438. Blind Barrels

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.

Hey roadies, it's Diane Strong with Bourbon on the Banks Festival. We've got another amazing event coming your way this year. Be sure to join us at the half and I'll tell you a little bit more about the event taking place October 4th, 2025.

Todd and I are proud to have Smokies Lifestyle Cigars as the sponsor of this episode and as the official cigar of the Bourbon Road podcast. Our hosts and listeners alike enjoy the ultimate experience of premium cigars. Smoky's Lifestyle Cigars are where flavor and craftsmanship meet. Find out more during the halftime break and at smokyslifestylecigar.com. The Surgeon General warns that cigar smoking can cause lung cancer and heart disease and is not a safe alternative to cigarettes. The Hill House Bed and Breakfast, located in Loretto, Kentucky, is ready to be your bourbon country home away from home. Located less than 3 miles from Maker's Mark, the Hill House is convenient to Bardstown and the rest of the Bourbon Trail. The next time you visit Bourbon Country, choose comfort and convenience. Choose the Hill House Bed and Breakfast. Listen in at the break for more details or visit their website at thehillhousekontucky.com All right, roadies. Welcome back once again. We are super excited today to have you back to the Bourbon Road so we can have an exciting show. We have a guest on today. We've got four great whiskeys. Todd, why don't you tell everybody who's with us?

So today with us today is Bobby DeMars. He's from Blind Barrels. So, you know, sometimes We get some PR folks that just reach out to us and we see all kinds of things. We got something, I don't know if you noticed, Jim, we got something from some lawyers. I'm like, well, that doesn't really fit our criteria as far as like, is it like a bourbon lawyer or something like that? But something like this just sounded really unique. So I was like, sure, we'd love to do this. So, hey, Bobby, welcome to the show.

Hey, how's it going? Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I get some lawyer emails every now and again. I'm never happy about those. I'm like, oh God, who did we? We got one... Man, Men's Journal featured us as like, I don't know, the whiskey gift. They put us at the top of their recommended like Christmas gift list. So we put on our site, you know, as seen in and you list the brands and we've been in Forbes and we've been in whatever, Bourbon Banter and whatever. whiskey wash and I put men's journal and somebody from their legal contacted me and they're like, you didn't pay to have a logo on the site. I'm like, you guys, wait a minute, like you guys just independently reviewed us and then now we're getting, and so it's funny because their font is, I can say mentioned in men's journal, I just can't use their logo. And it's funny because they don't even have a logo. Their logo is just literally the word men's journal and it's in a very specific font.

So I'm like,

All right, I'll just upload a different font, say Men's Journal, and that's... But I hate that I had to like talk to my own attorney to like, you know, like, what's the fair use? I don't know.

You can change the lingo a little bit, like journal of males or something like that. Yeah, exactly.

But yeah, wink, wink. All right. Well, I tell you what I'd like to do. I'd love to dive straight into this first pore, but I think it would be a disservice to what we're doing today to not sort of explain the basics before we do that.

Yeah, no, I think you're right. Obviously, people don't know what you're doing. You guys all have a kid in front of you. You can see you got a beautiful soft touch gold leaf magnet with the ribbon pole. We wanted this to be a really high-end premium experience. We're not the only alcohol subscription out there, but we are the only double blind. Meaning when we send you samples, you don't know what they are. You didn't pick the samples. So single blind is if you know what the four samples are, you still know what order they're in. And I think that's all right, but I don't think it's that fun. But to completely not know anything, you don't know where this is from. The only thing that we know is this is all American craft whiskey. So these are small American distillers. There's 3,000 brands that you haven't heard of that aren't in your Total Wine, that aren't in your Liquor Barn. And not everybody in craft is doing a great job some of them have found the footing someone never will but man there's some better than the big guys out there that are better than even the allocated. Um, you know, we've had a 10 year, uh, from the lost barrels of whiskey outlaw that I swear is better than a William LaRue Weller in any blind any day that we've had to line up. We sold that out of existence. That doesn't exist anymore. So some people think that we're just pouring things that, um, either didn't sell. So there's an excess of them. We've had everything. So everything that's in our kit is, is blind tasted, uh, by my whiskey wizards or the spirits guides who like to call them. Um, and we have a team of people that range from. newbies to experts and everybody has a say. And we're not picking brands, we're picking whiskey. And I will say every now and again, there's a brand that we do chase and it's more about trying to sync up with them and what skew it's going to be because we already know we love everything that they make. But most of the time, we get tons of bottles sent to us. I create a blind for my guys and then we try to make sure that the lineup is really diverse. You could very easily just put a bunch of brown sugar, vanilla, caramel, bourbons on a row. I don't think that's interesting. We want it to be kind of a roller coaster. And then what you also have in front of you is a tasting table. The tasting table, we reinvented the wheel, so it's now a table. And it's meant to kind of jar what are the aromas you're getting, what are the tasting notes, what are the finishing notes you're getting. And then there's a QR code. I don't think on the kit that you have, but we started now we have the QR code on the bottles now. But the QR code then takes you to a review page that tells you everything about what's in the kit. So obviously the distillery, the type of whiskey, the age, the proof, the aroma, the tasting, the finishing notes, and then the backstory of the distillery. And then you have the ability to buy a full bottle for the same price, but oftentimes less than if you were at the distillery yourself. And some of these are brands that aren't well distributed. Some of them only exist in their native state. In fact, you know, One of the ones in the lineup that you guys have was only in two states before they were in our lineup. Two of them were only in their native state. One is in about 10 states. It has become really popular and growing pretty quickly. So it's really about removing the bias, removing the pricing. What do we do when we decide on a bottle? If either somebody recommends it, right? And we all have that buddy whose palette is totally different than yours and what they like is and what you like and vice versa. You're making a choice on how cool the bottle looks, or you're making a choice on price. Or maybe you're making that comparison, but you should really be doing, what are your taste buds tell you? What do you like? What fits with your palette and your profile? And then moving forward, we're really close. We think it's going to be ready for the March line if that's about to come out. You're going to be able to guess. the age, the proof, and the type of whiskey, we're gamifying it. And you're going to get a score that tells you how accurate your palate is. So, we think that gamification of it's going to be really fun. It's going to be shareable. You know, you got a buddy that you're doing it with. You know, losers got to buy a bottle. So, if you go and you get a one-off kid, you'll get a pass lineup. Like right now, you guys are doing a pass lineup from September 2023. I just thought it was just a really diverse. Each one of these have killer stories behind these brands. But if you become a member, what happens is you'll get a kid immediately. Like if you sign up right now, you will wait and give you the March lineup. And then you get your kids mid-March, mid-June, mid-September, mid-December, and that release goes out to everybody at the same time. It was really important that we stayed true to the whiskey community. And, you know, at the end of the day, great whiskey is meant to be shared, right? Like what we're doing right now, where you guys are sharing some awesome pours with each other. You can talk about it. And it's meant to spark conversation. You know, it's meant to be mindful. But at the end of the day, it's meant to bring people together over some awesome pours.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. We really appreciate it. You had sent a March, 20, 23 kit to both Todd and I, and I have to say these are extremely high quality. Well done. Uh, each kid has four 50 milliliter bottles with the blind barrels label on it. And, uh, the boxes, like you said, kind of a magnetic closing box, very, uh, very high quality throwing away the box. Yeah, I think so. I love, I love the tasting table. I think it kind of breaks things down in a very easy to read way. And you've added a few categories, which is kind of neat. I think it, it doesn't just have the standard tasting note categories, but this be fun.

I'm really bad with tasty notes. I always will like, I'm the worst. I always have like one note that I offer with each one of them. Like I get one thing in there. Like I'm getting, uh, I'm getting that barreled root beer candy. Like I'll get one really good one in there. But Christopher Sebastian, also known as Sea Bass, he's really my chief tasting officer. He writes all of our reveal pages, including when we did the partnership with Fred Minnick. You know, so he's just a master at that whole, everything about it and really delving deep. We get to meet all the distillers and the owners and make sure that we're telling their story properly. And then Christian Riddout, who's my other guy, who's really co-founder, who is heavily involved in curating the lineup. So these are curated lineups.

So nothing on our kit indicates what we're drinking, but each bottle does have a QR code on it. And the tasting table as well has a QR code on it. So if you want a spoiler, you can flash that QR code and figure it out.

If you really want to spoil it and you want to get your reading glasses out, you can always look at the fine print on the back of the bottle. Because you got to have some legal stuff on the bottle in terms of like the state of distillation, which isn't necessarily always the distillery if somebody's like sourcing and blending. But the ABV has to be on there, pregnant women can't drink it. I've seen somebody sent me a link to a company that does blind things and I could tell I'm like, okay, they're not doing this legally. They're just literally throwing out. They're in a basement with a funnel, right? And they're just putting A, B, and C out there. And, you know, it took us a long time for us to make sure that we put all the key partnerships in place to make sure we were doing everything properly.

Well, I'm glad you're doing it right. You're doing it at a very high level, very high quality, and I'm excited to try the first whiskey. So I would say, what do we have in our first class? But you're just going to tell me bottle A. Yeah.

So this is sample A. You guys go ahead and try it. You know, if you want to give me any aromas that you're giving me, I'm going to write everything down. But the main thing, I'm going to gamify it for you. So tell me the age, the proof, and the type of whiskey. And look, don't, you know, some people it's funny, like I will get. I'll be like, this is a single malt and it's a bourbon. Single malts and bourbons are so different. And even my guys, we all do it. We're wrong about stuff all the time. We do a weekly radio show called Four Whiskeys where we do blinds every Thursday. And, you know, sometimes, man, somebody will literally guess the brand and like, we'll just, it's unbelievable how accurate. And then the next day we're just completely like, did I have this jalapeno earlier that messed me up?

I don't, I don't have high expectations for myself here. It's going to be like a private little contest between Jim and I. So no money involved.

Are we, are we drinking? bourbons? Are we drinking rye, bourbons, single malts? I mean, can it be anything? I mean, what's the ground rule? Yeah.

I mean, technically in the gamification that we're doing, there is bourbon rye, single malt, wheat, which obviously there's not a lot about there. And then other, which technically other could be a blend of straight whiskeys, right? And there's no dominant mash bill going on. It could also be that it's flavored. We've only done one flavored one ever. And it was Vermont number 14 out of Vermont Distilling Company. And we battled with whether we were going to put a flavored whiskey in the lineup. But damn, this thing was so good in a blind. And most flavored whiskeys, especially so they're using Vermont maple. And most, you know, maple flavoring, they're doing a heavy maple infusion. Vermont Distilling Company was doing like a 5% maple infusion. And it was just a subtle and I thought we were going to get blowback from like some of the whiskey snobs out there like, you put a flavored one in the lineup and We were 100% right. People love that bottle. I mean, we sold a thousand of those bottles. Like, Vermont Distilling Company was really happy with us because, you know, but just putting that one in there. So, other is basically, if it's not a dominant, you know, corn rye, you know, barley or wheat, then technically it's another. Yeah, sometimes people can guess, is there a finish on it or something like that. But we haven't kind of gotten the game that deep.

All right. Let's check it out.

This is a, this is a, I've been nosing a bit. It's really bright. Yep. It's brighter fruits, butterscotch. Yeah.

It's got a little bit of that, uh, spice gumdrops. Yep.

Spiced gumdrops. I love that.

Do you guys feature single barrels or shelfers or?

So we've done a lot of special releases. And so like our first barrel pick we did was with Mammoth out of Traverse City. I don't know if you've heard of them. They sourced really, they're sourcing Alberta rye. That's phenomenal. So it was a 15 year rye, but it was matured in a Weller barrel. And if I had a thousand of those bottles, I could sell them tomorrow. We sold that bottle for $100 in the secondary, I think eventually started going for $500 because it kind of created its own legend out of it. We've done a barrel pick with Bray Ranch, done a barrel pick with Southern Star. We've done a barrel pick with the Stock Exchange. And we now have too many members where we can't really do a barrel pick because everything would go Now, we actually can't even, if we just put it all into the sample, we have too many members in terms of the volume that we're doing. So, we started a new release series that we call The Smallest Batch. So, we trademarked the name The Smallest Batch. I can't believe we got it. The smallest a small batch could be, which is two barrels. And so, it was still awesome. We went out there and we went to their rack house and we went through 20 barrels. We picked five that were the most interesting. And then it wasn't just picking our two favorites. We actually picked the two that blended the best together. And sure enough, there was one sample that had a killer nose and front end and this other one that had this finish that was just off the charts bonkers. And we theorized if we put that together, that you would get the best of all the traits. And I was talking about guys, I'm like, you could get like an Olympic level athlete and then you could get like a Rhodes scholar and they could have kids and you could end up with like a really dumb non-athlete. But somehow when you put those two together, so the first in our smallest batch series was from still Austin. So yeah, we're still doing some special releases. A lot of times, like for instance, in this lineup, one of these Whiskeys was only released in the state that it was in. And in the state that it was released in, it didn't come out for another five months. And our members got it for 25% less than anyone else got it, which was pretty awesome.

All right. So definitely very floral, but a little, little on the bright side, it does have a, uh, it does have a, yeah. Yeah. A little bit of like an apple, but also like a, it's got a serial note to it, but it's leaning a little bit. I hate to say this because I'm probably wrong, but leans a little, it's not a ride, but it's got a little bit of a ride note on the nose, like a ride muffin. Mm-hmm. Okay. See, maybe a rye cracker, like one of those little wafers that you spread cheese on, a little rye cracker. It was giving me weeded vibes. It could be, but you know, I get fooled all the time.

Well, I will just say up to this point, both of you are hitting some really strong on the nose notes with aromas that you're getting and even kind of backstories of Nashville.

Okay. Well, it's time to taste Todd, what do you say?

Oh, I was already there. He's already finished this bottle. No, no. And I saved a little for afters too. Yeah, sometimes it's fun to go back. I'm thinking like the story wise, but I mean, you know, as you said, there's 3,000, I don't know all the ones you work with.

So, but yeah, there's, I would be shocked if you've heard out of, where were you both based out of? We're in Kentucky. Yeah, I'd be shocked if you guys heard of this brand. I hadn't heard of them before we got put in contact with them at all, and my guys hadn't either.

And where are you based out of? We're in Southern California.

We're just north of LA in Ventura County. Technically, we're 10 feet inside of LA County, but liquor licenses are cheaper in LA County.

Before we dig in more into Blind Barrels, tell us a little bit about your bourbon journey. What got you started in bourbon and obviously what was the brainchild behind Blind Barrels?

Yeah. I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. I've run an education company, an independent filmmaker, so I've made documentaries. The last film I made was a documentary that took on the NCAA. I played I was a defensive end for USC, you know, the peak early era. And I was the first player in the film school there. So, I made a documentary that really hit on the rights of college athletes related to money, academic integrity, and then putting their long-term mental health at risk and their body at risk and things like that. And we were able to use that film to actually change the law. So, I'm on the oversight committee for the nonprofit that created all the NIL laws and five minutes of my film played at the State Senate hearings and played for the Supreme Court. So I was really proud of that. And then I was more of a drinker than a taster. In reality, you know, in my 20s, I was getting Jack and Cokes at the bar, not realizing, you know, just how much of a hangover I'm, you know, putting all that sugar into your body. You know, if somebody poured me some tequila, I was probably taking a shot, you know, I wasn't sipping it. And as I got more into my 30s, I started really kind of appreciating some of the nuances that could be in all sorts of expressions of spirits. But it was during COVID, Christian Riddout, who worked at the same place that my wife did, was, while we were all quarantined, decided to make blind kits to just bring us all together and do Zoom while we were, you know, isolated. And he was very generous because he would put like an old Fitz Dusty in there. that, you know, like he got for $80, but it's probably worth more like six, 700 at the time. And he would only charge like per pour, the exact math of whatever it was he paid. So we were paying 30 bucks and getting eight pours of just crazy, badass, awesome stuff. And we went through it and we talked about it and it was just fun. It started with, you know, like six, seven people. And then all of a sudden it really grew into like, know, 70, 100 people. And he started making more of these kits. And it was just, you know, the blinds that you make with your friends. But after the second tasting, I called them up. And, you know, I was a little inebriated. You know, I felt like God was pulling on my cheeks a little bit. And I was like, this feels like a business. And he's like, Yeah, okay. And I'm like, look, I've done blinds with wine before. I'd never done whiskey. I never really realized or noticed, I should say, just how nuanced and interesting whiskey could be. And so diverse and just all the fun aspects of the discovery part of it and the communal part of it. And I said, I'm going to figure it out. So I called up an ABC attorney. I did a free hour long consultation to see if I could figure out how to do it. And that call lasted seven minutes. He told me there's eight federal laws we're trying to break. So I said, okay. So then I called 16 more. ABC attorneys and did three hour long consultations with them until I figured out a way to do it. Then I raised the money. It didn't take that long because we didn't really raise that much money because it was such a risky endeavor. Then we came up with a better way to do it. Then we kept tweaking it. We kept discovering better ways to legally put other people's whiskey into bottles. We discovered there was a lot of key partnerships that take place and there's not a lot of these partners that are actually available. especially based on where we're located and then we took a whole year to build the page, make the custom packaging. I mean, those are custom bottles. We have that glass made. Those are custom caps. We did all these things. I told... The investors are basically like my neighbor and some family members and some friends. And I put in the most amount of money. And I said, look, let's just be patient. And let's not hurry up and screw this up. Let's be really patient. And let's grow this thing. So when we started, we really launched in the first quarter of 2022. three years ago. And we had a couple hundred members and then we built a grassroots thing and grew a little bit every year. And then really started figuring out marketing and optimizing the site and really just getting our lineups to get just... Every lineup has just gotten better and better and better and better. We don't say everyone's going to love every sample in the lineup. I'd say our past lineup and the one coming up, I'd be shocked if someone didn't fall in love with All of them because they're all that far off the charts, some of these brands that we've been chasing for a long time. And now we've got almost 4,000 members in 44 states and we've grown pretty quickly in these three years. That's amazing. It's been exciting. And we get to showcase these small American businesses, which is phenomenal. We don't do what other companies do, which is say, hey, we're marketing your product, so you have to give us the whiskey for free, or you have to pay us a marketing fee. No one can buy their way into lineup. Like I said, these are all curated samples. We get to have these relationships with these amazing distillers and owners and they all have phenomenal stories and there's nothing better than when you get great people and you get great whiskey together. And I'd say everything in this kit is a good representation of those two things aligning. So you guys want to take some guesses on what A is? So do you think it's in terms of what type of whiskey it is, the proof and the age?

I'm sticking with my weed and bourbon proof. I'm thinking like in the 110 range and then age, I'm thinking like four and it's got like this journeyman corsets, whips and whiskeys vibe to me.

That's funny. We're talking to them next week. They were talking to that owner next week. Yeah, they're a cool brand.

I'm going to, I'm going to go with bourbon as well, but I'm going to say there's just a little bit of Ryan, this match bill. But again, I'm probably, probably messing up here. Um, 105 roof, um, kind of reminds me a little bit of like, uh, you guys ever had dry fly?

Oh yeah. That's, that's, that's really funny that you, yeah. Cause they're really good at the wheat, right? Like they're really known for that. Yeah. They're out of Seattle or just outside of it. They're in.

Yeah.

In Washington. It's funny that you say that.

See, this is a little harder. I've done a lot of obviously blinds and you know, sometimes they'll have some craft stuff in it, but you know, there's certain profiles that you can kind of guess when you're doing like the big guy. So like. Yeah. And craft the whole different ball game. And I love it. It's fun.

Yeah, it is. We've messaged back and forth with Don from Dry Fly. We haven't really connected fully with them, but one that was in a lineup that did 100% whiskey was Drift, and he apprenticed under Don at Dry Fly. Did you want to guess the age, Jim? I want to say three to four. Okay. You guys are both... rocking it right off the bat. Okay. So, this is Chambers Bay. I'll show you guys a picture of the bottle. Chambers Bay. I've never heard of that one. And this is in Puget Sound, Washington. So, yeah. Oh, wow. This is right around the corner from Dry Fly. This is their blue label straight bourbon whiskey. So, you guys are both right. It's a bourbon. The mash bill is 70% sweet yellow corn, 20% soft white wheat. and 10% barley. What is the rule for obviously the wheats there? Because there's the high rye and the low rye bourbons, right? Is there a threshold that the wheat has to be in order for it to be a weeded bourbon? I was debating this with somebody the other day. I don't know.

I feel like you don't see it go way up there sometimes unless it's obviously a wheat whiskey, but I don't know. We call it a medium wheat bourbon, medium wheat and bourbon.

Yeah. I would say it's a weeded. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. But yes, you've got the weed on that, which usually isn't always in the mash bill. Jim, you hit the bull on the head with the notes. It's green apple. So, we have green apple, cinnamon, butterscotch, fresh grain, saltwatered taffy on the aroma. You said that rye cracker. So, there's a honey wheat bread, sea salted caramel. yellow birthday cake, green apple pie, brown sugar, and some of those fruit nuts that you were getting, Todd, on the finish, we have candied orange peel. Okay. You know, hints of toasted oak lingers. And what's really cool is they have a rick house that's on a barge. Okay. So, if you know, what is it? Seagrass, you know, where they age it by the sea or whatever that the salt somehow influences. I don't know how much I are taken to that, the salty influence of the environment. But they're on a barge, so there's movement. And so there's that sloshing around. I'm kind of curious to see kind of what that influence is. It's 95 proof, so you guys are both a little high. A little high. Pretty normal. Yeah, the first one always comes in a little hot, right? Just the first whiskey. But you guys weren't that far off. And the age statement was four years. So you guys are both right on the money with that. So you guys are crushing on the age statement. And yeah, I'd say from a bourbon, it's a little crafty in the sense that it's a little bit young, so it's a little bit grain forward. And some people think that everything in craft is going to be young and grain forward. And that's not true. I mean, we've had crazy age statements in our lineups. But if we think it has character and we think it's interesting, and especially if there's a story to back it, we think it's worth putting in the lineup.

All right, so one more time, one more time for our listeners. What's the name of the distillery? What's the... Yeah, this is Chambers Bay.

This is their straight bourbon whiskey. It's 95 proof. It's four years and it's 70, 20, 10 corn, wheat, barley. in the mash bill at a Puget Sound. And yeah, they age their rack house on, it's on a barge. It's on a floating barge. So I always wonder if the ones at the ends are getting like the most character of the wood because they're moving around more. And if the middle is, I don't know theories about it, but we think that there's probably some form of natural maturation that's taking place because of that movement.

All right. Well, shall we move on to the next one?

But yeah, in the meantime, Jim, go ahead and pour sample B. I've got them all four poured. I'm ready to go. Oh, you're ready to go. You're already rocking. Yeah, sometimes, you know, one of the things that we get in the debates of, so we'll get all these bottles sent, we'll figure out what we like. And then the debate that really kicks in is what order do we put everything in? And we were usually on the same page completely, but every now and again, and it's usually we really know what the first one and last one is. Because if you get a single mall, you kind of need to put it first or last, right? Because it can really just mess up the flow of everything. And then and then sometimes we just ramp up and proof and it's obvious. And then sometimes it's that usually those middle two that we're debating, because it's not really a competition in the sense of like, Oh, which one's the winner? We know what the winner is because we know how many people order each the bottles of each, right? So that's kind of how we can tally a winner. But we like, you know, hey, some people come in and they buy three bottles of all four samples, one to drink, one to share and one to save for later.

All right. So this is our second glass. And, you know, color wise, these are like you said, Todd, at the beginning, these are all pretty similar. So they're not that dissimilar in color. But I'm excited to try the second one. The first one was a big surprise and very nice.

Do you, Bobby, do you know about what that retails for if folks can see it up there in the world?

Yeah, our site, we retail it for, I think, I think at the distillery, it's a little more expensive, but we sell it for $59.99.

Oh, yeah, that's fair.

Yeah, so all the bottles in our lineup so far, they retail for anywhere from 50 to... We've got one coming up that's actually 150. And I will say when we have a pricier bottle in the lineup, like, you know, we had a 26-year that was 151 proof that normally was a $250 bottle, we sold it for 130. You know, the lost barrels of that whiskey outlaw, that was a $200 bottle that we sold for 130. So if we do have a pricier one, but most of them are in that 50 to 80 range. And they're normally, you know, if you weren't at the distillery or if you got them somewhere online, they're usually, you know, 70 to 200, depending on what it is, but most of these bottles, I always challenge anybody. I'm like, first of all, go see if you could buy this bottle, just make the attempt, right? And if you can buy the bottle for whatever reason, I bet you can't get it for the price that our members can get.

All right. What do you get on this note, Jim? I'm loving it. I'm loving it. Yeah, same. I'm trying to, I'm trying to discern a good note on it, but it's, it's very interesting.

I've got like a honey pear.

Oh, man, you are so good at this time.

Well, I mean, it's all subjective. I mean, that's the. It's all subjective, so.

Well, you know, I was talking to a guy, actually the guy that used to be the head, you know, whiskey guy over at Mammoth, this guy Phil A.T. and we were at Speakeasy in Louisville. And he said, you know, the way your brain interprets a chemical, someone might say cherry and another person says almond. And the reality is they're both right because it's the way that your brain interprets that chemical. And sometimes these senses, these things, these are sensory, especially the olfactory are tied to memories, right? And I'm the worst where I'm like, this reminds me of when I got the second base in eighth grade with Jenny Rogers. It's like, did you guys get, where'd you go on your date? I'm like, well, we went and got ice cream and he's like, waffle cone? I'm like, it's waffle cone, it's totally waffle cone. A lot of times I'm pulling out like a memory from the past, like Ratatouille.

Getting like a rum caramel on the nose, a little bit of a...

There's like some nice brown sugar. Yep. There's also like a little bit of like fresh cut hay type thing going on too. Okay, I'm ready to sip it. Cheers.

Nice texture.

Yeah.

Yeah. This one has a really solid mouth feel for sure.

It definitely does. And it, it goes like racing to the back of the pallet.

I'm thinking like 90 proof probably.

Okay. It's got a little bit of a, I don't know how to say a sizzle factor, a little bit of a pop rock kind of going on in the back of the tongue. It's nice. It's, um, unique, very unique. I don't think I've had anything with this particular profile.

Pairs kind of carried over like a little bit of burnt sugar. Hmm.

Yeah, this is a brand that people that are in the vicinity of this, man, they travel to this distillery and there's live music and just a killer property. We were able to visit them in person, which is really awesome. We do a road trip every year. So like when we picked up whiskey three years ago, all of the whiskey was in, it was in Arlington, Washington, and then in Portland, and then Mendocino, and then in Paso Robles. And so we just went up there and picked up all the whiskey rather than freighted it. And then the next year we did, we started in Iowa and then went to Illinois, Indiana. or we started in Illinois and went to Indiana, or Illinois went to Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee. That was a hell of a road trip. They saddled us with a Tesla, which, you know, I was just like, those Tom Brady ads were like, just hit the mystery box and you'll get a mystery car. And Hertz gave us a cherry candy red Tesla. And I was like, huh. And I was kind of like, oh, cool, a Tesla. And then I'm like, oh, this is the dumbest car to have on a road trip ever. You know, like we got pulled over in Wood, like it was like Woodville, Kentucky. Like we literally got passed by the Amish while we got pulled over. We got a ticket for going like 35 and a 30. And I'm like, we're getting a Tesla ticket right now. And we had just come from like a thing and we always have a designated driver between the three of us. And, and yeah, he breathalyzed us and you know, we were good to go, but it was like, all right, we're getting $150 Tesla ticket right now.

Well, I've not experienced this profile, but it feels like, uh, it's going to be single mall lives.

Yeah. It's got like the orchard fruits going on now. I mean, again, I could be way off base, but.

This one evolves for sure. It's really changing. It evolves on the palate. It evolves. We call this kind of the everlasting gobstopper where it just keeps changing. And then you drink it 10 minutes later and it's a totally different pour. It's really good.

I like this one a lot.

These guys are seed engineers.

Okay, so we're talking Heartland here. We're talking Midwest.

Well, you know, can you name, how many distilleries can you name that grow their own grain?

I mean, there's quite a few actually.

I don't know that many of them. Maybe you know more than I do. I mean, I know Fray Rich.

Yeah, as we interview people, it's funny. Now a lot of just put out like, you know, 10, 15, 20 acre plots, you know, they don't put out full. You know, but they want to grow some of their grain. They don't grow at all, but there's a lot of people growing.

Yeah, a lot of them source locally, you know, and they're getting the limestone river from the thing, they're on the street and they're, yeah, like there's a lot of the, they're trying to get the terroir, right, and the alluvage and all the other cool things that we say about the territory. But I can only think of two brands that grow all over their own grain.

You see a lot do corn, the corn a lot, but all their grains, that's pretty impressive. Yeah.

Yeah. Frey ranch is one of them. Right. So, Frey ranch, you know, farm passed down for five generations, you know, Colby and Ashley Frey. And it's cool because when you grow your own grain, you get to go from the beginning to the end. And really, because there's so many things that affect the flavor, right? It's not just the type of barrel and the mash bill. So that's why these guys... A lot of places say from farm to bottle, right? They're from seed to bottle, these guys. They're really about making sure that the seed and the way they engineer the seed from the genome of it, from the get-go is a part of the process. So they're the only brand I know that really puts a focus on that. And every time they have a release, they have a bloody butcher release that I just, when it comes out, I have, I find a way to get it all cocktails. It's off the charts.

So I'm going to lean Northern Iowa, Northern Illinois, Northern Indiana, somewhere in the upper Midwest, maybe Ohio, maybe not. I don't know. Um, I'm kind of leaning in your direction, Todd. I'm thinking maybe this has got a high mall content. Could be a single ball, but I don't know.

I don't think it is now. I don't know. It changed on me. Like he said, it's kind of opened up a little bit.

I'm just not getting enough stone fruit to be a hundred percent sure.

Right. But I think it's 90, 95 proof somewhere in there. Um,

Okay. So you're saying 90, 95 proof?

Yeah. A bourbon. And since you started talking about the corns, it made me think of like, I think it's Pickneys out of Iowa or Missouri, maybe. I know they do a lot of airline. Oh, wow. You're picking the actual distillery.

Ah, let's see.

Which one out of Missouri? I think it's Pickneys or Pinkneys. Again, this is, there's only thousands of these. So it's a little bit like a needle in a haystack almost.

All right. So you're saying 90 to 95 proof, you're saying bourbon. You want to guess the age?

I think it's in that, again, about that three to four. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. I'll go American whiskey four years, a hundred proof. Are we picking distilleries? You picked a distillery.

I'm just being super. He's calling a shot. I'm being super nerdy.

I don't even know if they make anything like this. How about. I was going to go like. Iowa, but I think I might, I might go.

We, we, you know, I will say one of the territories you mentioned, um, is where it is. It's in, it's in, uh, since you already kind of guessed all the other ones, it is in Northern Illinois.

Oh, okay.

Uh, long brothers. No, no. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I'm trying to think of who else is up there. Yeah, and you may not have heard of this brand.

This was the first time that we had a member. This was only distributed in Illinois and Nebraska, and we had a member in Nebraska that wouldn't shut up about this brand, so we contacted them. And they sent us things. I tried really hard to get the bloody butcher in the line up. They make a blue corn one that's bonkers too. But this is whiskey acres out of Decarlo, Illinois.

What do you mind just sending me some of that? Wow. Okay. I literally just drove by there like two weeks ago.

You got to stop by and say hi because it's just a cool, you know, they've got like this old silo that was used for like all these, like they turned a silo into a rick house and, you know, that was a grain silo. But yeah, this is a true farm to bottle operation where they're all about getting the seed. It all starts with the seed and making sure that that's engineered. Jim, you're on point. It's 100 proof. It's their bottle to bond, isn't it? It's their bottle and bum bourbon. I just had that.

You just had it. You're going to guess it. You just had it.

I just really had it like about a week ago. My buddy, Adam Dorman, who's a listener, he sent me a couple of pours of theirs. That's really good.

Nice. He's going to listen and he's going to send you a strong email that's going to be mad at you. You guys are both a little off on the age. It's five years. Okay. And yeah, their age statements are, you know, they'll do a seven or an eight year release every year. So, their stuff is just getting older and older and older. You know, they have you know, barrels in there with their kids' date of birth on them that they plan on releasing in 20 years. So, they have all sorts of cool stuff like that. Yeah.

I tried their Bloody Butcher too. Oh, their Bloody Butcher. Yeah.

We put it in, I think it was called a cocktail called Lion's Mane when we had our company party at the end of the year. Maybe one of the best cocktails I've ever had. Seabass is our cocktail engineer and he's always putting together just something awesome. It's great straight, but in a cocktail, it is off the charts. You guys hit on a lot of the notes. It's got a rich nose of vanilla. herbal tea, lemongrass, so you were talking about that fresh hay, touch of cinnamon, nutty oak, graham crackers. And the mashbill does have some wheat in it, so it's 75 dent corn, 15% soft red winter wheat and 10% mulch barley. The tasting notes, caramel corn, so you guys had the caramel, grassy, you got that too, pear drops. Um, raw hazelnuts, dark wood, lightly toasted coconut, apple cider donuts, ripe apples straight from the orchard. So you guys got those orchard fruits, um, butterscotch and the finish is just, yeah, as I said, great texture, um, medium kind of length on the finish and a finish of red berries fading into a peppery spice. So that's kind of where you get that, that little dances in your mouth. But yeah, talk about a first, second and third course where it's just totally Three, I mean, some, some glasses, you know, you'll just sit there and want to nose all day. Cause the nose is that phenomenal. And then, you know, some, some of these, you just have finishes and long enough, whatever it is. This one just kind of, it just checked all the boxes for us with that. It was interesting the whole way through.

Well, the fellow that's right in your tasting notes, my hat's off to him. He's doing a great job.

No, well, let's see, Vass will love hearing that. But yeah, I love that I get to lean on my guys, you know, when you got something that just has a way with words, you know, and just putting everything there.

Yeah. All right, folks, we're going to take a quick break, take a bow to our sponsors. And when we come back, we've got two more line barrel bottles to try. And at the end of the day, I don't know, Todd, we probably say which one's our favorite. What do you think? We've got to pick one, right? Yeah, I think so. Stick around folks. We will be right back.

Hey roadies, it's Diane Strong with Bourbon on the Banks Festival again. We have another amazing event this year, but we want you to come early because we've got a lot of events leading up to the festival. Starting on Thursday, we've got another mixology with master mixologist Heather Wibbles on the Bourbon Bell and O.H. Ingram. Leading into Friday, we have got Peggy No Stevens. She's back with another bourbon pairing and a lesson called The Stave is the Rage. It's going to be amazing. Limestone Heritage Distilling is going to be bringing in three single barrels. You're going to learn a lot. We've got the VIP coming back, and this year we are celebrating women in bourbon. This year, Bourbon on the Banks Festival promises to be even better than ever. We've already got more than 70 distilleries that are going to be there. More than anything, I need to encourage you to get your tickets as soon as possible. They're selling fast. Some of them are already sold out. If you want to come this year, please get your tickets. We don't want to miss you on October 4th in Frankfort, Kentucky on the banks of the amazing Kentucky River.

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All right, welcome back, roadies. We're here with Bobby DeMars of Blind Barrels and we're having a lot of fun. Jim and I are doing a blind that Bobby's been kind enough to send us. It's a really neat package. And yeah, we're getting ready to check out pour three and do a little deeper dive into what blind barrels was all about.

Yeah, we've already done samples A and B and now we're cruising into C. And yes, he's going to totally throw you guys for a loop. There's no like this is, you know, this is one of those ones where I don't think we've ever had anything in a lineup or ever will have anything in a lineup that's like sample C. And this this was a bottle that, you know, we've worked with a lot of influencers. I don't know if you've heard of the bourbon junkies. Yeah. And, you know, Dan and Sean, and this is one that just kind of blew their minds that they then did a whole separate video just related to this bottle. And I remember the, it was one of those videos that went kind of viral and I didn't realize that they put it out and the owner of this distillery called me up. He's like, did you guys do something? Like our sites are going crazy right now. And like all these orders are coming in. I was like, no, we didn't, we didn't do anything. And then I saw that video and went, Oh, we did something. We were a part of it. You know, we were the catalyst for that. But, um, this is like, once again, one of those bottles that just kind of went nuts.

Oh gosh. This is, this smells, this smells awful. Familiar Todd. It does some, yeah, it does a little bit. Oh my goodness. I think I know what this is. I'm going to, I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait.

That's awful Babe Ruth of you calling your shot. So Bobby, about how many different distilleries have you guys worked with in this project? You know, off the top of your head or anything?

Yeah. We have our 13th release coming out, so that means we've had 52 completely different SKUs that are in our lineup. We have probably eight locked in for the next few that are coming out, so there's another 12 spots throughout the year. And actually, the one that we have coming up is a partnership with Randy Sullivan from Bourbon Real Talk. And, you know, he picked the lineup. We just had to kind of agree with what the things were and make sure that it aligned with everything that we were on brand for. And so, one of the distilleries that was from a past lineup is one that a different skew from them that he wanted to have in the lineup. And so, it's the first time we've had a repeat that's in the lineup. Okay. And we plan on doing that. Like, in our first lineup ever, we had Midwest Pumpernickel Rye. I don't know if you've ever had anything from Midwest, but they source for a lot of brands out there. We love Midwest. I mean, everything they make is phenomenal. Really good. Really good. It's affordable. Yeah, that pumpernickel rye, they leave the husk on the rye when they're distilling it. At the distillery, it's 50 bucks, so we sold it for 50 bucks, but we only had 200 members when we launched. I kind of want to bring back, you know, they do all the Rosa finish on it. That's like another high end version of it. They have so many cool, awesome skews there, different types of whiskey that I want to bring middle west back into a lineup for sure. Yeah.

Great distillery. And they've just done this huge, huge expansion. Their new place up there in Allam Creek is just a blow your mind. Have you been to their new distillery? I haven't.

I've never been to Columbus, Ohio. It's on my list now that USC is in the Big Ten, so that I want to go to the U, I want to go to the horseshoe. And this stadium, I want to do the whole bit. But yeah, I haven't been down there, but great people, you know, just killer whiskey. And it's a great example, I'd say, of craft that despite, you know, everyone talks about the, oh, the bourbon bubbles bust and the whiskey bubble and all this stuff. And it's like, The big guys are hurting right now, especially internationally and what's happening in Canada and they're not getting any sales. Well, the craft isn't really distributed in that way. The craft brands that grew at a good rate that are creating experiences, which is what people are getting more into, they're thriving. They're doing really well. We're going to see some of the small guys are going to drop off and we're going to see some of the big guys get hurt. But, you know, Kraft is alive and well, and while some were having a tough fourth quarter, we were having a great fourth quarter, you know, because, you know, every... I would say we're not really a whiskey brand, we're a whiskey experience. And we're giving people something that goes a little bit beyond. Obviously, most people come for the blinds, but they really stay for the access. these are brands that you wouldn't be able to get access to in any other way. So we've thwarted distribution a little bit because distribution is one of those... When the three-tier system started, when Prohibition ended, and the producers, the first tier, have to pass to the second tier, the distributor, before it gets to the retailer, Um, a lot of the, you know, like distribution controls the shelf space and they'll, they'll gobble up a craft brand just so that they don't have to compete against them and then not sell them, you know, cause they got, you know, bigger kickbacks with, with all the big dogs to make sure that they get that shelf space. So we're kind of, um, you know, putting, you know, we're messing up the system in that we're trying to give people access. And distributors like us too, because we're selling their product and they get to take credit for that sale, right? But at the end of the day, there's some big distributors that, you know, we have love-hate relationship with some of them.

You said you are shipping to 44 states, so it'd probably be easier if you told us the six you're not shipping to, right?

Yeah. Unfortunately, we don't ship to Kentucky and Tennessee. Those are the two big ones that we'd like to get in. You know, we're going through some legal right now to figure out if we can get it in there. And, you know, we don't do Hawaii and Alaska just because it's cost prohibited. And, you know, the shipping is just off the charts. There are fulfillment partners that can get to that.

There are ways to get into Kentucky and Tennessee, but we'd have to kind of adapt our whole system.

And then New Hampshire, Massachusetts. So some states are, you know, you're dealing with, in some cases, city, county, state, federal laws, right? to be compliant in all those capacities and dole out the taxes because you got to get all these permissions. So, it's really about finding the right fulfillment partners. And there's more than one way to skin the cat. We know how some people can shift to all the states. And we know how some ways that, you know, you can even ship outside the country. We haven't crossed any of those bridges. We're aware of them. And it's just a matter of if we want to cross that bridge and if we want to reinvent the way that we did it.

Okay. So, I'm getting a little chocolate on this one. Okay. This is delicious, by the way. I've already sipped two.

Yeah, this, this one is just, you know, it's funny if you don't do this one blind, you don't realize you can easily just go like, what is this? And why is this?

And Todd, I think we've had this on like within the last month and a half or two months. Do you see, I was going in a different way. I mean, I I'm probably so wrong. So at so crazy wrong that I'm going to be embarrassed throwing these driftless Glen vibes to me.

Oh, Driftless Gland.

We've reached out to them. They were one of the few brands that just responded with not interested. Well, that's not that one now. Yeah. Well, it's weird though. A lot of times, you just get the wrong person that doesn't understand what we're doing. In the industry, it's called liquor on the lips. That's the marketing term. The hardest thing to do is to get someone to actually taste the product. And we're creating that avenue for these brands. And some of them get it right off the bat. Others think that it's a white labeling situation. which it technically is, we're putting other people's whiskey into our branded bottles, which is white labeling, but we're not passing in saying this is our whiskey. Right. And that's kind of one of the rules that we kind of have in the sand. I mean, there's nothing wrong if somebody's sourcing but you have to do something to it, right? So, like we just had Dark Arts in the lineup and McCauley, he's maybe one of the best pallets in the industry. You know, according to some score thing, he does have the highest rated pallet. Yeah, they're doing phenomenal off the charts bonkers blends, right? They're not making their own whiskey, but they're, and they're sourcing, but they're doing killer blends. You know, and that was the Julepied, the French Oats Day finish. So it was all the stuff that was going on in that one. But if someone's just putting it, say, I've got this MGP, I'm putting it in this bottle, and I'm putting a label on it, that's not enough for us. Either you got to make your own product. And if you're sourcing it, you got to be doing something to it. Even if you're just doing a stay finish, like 291 or Broken Barrel, or you're blending it or you're doing some barrel finishes. We got one right now in a lineup, which is Bonkers that They're sourcing, but then they're putting it in really small barrels, and then they're doing five different barrel finishes on it.

Oh, wow.

They're doing char one, two, three. They're doing a toasted and a char one, two, three, four, five. It's like, who is the time for that? Who is the barrel? I don't know. It's crazy. Yeah, so the wood influence, the character of the wood influence is just so nuanced and interesting. But somebody has to do it, and it's always craft. You know, if you look at what Some of the bigger brands do, they follow crafts lead. Yep.

You know, all right, Todd, Todd, what do you think? What do you think about the mash bill? I think it's bourbon again.

Um, right. Bourbon. I mean, I think there's Ryan and I don't think it's another weeder from, um, and I think it's along those like 95 to a hundred proof type thing.

Barton against the story. So that was out. So, but it does have that kind of vibe to it. It's really good. Are there any other notes? Just really good.

Yeah, I'm getting, I'm getting some great notes on it. So I don't know. I mean, I've just been zeroing in on this and I'm probably completely wrong. I mean, there's a lot of dark fruits. Is, is it, so let me ask you this. Are we allowed to ask questions like, all right. So does this have, is this okay. Finished or blended with something not, not whiskey.

No, but I can see why you would say that. So, well, so something not whiskey categorically, this may be the only brand that we don't know a hundred percent if it actually is whiskey.

Okay.

It doesn't say the word whiskey anywhere on the bottle. It was what we discovered after it was in the lineup, which is really kind of interesting. But in reality, this was one of the most popular whiskies at one point in time.

It's just kind of reminds me of that Templeton that we had. You remember what I'm talking about?

The, um, it was actually blended with pork. It was really, yeah.

I had like a port wine in it. And when I first tasted it, I was like, Oh, this is that. I knew it was, I knew it was, but now I'm kind of questioning myself.

So you might, you might be like a little clairvoyant, Jim, cause you mentioned like dry fly, which is pretty close to the Washington one. And now you're mentioning Templeton and this is not Templeton. In fact temple ten you know was a big lie right temple ten days and that they had right that they had only got out components recipe and it's like no the resources from mgp was all bullshit right. And this is a brand it's funny that temple ten is very much a part of the story to a degree.

Cedar Ridge, maybe?

We've had Cedar Ridge. We had their quintessential with sample A in our December, 2023 lineup. So the lineup right after this was sample A. And that quintessential is so good. I mean, it's a Solera single malt. And so they've got basically, I mean, the flavors are all over the map.

Have you guys been to Cedar Ridge? I've been there and they got a Tokai also. It's really good. The Tokai is phenomenal. The food there is like so good. I spent a day at the distillery there. Just, I loved it. I just loved it. I just, I could stay there. I could spend a whole day at that distillery. It was gorgeous.

And yeah, I mean, they're, you know, they're a winery and they do all the things there. All right.

So, so, uh, Todd, you guessed, uh, 95, 95 to a hundred.

You said it's a bourbon with some rye influence. What's your guess, Jim?

So I was, I was kind of leaning towards the template and I realized now I'm wrong, but I was thinking it was a rye. It had some kind of a port finish or something to it. Um, but it would have been a younger rye with a port finish and maybe 105 proof. I was going to say about a five years, what I was thinking five year.

Okay. Yeah, this is, I think the only whiskey we've had in a lineup where we don't know the age statement. Okay. Or it's considered non-age. And so, this is out of Carroll, Iowa, Iowa Legendary. I'm not familiar. Iowa Legendary Rye. Now, this bottle, this gold label, okay, so they make a black, a red, and a purple. The gold is a blend of all three. The purple actually is really expensive, like a $200-something bottle. And then the red and the black are somewhere around $50. And then this one, which I think they sold for nearly $100, we sold for 70-something. And so this is a true prohibition-era rye. Oh, wow. Oh, I got it. You got a rye. You got the proof. It's 105 proof. You got the proof right on the nose. But no finishing, right? No, but you said there's something in there that isn't whiskey. And there is something that we talked about. So this guy's grandmother was the most well-known female bootlegger in Prohibition era. So the train stopped at the back of her farm and they would load up the whiskey. And this was supposedly Al Capone's favorite whiskey was this recipe. So she used the 26 gallons still. and use 15-gallon barrels because you could run with 15-gallon barrels, you couldn't run with 55-gallon barrels. When the grandson had the property, they dug up, they found barrels buried all over the property and they found the still. He made this 26-gallon still and then he made several of them. There's only four ingredients in this. There is bread rye, which is what his grandmother used to use bread rye. There is water, there's yeast, and there is sugar cane. Yeah. And that is why categorically, we think that it's legally not considered whiskey because once you throw that sugar in there, it's an additive. It's funny, there's a lot of brands out there that we've heard use sugar. They just don't say that they do it. And I won't say which ones those are because I don't want to get in trouble. But this one, you know, is very clear about it. Like I said, it doesn't say the word whiskey on it, but this was the recipe. This is exactly what they used in that prohibition era. This is the same thing that Al Capone drank. Literally.

I like it. I like it. Al Capone had a great taste. No doubt.

And we have the aroma nuts, maple donut, Werther's original. thyme, turbinado sugar, aromatic bitters, buttered bread. The tasty nuts we have rounded in rich texture, melted caramel, cinnamon, orange studded with nutmeg, deep oak presence and baked oats. And the finish is a mid-long finish, slightly dry, leather and black pepper that rounded out. But this is a thyme machine in a bottle. Yeah.

There's a small distillery out in Western Kentucky, Casey Jones, that does a cane sugar and like a corn whiskey blend that's aged. I was kind of... When you said something about that, that made me like... Yeah, I was like...

I love Casey Jones. Yeah, they got the first commission still in Kentucky. They get a square pot still that the great grandfather did. So yeah, we went and hung out on the property with Peg and AJ and we talked to them for several years. They ended up in the lineup. that we did their single barrel white label that comes in like around, you know, they do a lower barrel entry. So, you know, put those like 105 to 112 roofs, but it's still cast strength. And I mean, we sold that bottle for 50 bucks and it's three and a half, four years old, but honestly, it tastes like eight or nine years. And I told them this, I'm like, you guys could sell this for 70, 80 bucks. You really could. Like, it's that good, like that Casey Jones. And I'm like, just raise the prices after and they're in the lineup because I still want to sell for 50 bucks. But that bottle of Casey Jones, it's a bottle I always have in my house along with that Midwest Pumpernickel Rye. This Iowa Legendary is another bottle that I always have in the house too. Because I like when somebody will tell me, I want a bourbon. and I'll pour them a Midwest Pumpernickel rye or I'll pour them Iowa legendary rye. Because of that sugar influence, that sweet influence, it just makes you want to drink more of it. It's just a natural. We like sugar. When we were the monkey mind, we wanted the fruit and all those sugary things. People go, this is a killer bourbon.

I go, it's a rye.

People that get into that bourbon box, they'll, oh, I only drink bourbon. I get this on the support email or the support chat all the time. People go, my husband only drinks bourbon. So we better, I'm like, I could send you a box that I was all bourbon in it, but honestly, I think you're going against the nature of what we're trying to do. And yeah, that, single malt from Cedar Ridge that we've had in the lineup. We just had a single malt from Andalusia at a Blanco, Texas. And I love it when you get people that are buying the well-aged bourbon that are in the lineup, but then they're also buying that single malt. They're buying that interesting rye. They're buying that because you're getting the diversification on your palate. It's what you really crave. There's some that you can sit around and have a glass, right? But I usually, I never almost never pour two of the same whiskey at my house. I'm always, I bounce around when I'm drinking. And so, this experience, I think, you know, I mean, so far, has any of these samples tasted anything like the other? No.

No, no, they're all very different. They're all very different.

So, that diversification that we try to get on the palate, you know, we try to go for that experience as much as we possibly can.

All right. So we're onto a sample D now sample D. This is our fourth and final sample out of this blanket. And, uh, I'm pretty excited to try this one. I'm hoping I can do better on this one that I did on the last. I kind of fallen off.

The good thing is we haven't embarrassed ourselves too much. We we've been in the ballpark at least. Yeah. You guys are crushing it.

We've done really well, I think.

You guys need to get some positive affirmations going on in the morning in the mirror.

If we take your best and my best and put them together, I think we're doing okay.

I mean, you'd be dead on if you did that. But yeah, you had the proof down on that one as well as you said it's a rye and technically it's, we don't know what it is. I think...

Casey Jones calls it a, what was it, a distilled spirit, a distinct distilled spirit or something like that. They have a specific... Yeah, distilled spirit other. Other, yes. That's what they call it.

Yeah. Yeah, and they're doing all sorts of wild stuff. I'll tell you, if you go to Casey Jones, Peg and AJ will be there. They have grandkids working the Rick house and you can taste all their products there and they have so many awesome SKUs there, you're going to walk out of there with two cases. Yeah. Like, I know, I had to, you know, I always, now when I travel, I always have like a, I travel so lightly so that way my suitcase, you know, I bring the bubble stuff. You know, I brought like six bottles from Casey Jones and I would have brought 20 if I could fit them in my suitcase.

Oh, yeah. We picked their, we picked their very first. a barrel of weeded bourbon that was sold the gift shop and pretty, pretty nice. I thought it was really good.

Oh, their weeded bourbon was so good. I was pushing that to be in the lineup, but the single barrel bourbon, it just ended up, you know, hitting for everybody that when we did the blind for it, the white label there. And, um, but I couldn't, that was the one thing where we just had that debate. Like these are all killer, killer whiskeys that, you know, um, another brand that, because they have so many diverse, interesting, you know, skews that we're going to put them in the lineup again. There's no doubt. Yeah, absolutely.

All right. Let's check out this sample D. Yeah.

One of the other cool things I noticed on your website is you guys have tasting videos and tasting 101 and things like that.

Yeah, we have a free masterclass. So, if anybody is kind of new on their whiskey journey, you know, you don't have to be a member for it. But you want to know the basics, the four phases of whiskey from the appearance, the aroma, the taste, the finish, or, you know, just different terms like what makes a bourbon a bourbon, a rye a rye, you know, what is straight. You know, I think we even get into like non-chill filter terminology, you know, if you want to go deeper down it. But yeah, there's about two, three hours of content on there. that we just make free for everybody because, you know, you don't have to be a member to want to learn more about where you are in your whiskey journey.

All right. I'm getting like a white grape on this, like lighter fruits, orchard fruits again, but there's like a grapey note too.

You're getting that on the nose?

Yeah. This is definitely on the fruitier side, sweeter side. But the oak is ever present here. I feel like this one might, might peek above four years. I could be wrong, but it feels like it might be a little bit over than four years.

Okay. I wouldn't have sipped. Now I'm getting like, oh man, that's good. Wow. I thought three was going to be the top dog, but oh man.

Yeah. This is a, this is, this crushes like people.

Like juicy fruit gum, uh, peach. It's given me single malt vibes this time.

Um, man, you nailed it with the juicy fruit. I mean, it really is juicy fruit. It's. And, but it's got a little bit of like this, this background savory note, this meaty note that's in the background. It kind of makes it feel rich and thick.

Oh God, I love this. And I can't order this directly.

Yeah, you can get it. Yeah. You just, what I would say is, uh, if, if, you know, cause you're, you're not a member, you're in a state we can't ship to. That's the issue actually. Yeah. Cause you're in Kentucky.

I have friends out of state. We'll figure something out.

I can get something to someone else. Yeah. Just, you got a friend in Indiana, right? So we can get it to them. Wow.

That's, I love this. Woof. Wow. This is really good. This is, uh, yeah, this is. This is, I would say taking the cake, but this is definitely at the top of my list so far.

I'm going to go, I think this one's over a hundred, like one, one 10 maybe. Yeah. This is higher than that.

I think it's higher.

Like I feel like heat on that, but yeah, I feel like this is, uh,

It's 2023, huh? Let me think who's making whiskey this good in 2023. This is really good.

Yeah, the guy that runs this spot is just one of those good dudes. They recently moved their distillery to another location within the same state, but great people, great whiskey. And, you know, this was really popular in the lineup. Sometimes, look, sometimes you get something that's just a diamond in the rough or you get this crown jewel or you get something really special. You kind of almost always have to put it last just because it's going to make some of the other ones pale in comparison, right?

And it is, it's very like, obviously I've done some other blinds and like true blinds, like you said, double blinds. So order can be everything sometimes. Like if you were to switch orders, there might be something else that's, you know, sticks out a little better because of what you had before it and, you know, things like that. Now, you said you've had 52 distilleries, right? So about how many states has that covered that you guys have presented out there?

No, I should know the answer to that. I mean, I could go through all the lineups in my head real quick and figure that out. But I'd say we've probably had 20 states, maybe. We definitely had some California repeats. We've had Colorado repeats. I think we only had one out of Florida. We've had a couple out of Tennessee, a couple out of Kentucky. you know, a couple out of Iowa. And, you know, we just did a road trip to Texas. Texas is going to be featured prominently recently. We had two from Texas in our December lineup of 2024, and Delusion still Austin. So, we've got one coming up from Louisiana that's you know, everybody's going to want this bottle. It's so interesting and how they're making it. And the Mashbill is like, I've never had a whiskey that is this Mashbill before. And I didn't think it would taste like this.

It makes me think J.T. Mellick. Then it's you, Jim. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Sounds like it's wild.

Can you guys get J.T.

Mellick where you're at?

Yes. Because I mean, Louisiana is right there. They're not, they're not heavily distributed.

I think bourbon outfitters, like Justin's kind of thing. That's their kind of, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the buzz on them is just through the roof. But yeah, they're using the rice paddies that they're crawdad farmers. And then they use the rice paddies that they grow the crawdads that to make the whiskey. So it's a hundred percent rice whiskey. That's like, what?

It's really unique. So you want to kind of tell, you've got, I guess, three different offerings for your blind barrels. Is that correct?

Yeah. So there's a one-off. So you don't want to be a member. You can just do a one-off subscription. And so that's $70. You get access to the brands and you get the blind tasting, you get the kit, and then it's $15 shipped to your door. If you sign up and you become a member, then it's $60 instead of $70. And it's still 15 flat. And then that recurs every 3 months. So if you sign up today, we'd make you wait for the March release, which ships out Monday, March 17th. If you sign up in April, then we'll ship you the March 1 and then dial the renewal so you'll get the June release. It'll sync up, right? And then it'll be 3 months after that. The annual is $200. And then it's $50 for shipping because you're prepaying for 4 shipments. So you're getting $12.50 per shipment. So you're getting a bigger discount because you're prepaying for 4 shipments.

Those are the three SKUs. We did have a Fred Minnick box on our site that we just sold out of.

So we're meeting with Fred in the coming weeks to figure out the next lineup that'll probably be available. And I think the Fred Minnick kit, we're going to have it on our site, but I think a bulk of them are going to go to retail locations in Tennessee and Kentucky. Oh, cool. So, you know, we, we can't get our stuff out there. So, um, we're going to sync up with Fred soon. And, uh, he just, one of those good guys. And it's funny when Fred started, he wasn't really keen on craft and he just talked a lot of smack on it. And then now if you look at his, his, his list every year, I mean, big majority of his top one under list features craft and we joined the movement.

So let me ask you a question. So somebody receives a kit. One of the bottles in there is out of this world. One of the samples is out of this world and it sells really quickly. So it's very possible that somebody that receives a kit could find out that they couldn't get a bottle. Does that happen?

That's possible. Like for instance, everything that's in this lineup that you guys are having is available. So if you want to get a bottle of it, you can. But sometimes what happens is... So when we had this loss, I mentioned before a couple of times, the lost barrels of whiskey outlaw. There's this group called World Whiskey Society. And sometimes distributors will introduce us to brands. And they sent us this Doc Holliday bottle. And you've probably seen it. There's a gimmicky one now that's got guns in it and whatever. And it was a six year bottle and it was cool. You know, it said, I'm your huckleberry on it. It's got like bull horns and there's like bullet casings in the, you know, it's gimmicky, but kind of cool. And the distributor told me that they made their own whiskey and then I get them on the phone. It's like, no, they don't. And so that Doc Holliday, that six year was MGP. And I said, well, are you doing anything to it? So they had these other ones. They had like a rum finish and they had a tequila finish and they had a Mizunara finish. They had like a samurai head on it. That was really dope. So their finishes were phenomenal. And they said, you know, can we send you another Doc Holliday? And I went, sure. So they sent us the 10 year. And I was like, Like, I literally was like, it was so dark and rich and unctuous that it tasted like a William LeRoux Weller. It was like, honestly, like this $2,000 bottle. And I was like, is this 10-year MGP? And they said, no, these are some barrels that we found in Texas. And I'm like, well, tell me about that. So, there was these guys out of Georgia, this family called the Lovells. And for four generations, for 150 years, they made unaged moonshine, sour mashed Georgia bourbon moonshine illegally. And they would bounce to the Appalachians and they'd bounce all over Georgia, evade the feds. And Carlos Lavelle was the fourth in the generation. And the thing about craft whiskey just in general, when people start making whiskey, unless they're apprenticing or they come from a brewer background or a wine background, They're usually not good at it right off the bat. It takes them a while to find their legs. If they ever find their legs at all, some are good right off the bat, especially if they have some of that experience. Well, this guy was making whiskey since he was seven years old. He was in his early 70s and his daughter convinced him to go legitimate. He started this Ivy Mountain distillery in Georgia. He was for the most part making moonshine and not aging it, but then he was aging it for about six months in these barrels. Three years in, he died. And the barrels sat there for four or five years. And finally, the family offloaded them. Bardstown bought a bunch of them, put it in their Explorer series and their Fusion series, you know, and sold that for 130 bucks. The rest ended up in Texas. And these guys were passing through from World Whiskey Society, saw that the barrels were originally from Georgia and they were from Georgia. So, they brought it back to Georgia, dock holidays from Georgia. So, that's kind of where that came from. And, but it sat in Texas for like four or five years. And Texas heat, you know, that maturation rates double, you know. In Kentucky, it's returning for about seven months out of the year. In Texas, it's every, you know, every month except for six weeks. And, and then they brought it back to Georgia where it sat there for another year. So they aged it to 10 years. So that 10-year whiskey was like, almost like it was like 18 years. And this was a guy that was an expert in his craft that had never intended this whiskey to even go that far in the aging process because the whiskey was that good in its raw form. And so I told the guys, you know, I wouldn't have personally, you know, done, you know, they have, you know, for instance, the one with the, there's a 10 year doc holiday with the guns on it. And that's not the same whiskey. That's still his source whiskey. They never differentiated Carlos Lavelle's whiskey in the doc holiday bottle versus the six and the seven and the other age statements that they had on it. And I said, look, if this is a pure white labeling situation, you guys are just putting other people's whiskey into this. You're not doing anything to it for their other ones that they were finishing, which they did a great job. But I said, look, if we're going to do this, because this was from a craft distiller, we need to put a neck tag on the bottle that shares his story and his legacy. His legacy is in this bottle. And they complied with that, which is really cool. And yeah, we sold this out of existence. You can't get, you can't get the 10 year Doc Holliday anymore, at least not the 10 year that's Carlos Savelle's whiskey. I know they held a couple of barrels back to get to 12 year and I'm going to be first in line and I'm going to buy several of those cases.

Send me a text.

I'm telling you, it is so off the charts and it was a bottle, you know, the distributor. I said, look, we're going to sell a lot of these. But for the most part, if you look at our competitors out there, like our annual is $250 and that includes shipping, our biggest competitor is $320. They sell kits for $320 for 4 kits throughout the year. And they do 3 samples, we do 4. But I'm like, we made a real important... The reason we make our bottles custom and I talked to every vendor in the country to get our packaging, to get all of our pricing down, because we want We couldn't support and showcase small American businesses and then price out the middle class. And, you know, I talked to the distributor. I said, look, if we can get this at a certain price so I could sell it at 130 instead of the 180 to 200 that everyone else was selling it for, I'm telling you, we'll crush with this. And we did. And we just sold it out of existence.

Wow.

That's so awesome. But I got six bottles in my cellars just because that was part of the problem.

Not a bad problem.

All right, Todd, what do you think about this last one we just had? Like I said, I think I kind of threw out my stuff.

So you said 110. What type of malt?

I have no idea. You said single malt. Single malt for your 110. I would say.

I'm going to go six year on this.

OK, so it's a single malt. So I'm going to agree with you on the age. I want to say this is over, over four, over five, probably six year. This is probably closer to 120 proof for me. Um, I'm going to go American whiskey, but you know, that kind of, that's kind of cheating because American whiskey can be just about anything. I don't think it's a single malt. I guess it could be.

It's kind of got a California vibe to me. Kind of reminds me of the St. George, but it doesn't have that Meyer lemon to it that we tried recently.

Yeah. So I'm going to go 120 proof, six year American whiskey, um, west of the Mississippi.

That's about all I can say. It is, it is west of the Mississippi. And this is a brand of distillery, um, that is now in steamboat Springs, uh, Colorado, Colorado. And this is mythology.

Oh, I've seen mythology. Wow.

This is the cast rank version of man's best friend. So, there's always kind of these spirit animals that are a part of the theme of the bottles that they do. This one has, you know, half a man on it and, you know, half a dog on it. And the proof is 118 proof. So, you got pretty close to that one, Jim. And it's a bourbon. It's a cast rank bourbon. And this is a, so this is a blend of different age statements. So, there's a 15-year Kentucky Bourbon in this, there's a 5-year Indiana Bourbon in this, and there's a 3-year Indiana. So, maybe Barstown, MGP, MGP, they don't stay what it is. And wild kind of mashbills, but all dominant bourbon in the mashbill, all of them. So, if you had to take the average age statement on it, it's like, you know, eight year if you had to take the average of it. Technically, you have to say the age statement is three year because you have to take the smallest age that's on it. But yeah, there's some 15 year that there's some richness that on the back end that, you know, really comes through.

It's really unique though, that came off as such like bright fruits and orchard fruits. It just made me think, wow, way off, single malt.

Yeah, this was I'm just going to throw it out there. This was my jam. This was really good. All four were really good. But that one really stood out. Yeah. This got my attention. This definitely got my attention. And it could be because of the proof and the age. I'm sure that had something to do with it.

Yeah, the age is always, you know, you mentioned that wood influence that was in there. We have a roma notes of peanut brittle, light herbs, cornbread with wildflower honey, tasty notes of rich caramel, candied almonds, oak, toasted grains, strawberry frosting, cherry, pipe tobacco, peanut dust, and a finish that's a long decadent finish with vanilla bean, creme brulee, and black currant.

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's delicious.

But yeah, this is a, this, this is a bot. Hey, somebody comes over your house and they want a bad ass bourbon. And, and look, you can, you can pull up a bottle of Bardstown. You can get some of your traditional Kentucky bourbons.

And I think this holds, you know, this can hold its own against any of them, really.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, you can bust out your BTAC collection. I mean, I like to do this to my guys. I always put in... In fact, when I was mentioning that Doc holiday that I had, they thought I was fucking with them because I do that sometimes. I'll put... I'll put an allocated bottle on the blind or I'll put their favorite whiskey. Jimmy, you were getting a palate cleanser, you're drinking Wild Turkey 101. Seabass loves Wild Turkey. That's his jam. He's got DSP. He's got the shirt that just said the DSP on it. If you know, you know. I'll put in the master keep, you know, like into the lineup, just to see if he, you know, he takes a dump on the thing that he thinks he loves, just so I can ruin that for him. So I do that with them from time to time. But I love it when you put in this great sample in the lineup and they think it's too good to be some small craft distiller. They kind of stopped doing that because the craft that we get access to now is so good that You just have to expect that it's going to be awesome. We're not kissing that many frogs these days. Early on, we were kissing quite a few frogs.

Times have changed. Times have definitely changed. I can remember a time when many of the samples that we received in for review were, I'll just be honest, not fit for a show. And it just takes time for these distilleries to get their legs. And it's just the way it is.

Yeah, if they do, and they find their audience, and the worst thing is we meet great people, and then sometimes we don't like the whiskey, and then I have to have that conversation. I let my guys pick the lineups. I have a heavy hand in all of it, obviously, but to kind of not have blood on my hands and so that when I do follow up with these with these dear people that I'm not, you know, insulting them in any capacity. And then, like I said, like if right off the bat, I know that they're just sourcing and they're just putting the label on it, then I just tell them to not even send anything, you know, because we're not it's not going to make the lineup.

Yeah. Well, Bobby, it's been a blast. We've had such a great time today. No, I'm so glad. Did you pick number four? Did you, did you pick the D bottle too? D is my favorite.

Yeah. But I mean, there were, those were all four really good pores. I mean, yeah. But D just really, I mean, again, it might've been the proof, but man, that's just... Yeah, it ramps up.

You put that 118 proof, you kind of have to put it last, but yeah, you got some 15-year Kentucky bourbon in there, right? So...

I'm just disappointed I said single malt. I'm like, oh no, can we edit that out?

Yeah. But you know what? My guys do that all the time. Yeah. And you really gave us a spattering across the U S you gave us, uh, let me think it was, uh, Washington, um, Illinois.

Yep. Um, Iowa and Colorado.

So yeah, that's a, that's a nice, you know, that's a nice, uh, pick across the U S there. So you get a nice, uh, variety. That's awesome.

You get a nice balance. And I mean, so you, so of these four brands, how many had you guys heard of before?

Uh, I think mythology was a. Yeah.

Only one whiskey acres. So two of them.

Yeah.

Yeah. Chambers Bay was really kind of off our radar totally from the beginning. We hadn't heard of them when they reached out to us. And it was actually one of our fulfillment partners that was saying that they've had a big following with them. So, you know, I forget how we got in touch with them, but, you know, the Iowa legendary was just one of those ones where they reached out and I was like, look, can we have something that no one else has that you guys have? And they said, well, we've got something that doesn't come out for I think we had that in September of 2023. It didn't come out till March of 2024. And it was only available in Iowa. And so our members got access to something that no one else was going to have access to for six months, which was pretty cool. Yeah.

Well, I know I'm not driving through DeKalb again without stopping. I know that. Oh, you have to.

Yeah. And it's just gorgeous and everything there. I don't think there was a food thing going on there, but a lot of times they'll do live music. Their Friday and Saturday nights are usually hopping there from what we understand. Yeah. We really push our members to go visit these distilleries, go do their food pairings, go, hey, go buy bottles. If you can buy a bottle from the distilleries, when we sell bottles, we price them so that we don't lose money. We're in the process of raising money right now to expand into tequila and we have a restaurant to hotel model. It's funny, we talked to venture capitalists, they're like, why aren't you upselling these bottles? I'm like, Because that's what's special about the membership is that we're not going to gouge you on the bottle prices. You're going to get a bottle at the best price that you could ever get that bottle and probably a bottle that you wouldn't be able to buy any other way. And we think that's awesome. We think that's why we have a lot of loyalty with our members and why we built a community. And we do live tastings, two of them every quarter. So we'll have 80 to 150 members on with us. That's cool. And we go through the lineup live. And if you email our support, you're going to get me. I'm going to do that as long as I can. I'm going to take care of you. And if you got a suggestion, I think our September kit is going to be all member suggestions. So we're going to try to make that a theme every year of all brands that members have suggested that we're going to put in the lineup. And we're going to keep building our whiskey community and stay true to the roots. It's one of the few industries that it's competitive, but there's a lot of love behind that competition. You get into the wine industry and everybody's cutthroat. You get into these other industries, whereas Heaven Hills, Rick House burns down. Everybody steps up and says, can we give you some juice? Can we get help get you back on your feet? There's so much history that's built into American history. It's the first thing that's ever taxed. There's so much that's a part of our very foundation as Americans. So we really take to heart the history of the whiskey community and wanted to be proponents of that.

All right. Well, Bobby, we really appreciate you coming on the show tonight. We certainly appreciate you sharing your whiskey with us and sending out these sample kits to Todd and I. We had a lot of fun, didn't I? It was fun.

It was really good. No, my pleasure. And look, if you guys go to blindbarrels.com, if you use the code whisky10, that'll take 10% off of anything, whether it's a shirt, a hat, a tasting glass. We got, you know, premium hats that we basically sell at cost or even a one-off kit or a quarterly or annual membership. It'll take 10% off of any of those. All right. And new members get a free tasting glass with their first kit too.

Yay. Such a good deal. Well, let's do this again real soon. Let's, uh, let's hook up again here in another six months or a year and, and we'll, uh, we'll have one of your newer kits on and we'll just, we'll get the word out.

Yeah. You guys are going to want to do the, the March lineup. It's called heat and, uh, it rivals our, our March, 2023 lineup. That was called some like it hot. where it was just all cast strength bangers, including the hazmat. So, you know, so the newbies kind of freak out about that. And they're like, this is a lot of, this is a lot of whiskey. And it's like, proof it down, put some water in it. And then the, you know, the, the bourbon chasers are like, Oh my God, like this is like, yeah. Cause where do you really get some of these brands, man, we've been chasing them from day one and we finally got them in the lineup. So it's just, I always say we were trying to elevate every single lineup and The last year and a half, we've been doing that and we're like, we can't top this one. And then we do it. And then, so we just keep trying to make it better.

Thank you guys so much for having us on and really appreciate it.

I thought you guys were killer with your gases. Your pallets are phenomenal. Um, thank you for having me on.

All right. Well, roadies definitely check out blind barrels. When you get a chance, you'll definitely want to grab one of their kits and, and have this experience. It's, it's amazing.

It's really fun and make a great gift too. I mean.

Yeah, I think so.

I'd be happy if Santa gave that to me for Christmas.

All right. Well, you can find the bourbon road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook threads, all those places. Todd and I put out a show every single week. We'll have, uh, we'll have a guest on like, uh, Bobby DeMarche from blind barrels. Sometimes we'll have a musician on or an author or somebody in the industry. It's always fun. We're always drinking whiskey. We're always having a good time. It's a lot of laughs. We hope you'll join us every single week. The best way not to miss an episode is to scroll to the top of that app you're on and hit that subscribe button. That way every week when we put out an episode, you'll get that bell notification letting you know that Jim and Todd have dropped another one and we will get you through that next sales call drive, that next trip to grandma's house, cutting the grass, shoveling snow, sweeping the house, whatever it is you do with your headset on. We would love to be a part of that day. But until the next time, we will see you down at the Barber Moon Road.

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