes us distinct is that we never pick a barrel when we're on site, even though we visit every distillery we work with. So we go there, we talk to them, we maybe even taste some barrels there and take samples back with us. But we don't like to select when you're in the room with them because when you've been to distilleries, you know when you're there and the whiskey's all around you and you kind of like you fall in love with the romance of it. And then taste it back at home and you're like, okay, these samples, this one is actually the best one and it helps us to taste in a neutral environment rather than just falling in love in the room. So, I think that it's part of what we're doing is curating for people who sometimes are a little skeptical of craft whiskey and we want to be really sure that we're selecting and shining a light on things that they'll be really excited about.

Yeah, I've done my share of some, you know, single barrel picks myself. And I think it can, it's an awesome experience. But there's also that factor, like, you start hearing other people talk about the notes they're getting. So like, I don't know, I've got so I usually take a pair of headphones, headphones, and just to kind of drown everybody out. Yeah.

Yeah. So we always bring samples back here and we taste them multiple times and we also taste them in total silence until we're done with the tasting. Then we talk about it and compare notes. And we have to decide whether each of us would say, yes, I would buy this cask before we start talking about it. So we can then compare notes and as objective a matter as we can. And it's

It's less fun that way, but I think it's more rigorous in terms of- About how many samples did you guys get for each of these? Did it just kind of vary? I'm sure this is probably some of the older products for all of these distilleries. There had to have been probably limited barrels, but-

Yeah, it varies. This collection, as you said, was some of the most limited because a lot of places we work with only have a couple of 10 year old barrels. And sometimes we got to try all of them and choose our favorite. But I also want to say that this is not every distillery that we looked at for the 10-year collection. We have four in the collection. We probably tasted seven or eight altogether. And there were some where we just didn't think they were, we didn't want to showcase them just yet in their 10-year form. One thing we've noticed very consistently is that a distillery's oldest whiskey is rarely their best. And that's why for these distilleries, most of these places have been open for closer to 20 years than to 10. So this is not like the very first whiskey they've made. They already had honed their chops a lot before distilling these.

Well, I think this is a good time to take a break and we'll come back and we've got two more expressions to go through. We're going to keep on chatting with Adam Polanski about Lost Liner and whiskey.

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All right, folks, welcome back to the second half of the Bourbon Road podcast with Adam Polanski of Los Lantern Whiskey. I've just been blown away with the first two, so I can only, I'm ready to dive into pour three. So what can you tell us about that, Adam?

Let's do it. So the third whiskey in our 10-year collection is a 10-year-old straight rye from New York Distilling Company in Brooklyn, New York. This is 66.9% ABV, so a little lower than the Spirit Works that we tried. 72% rye, 16% corn, 12% malted barley, and we think one of the oldest New York whiskeys ever released. So we're now jumping all the way from California, completely across the country to Brooklyn and a very different climate, very different style of rye.

Yeah, that's what's great. We're traveling the world with you today too. Yeah. So this has got some darker notes on it to me.

Yeah.

Some more leather.

I always get a lot of dark chocolate from this one. and they are one of the oldest distilleries in New York City and in New York State in general. Originally got started in Williamsburg. One of the co-founders had first started the Brooklyn Brewery many years before and then said, okay, well that went really well. Why don't we start a distillery now too? Same neighborhood and always wanted to focus primarily on rye and on gin. And that's exactly what they've done. They have a some great gins that are perfect for cocktails, very common in the New York City area, and their flagship rye, which nowadays is called a jaywalk rye. And it's really, to us, exemplifies what a cool climate rye can be, where it's, you still have that oak spice, but it's It's not the dominant feature. And it's also a different mash bill than you usually get from Kentucky, where it's pretty common to see like a 51% or a less than 60% rye. And this is more than 70. So it skews a little different in my opinion.

Yeah, I've been lucky enough to have one of their single barrels before and really enjoyed it. Yeah, darker notes. I'm ready to sip this. Cheers.

Cheers.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Gone to a darker ride mode. A lot of chocolate. Darker fruits.

Definitely some oak too.

Yeah, oak is very nice. Everything I've had is had like this really nice, soft, velvety mouth filled too, which, you know, there's great flavors, but if you get that nice viscous, thing going on too. It's just, that's, that's heaven to me in a, in a glass. And this is a, yeah. Three pours, three, just like that.

Yeah. And I think this one is a, if the spirit works rye is a rye lovers rye, this is more, I don't know if I would call it a bourbon lovers rye, but it's, this is a little more traditional in some ways, whereas the spirit works is like very much on the fruity and grassy side. This is more like chocolate leather oak. And people go back and forth on which one they like better. And I am curious between the two of you, if you have different preferences or if you both like the same one.

I was going to say it's like night and day, but I like night and day. So I might have had to just cop a plea and say, I like them both a lot. I'll take it. Yeah.

The last one will really be night and day.

I was going to say, no, we won't spoil it, but that'll be a polarizing poor for us. I'm very excited because, yeah, I don't mind that style at all. Yeah. So can you tell us a little more about like some of the other products you have rather than, you know, like I said, we're featuring the single cast collection this time. What are some other things that you guys have that are available?

So we have three basic product lines. These are all part of our single cask collection, and especially because they're 10 years old, they're all very limited and primarily available online. But we also have two other series called our single distillery series and our blend series. The single distillery series is like a single cask in that it comes from only one distillery, but instead of just one barrel, it's a blend of multiple barrels. tend to often create those collaboratively with the distillery or in close consultation with them to blend a number of barrels in a way that showcases their whiskey, sometimes in a different way than you normally see it. So we've done a bourbon from Frey Ranch in Nevada, which is a state distillery that grows all their own grain. That whiskey is called Sword Spice, and we blended it Because their whiskey normally has a very earthy flavor, we tried to amplify the baking spice notes a little bit to kind of bridge the difference between where it is and the Kentucky bourbon flavor profile as a good entryway for people into bourbon from Nevada, a place that I think is not normally associated.

Not at all, not at all.

And our blend series, on the other hand, is a blend of whiskey from multiple distilleries. We've seen a lot of great blends out there that blend together like MGP and Barstown and Green River or something from Kentucky. And those are great and other people are doing those. And for us, we are playing with sources that nobody else is really using. So our far-flung bourbon, every batch of it is a different blend of distilleries and states that have never been blended before. Our latest far-flung bourbon has whiskey from West Virginia and Mississippi and Wisconsin and Indiana, but it's not MGP, it's Starlight and New York King's County distillery. Our first edition of far-flung rye is actually a regional blend. It's a blend of whiskey from across the Midwest because we think that the Midwest has a cooler climate and makes these beautiful, creamy, toasty ryes that blend together really well. And every blend we do is trying to show something about American whiskey, not just to be a hopefully delicious bottle, but to hopefully push people on how they think about whiskey and explore it in a slightly different way. So the blend series really lets us do that.

So what are their prices and like you say you blend more than one barrels like so what kind of production like how many bottles are you getting on some of these?

It's all very limited. I mean, single casks tend to be 200 bottles or less, as you would expect. Single distillery series and blend series usually ranges from 400 to 1,000 bottles. So it's still very small. We're not doing national distribution or anything like that. Once it's gone, it's gone. Even with far-flung bourbon, we'll always have a batch of it available. But every batch is different, different blend of distilleries. And even for those, it's totally transparent, like it says right on the front label. what distilleries went into it. And that for us is really special that to me, when I used to see blends of bourbon back in the day, I would say like, why don't you just say that it's MGP and whatever else?

Yeah. Those NDAs.

Yeah. Now we found out you can, you often can do it if you, if you ask people and you say, we're showcasing what you're doing. So it's a, we're very proud to always be able to put the distilleries on the label.

Now, you're the tasters. Are you also the blenders?

Nora does most of the blending these days. We both do some blending. I think she's more meticulous and patient with it. The hardest part of blending in some ways is it's getting started from A bunch of different parts from all over the country and you don't know how they're gonna play together is one of the hardest parts. And the other hardest part is when you're at the end of saying, okay, are we done yet? Or do we need to keep tweaking, change this whiskey from being 12% of the blend to 14% or 13 and a half percent? Or when do you say that this whiskey is finished? And she's better at that than I am. So we trust in her palette for that.

So the blend series run, is there a range of prices depending on? Yeah.

Most of the blend series come in at $100 as the single distillery series do. Single casks range from about $80 to $150 in the 10-year collection. All were priced at $150 because they're from small distilleries that have very little 10-year whiskey. And in two cases, it's the first 10-year-old they've ever done.

It costs a lot more for them to make, too. So there's that.

Exactly. And these are whiskeys. They could have sold it six years ago as a four-year-old and then used that money to make another four-year-old. But instead, they said, no, we're going to sit on it and wait until it gets to be 10 years old. And that takes time, and it takes money, too.

Yeah. What's nice about, like I was telling you about Whiskey Thief, you'll pop out there, and they'll have usually five to eight-year-old bourbons to try straight out of the barrel. It's rare to, I've never seen them offer a four-year as a, you know, as a sample or anything like that. All right. Let's dive into port number four.

Yeah. So this is a super fun one, a little different. So we're now leaving the world of bourbon and rye and going into not just American signal malt, but peated American signal malt. with a 9.99-year-old American signal malt from Westland Distillery in Seattle, Washington. It was 54.9% ABV. I'll explain the age statement in a minute. And 100% malted barley, peated with peat from Scotland.

From Scotland, okay.

Yes.

Okay, you're obviously, it being peated, that's gonna... Yes. Some people just zoned out just now. But me, I'm like, OK, let's do this.

And I think the interesting thing is Pete, as a rule, tends to show less as it gets older. It's strongest when the whiskey is really young. So at 10 years old, the Pete is very much still there. This is a smoky whiskey that is not the only flavor. It's not completely dominant by any means. At least not in my opinion.

It's like, I mean, the smoke is there, but I'm also getting like some light fruit notes, like baked apples.

That's exactly what I wrote on the label. I said scorched apple.

Oh, scorched. Okay. It's taken my baked apples to a whole nother level though, I think.

It's a beautiful dark color for a single malt. Westland, like a lot of American single malt distilleries, ages their whiskey primarily in new barrels like they do in Kentucky for bourbon and rye. So it does get more oak flavor than you would get from the Scotch. It's one of the ways that American single malt is often different than Scotch.

So you yourself, if you're going to have a pour, are you going to lean towards rye, bourbon, or a single malt? Or is it just kind of a mood for you?

I usually start with a bourbon, and I end the night with a single malt, often a smoky single malt. Rye for me is a mood. It's probably the style of whiskey I drink a little less often. But when you want it, you really want it. I'm in a rye mood. I need a rye tonight.

All right. Ready to dive in. Cheers. Oh, yeah.

It's definitely got that smoke.

Yes, it's there, but there's some nice fruit things going on, like orchard fruits. A little bit of like a cinnamon on the tail end.

Yeah. And to me, it has like a little bit of a savory note to like the roasted or grilled meat kind of thing. I really like that. And I think I should explain the unusual 9.99 year old age statement. Yeah. We bottled this cask the day before its 10th birthday. So we bottled it at 9.99 years old. We did that very deliberately for two reasons. First is that Westland has never done their own 10-year-old whiskey yet. And unlike some of the other whiskies in this collection, we already had this cask. We bought it when it was about eight years old and kept it in our warehouse. So we didn't buy it explicitly for this collection, unlike the two Rye's. And we didn't want to take away from Westland the chance to do their own 10-year-old as the first of its kind. Tom Spoolery has already done 10-year-old single casks, as I believe New York Stone Company has as well. Westland hasn't. And that's a big important first, is that there have not been very many 10-year-old American single molds. And we also think it's a good talking point, because we bottled it the day before its 10th birthday. It's 9.99 years old. What difference does that make between that and a 10-year-old? besides the perception of it. So I think it's kind of a fun and unusual thing that we get to do as an independent bottler.

It is fun. So where did the name Loss Liner come from?

The idea is that we shine a light on whiskeys that would otherwise not be discovered and that it's hopefully alliterative and somewhat memorable. It's definitely alliterative, hopefully memorable.

Yeah, this is delicious. I mean, if you poured this to me blind, I would think I was, I mean, Scotland. Yeah, for sure. But I've had some had some Westland before and they some really fun single malts. I had one that just reminded me of like a banana split. Like it had the cherry, the caramel, the vanilla, the pineapple even. It was amazing. Yeah.

And the fun thing for us is they don't make this type of whiskey anymore. They still make peated whiskey, but now they do it with Washington Pete. They're the first distillery to start pioneering the use of American Pete that I know of, one of the first to release one. that helps make with their whiskey now truly local and endemic to the Pacific Northwest. When they got started, there was no Washington peat that you could use for malting barley at all. So they started with scotch or with Scottish peat feather. So this is a style that they discontinued and is one of the probably the oldest one of it that may ever be released. And kind of a glimpse at their past while the future of American single malt is changing to an even more localized form.

I'm kind of hoping you have like a eight-year-old with the American peat there of their product and maybe in a couple of years you could put out another 9.99 American peated.

That's a pretty good idea. We don't have one now, but I could probably get one if I wanted to. Yeah, because that's one of the interesting things for us too, is that as an independent bottler, we can showcase something that's a little different than the distillery does on their own. Like Westland tends to do relatively young age statements on purpose. A lot of their whiskeys are four or five years old because they're using really, really high quality grain that is grown especially for them in the Pacific Northwest and they want that grain flavor to be showcased and they want some oak but they don't want that to be the dominant feature and they find that that often shows best at around four or five years old. They play with going a little older too and this is the oldest whiskey that has ever come from them. So that's kind of the fun thing about being in IB is we get to push the boundaries in different ways, explore something of a different side of distillery than they normally do on their own.

All right. I'm going to rinse my palate because I still have some more of the others too. But is there anything you can tell our listeners about what might be coming down the pipeline in 2025 from you guys?

Yeah, we've got some big plans for next year. We'll have three collections, spring, summer, and then our fall collection next year, which will be our five-year anniversary. So we'll have to do something fun for that.

It's nice you take a winter break.

We figure that we also do a lot of private casks for retailers and clubs around the country. So we've done some with the Reddit Club and the Sealbox and Rig and Bourbon and that lets us do some fun things too. We're going to do some things next year outside of our normal collections that will also really emphasize the theme of helping people discover whiskeys that they haven't had before from places that they've maybe never heard of or certainly never had a chance to get their hands on. So keep an eye out for that. If anyone's interested in learning more, follow us on Instagram at Los Lantern Whiskey. Sign up for our newsletter. That's the way to keep an eye on what we're doing.

Yeah, I just signed up for that myself. So thank you.

And of course, if you're in Vermont or traveling up here, come visit us in the Tasting Room and taste a very wide range of whiskeys and bring friends so you can exchange pours because we can only do four pours per person per state rules.

Okay. So see, not only is Vermont known for their hazy IPAs, now there's a great place to go have some whiskey.

We often get people who are doing the beer tour and kind of need a break from the 18th hazy IPA. Let's go get some bourbon for a while.

Change of pace from all that juice, right? The hot juice.

Now, are there any craft distilleries in Vermont? There are. We haven't done a single cask from one yet. It's a climate. It's a very cold climate here, so I think a lot of the whiskey needs a longer time before it's ready. We do have some Vermont barrels in our warehouse and we'll probably have some more soon. Probably the best known whiskey companies here are Caledonia Spirits, which has its own whiskey brand, but best known for Bar Hill Gin, which is a gin made with honey and really

focused on local and regenerative agriculture.

Not as much known for being a producer, but Whistlepig is also here.

Okay, that's right.

Mostly Canadian whiskey, but they also are making Vermont whiskey as well. And there are a couple of other smaller distilleries. We used to work with a place in southern Vermont called Village Garage, which did our bottling for us before we had our own facility. And they're making really nice whiskey. There's a lot of great creativity here, and including some people distilling those hazy IPAs. And those turn out really nicely.

Well, you've done an outstanding job on picking these single barrels. It's honestly hard to pick a favorite for me. I mean, these are all, they, I mean, they're all very different, but they're all excellent. And yeah, hats off to you and Nora. Thank you.

I also find it hard to pick a favorite. It really depends if I'm in a bourbon rye or a single malt mood. And whichever mood I'm in, that one's my favorite.

Yeah, it's kind of been fun to, like, I rinsed my palate after the peated, of course, as best as I could. So it's been fun to kind of go back. And now, you know, my palate's getting some different notes from all. I'm back at the SpiritWorks rye, and there's some different things. It's still got that, like, lemony, minty vibe. But it's like, it's a little bit different as well, too.

I guess I can tease a little bit more about our spring collection, which will have, I don't want to say too much. But if this collection was pretty classic, it's suburban, it's too rise, it's a peated single malt, the spring collection will be a little bit more unusual flavors and highlighting both unusual flavors and regional styles that are starting to emerge across the country in a different way. And I can't say too much or I'll get in trouble. So I'll leave it at that for now. I understand. I understand.

So you want to let the folks know how they could reach out to you guys or follow you and all that kind of stuff one more time?

Yeah. So if you want to snag any of our whiskeys, the best place to do it is through our website, losscentrumwhiskey.com. You can sign up for our newsletter there. You can put your estate in a dropdown and find an online retailer that can ship to you. Also available in California, New York, Massachusetts, and of course Vermont. Follow us on losscentrumwhiskey on Instagram or Facebook, or feel free to reach out to us by email too, and you'll probably hear back directly from me if you have any questions.

Awesome. Adam, again, thank you for sharing these amazing whiskeys with me and then I'll eventually share them with Jim or maybe I won't. We'll see. Yeah, cheers and best of luck for the future for you guys.

Yeah, thank you so much for having us on.

My hat's off to you because like you said, you know, you guys are celebrating some of the great craft distilleries out there and I think that's amazing because I think there's some really, really good stuff out there that, you know, it's hard to find. You got to get off the beaten path a little bit, but it's there and you should go out and check it out.

Exactly. And if you're not sure where to go, we'll help you find it.

Well, folks, you can find the Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, threads. And even you can find us in some liquor stores sometimes. You never know. We do a show every single week on Wednesdays. Sometimes we'll have a guest like our good friend here, Adam. And other times we'll just take through some samples or we'll speak to a musician or who you just never know what we're going to do. But the main thing is we have fun every week when we put out a show. The best way to not miss out on one is to scroll up to the top of that app you're on, hit that subscribe button. That way every single week, your podcast app will let you know that Jim and Todd have dropped another episode of the Bourbon Road and we will get you down your drive to work. cutting grass, sweeping the house, whatever it is you might be doing. If you're ever going to be in the area in Kentucky, we ask that you reach out through our Bourbon Roadies Facebook page and let us know. We'd love to meet for a pour. Who knows, we might even drag you in on an episode. Until then, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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