477. Whiskey of the Year 2025: The Top 5 Countdown

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 four and join us.

Hello there, this is Drew Hanisch of Whiskey Lore and I'm so happy that the Bourbon Road guys are going to let me promote a little bit about my new book coming out called Experiencing American Whiskey. It is a travel guide to whiskey distilleries in the entire United States. Lots of details in this book to help the traveler along the way and I'll tell you more about it at the break.

All right, listeners, it's that time of year, or should I say it's that time of the new year.

That's right. We are definitely into the new year, well into the new year now. We are pre-recording this, obviously. This is coming out on January the 7th, 2026. We hope you enjoy the show. This is our annual Whiskey of the Year slash Bourbon of the Year slash Craft Distillery of the Year show. Yeah, recap. Recap.

Remember the good old days and move on into 2026.

And I hope everybody enjoyed the final two review shows of the year. Todd and I were able to get the last of our samples through the mill and get them tasted so that they could be in the running. And good reason for that because it's very possible that some of those may be in the final few.

Yeah, it's a tough cut. We take a lot of factors into consideration when we choose these, I guess. So no single barrels, because that would probably change the game a little bit for sure. I recall us having a couple of single barrels at Bluegrass that really blew us away. The 18-year-old Elkwood and the 11-year Elkwood Spanish Oak finish that really Really blew me away. Yeah, and no ultra premiums.

No, nothing that is vastly expensive and impossible to find. Now, some of these are going to be hard to find or maybe impossible to find, but at the time of their release, it's very fair that somebody could put their hands on one of these.

Yeah, for sure. I also feel like these are something you can find in a nice bourbon bar.

Yeah. Anybody can go out and taste a bottle of something X that costs $2,000 and say, that's my bourbon of the year, but that doesn't help our listeners a whole lot. These are standard issue, widely available, and reasonably priced. Reasonably priced. Reasonably priced. And reasonably anymore is not what reasonably was years ago.

I was going to say, if we go back to when you first started your bourbon the year, it'd be interesting to hear what the prices of those that were in that running.

But Todd's done a lot of work preparing for this show. He's got a lot of notes. He literally went back and reviewed every 2025 episode to compile our findings, our results. We talked about it. And we came up with what we thought were the five whiskeys we wanted to have on the show today. We're going to drink them. And then we're going to reveal our findings for the year. Yeah.

I'm excited. Like I said, it was tough. I mean, we were rallying off a few before as we were setting up and we're like, oh, that could have been in here. But here we are.

And we had actually decided that this year it wouldn't be called the Bourbon of the Year, that this year it would be called the Whiskey of the Year, because in the running were Single Malts, Rye's, American Whiskeys, Bourbons. and such. Yeah. Wheat whiskeys, all those things were in the running. Right.

We even had some bourrées and corn whiskies that really impressed us.

Finished whiskies were in the running. Finished, yep. Normandy. Yeah, just not single barrels. Right. And ultra exclusives. But I think we're ready to start tasting, right?

Yeah, we are. And we're going to go in the order of proof today. I'm hoping that works out well, but it just seemed Yeah. It's a tough call because you've got different age whiskeys.

It just so happens that our oldest is also our lowest proof.

Yeah. Pretty cool. So this is a Knob Creek 21, which we recently just had this. Hunterproof and retails for $250 and was featured on episode 472. OK, so not very long ago. Yeah. This is the oldest product Jim Beam has put out. And yeah, I think we were really wowed by it. Cause we had it going up against the Booker's Reserve, the Booker's Infinite. And there was one other in that show too, which the, Oh, the little book chapter nine.

Right. Yeah. So that was some heavy hitters.

That was the beam me up toddy show. Yeah.

That's right. All right. Let's check it out. Once again.

Once again, I know it'd be interesting to go back and, oh my gosh, if we're getting new notes today,

I remember us getting a little coconut. A little coconut, a little cherry, which was odd in a 21-year-old whiskey. But the oak is definitely very present in this. But it doesn't dominate. It doesn't dominate. And we talked about this when we had this on the show, how the 12, 15, 18, and 21 differ so much. that it really has to do with how they put the barrels together and where they get the, get the barrels from. There's almost an almond joy. I'm getting a little chocolate this time. So good. This has a killer nose guys.

Killer nose. Might be the best nose we, we smelled. Oh yeah. It'd be in the running. Best nose we nosed. Best nose we nosed. I love it. Cheers. Cheers.

Oh yeah, there's that coconut. So good. So good. Such a delicious whiskey.

Tons of vanilla.

Yep. Vanilla, coconut, henna cherry, a little bit of chocolate. All the things. We might even have said Mounds Bar, right? At the time. Yeah, I think so. I think we did because the Mounds is the one with almonds and coconut, right?

No, that's Almond Joy.

That's what I was saying. Yeah, Almond Joy. Almond Joy. Yeah. So good.

Still some like nice cherry notes too. Little bit of like leather, tobacco.

It just sits, the finish sits there with that just hint of coconut.

It's really nice. I really like this a lot.

It's a good start. Oh my gosh. So let me ask you, and I don't know if we talked about this when we had it on the show, 12, 15, 18 and 21. How do you rank them? 21's gotta be tops.

Probably tops. Second for me would be maybe 12. Now are we talking the cast-string 12s that came out?

Yeah. Probably 12, then 18, then 15. Yeah. Okay, so 21, 12. That 15, like I think we talked. So 18 and 12 are close. 18 was good.

Yeah. I think 18 was one of those batches, cause they had like different batches of that.

Yeah, oh, this is so delicious. Yeah, if this one shows up on a shelf near you, do not hesitate at MSRP. Grab it, run with it, get two if you can. Buy one for a friend. If you can't find it, we understand that. Even at the price that it's at, it's worth it.

Yeah, agreed. I got this in the beamed, barreled, and boxed set. That was a nice addition to that. Absolutely. I was very excited to see that amongst the offerings.

The good thing about this, Whiskey, and the ones that follow on the show, is that you're very likely to find them in a well-stocked bourbon bar, for sure. So if you don't get a chance to find a bottle of any of these, write them down. Make sure that you seek them out next year, this year, I'm sorry, 2026. Seek them out and have a pour because they're going to be as good or better than anything else on the shelf in that bar.

Yeah. So some fun facts. Went through all the, used AI a little bit and you sent me some stuff with AI about all our episodes and we tried or tasted or reviewed 199 different products this year.

It's not bad for 52 episodes, right?

Well, we missed one. That's right, we did miss one.

51 episodes.

51 episodes. The breakdown on that, which is kind of fun, 121 bourbons. 29 ryes, 24 single malts, and that includes American, Scotch, and Indian. We had a couple Indian single malts. 22 whiskies, and in that category, I included the bourbon rye blends, corn whiskies, wheat whiskies, light whiskies, and Irish whiskies. And we even had three brandies.

Yeah, I remember that. Yeah.

And of those, 199, that represented 89 different brands. That's a banner year. That's really good. That's a lot of work, Todd. It wasn't too bad. Like we said, AI is very helpful in our podcast. If you go and look at the... I don't guess it's a recap. It's just kind of a summary of what it is. Some of them are excellent. It would give you all the information you needed. Some you had to go listen a little bit or, you know, skip through the transcript, but not too bad. Yeah.

The trip, the, the since July of 2025, uh, our podcast descriptions have contained kind of a summary as well. Uh, when we put it out, we just don't reveal any winners. No, no winner winner chicken dinner winners because we don't want to spoil it for anybody. That's right. But we do tell you what's coming on the show.

All right. Shall we move on to two? Or you want to keep on sipping on this for a little bit?

I could sip on this all day long. We could just make a show out of this one bottle. But we have four more great whiskeys to talk about.

All right. One of our entrants this year is from Tennessee, and this is the Jack Daniels 12. Back on episode 439, which was quite some time ago, we tried the Jack Daniels 10 batch that was released, the Jack Daniels 12, and the Jack Daniels 14. Surprisingly, the 12 kind of outshone the other two for us. I have faint memories. Yeah. Faint memories. I'm looking forward to it. 107 proof, retails for 95 bucks. So this is about our cheapest entry in our top five here, if you will. And this is the third iteration of the Jack Daniels 12 year old. This is the patch three. So I'm assuming 2026, they'll have a patch four.

And of the whiskeys we have on the show today, this one's most likely to still be available on the shelf.

I would think so. And then Knob Creek 21, I've seen them out there in the wild. So it might be one. I mean, 250 is a big price tag, but I mean, it's definitely a star. You can't find, you know, those older pappies. Well, this is, it's not a bad flyer to take on. So if you want to double digit, you know, 20 year old bourbon, cause it's excellent.

It's really good.

All right.

I've been to this 12 check down as well. This is a little bit less of the sort of a cherry vanilla, coconut notes. There's no coconut notes on this, but a little bit more of the darker wood.

I know you're going to be disappointed, but I'm getting that like ripe banana. Yeah. Yeah. That you always struggle to pick up.

I'm getting a little fruit sweetness, but I honestly, um, yeah, I'm not getting any banana. Just doesn't work for me. I don't have the receptors, I guess.

Yeah. I think if I recall correctly, we thought the 14 was a little oak forward. It was a little, it was a higher proof, but yeah, I don't know.

I think it all matters where the barrels come from. Right. Let's taste it. Cheers. Cheers. Wow. Intense flavor.

At 107 proof too.

Yeah. Very intense. Uh, this is a, um, This is a, a bourbon chocolate kind of, but very high proof bourbon chocolate. Like somebody got too much bourbon in the candy.

Well, in this case too much whiskey in the candy. Yeah, I should say whiskey.

Although we know it does qualify as a bourbon. They choose not to call it one.

Sweet. It's got some nice sweetness, but there's a nice balance of sweet and oak.

The sweetness is more evident on the palate, not so much on the nose. Agreed. This is really good. This is a great whiskey. You're remembering it a little more now? I am remembering it. Yeah, this is a good whiskey. This is probably, you might say compared to our last one, less cherry vanilla, a little more... Darker fruits, I would say. Darker dryer. Darker dryer, yeah. Yeah. But it does have a sweetness to it, but it's less.

Now I'm curious. Are you going to blend all five of these at the end? It seems like a terrible thing to do, but I might. We'll see.

We'll see. These are such great whiskeys. I mean, that would be a, I don't know, depending on how much I have left, it could be a very valuable pour, very costly pour.

Right. Now, I thought it was surprising. I mean, you and I are both big Rye fans and no Rye was represented at this time. I know. But we had some excellent Ryes, I thought.

We did. We did. So, I think it's only fair if we mention a few of the honorable mentions. For sure.

We'll just kind of hit a few in the rye category, and then here in a little bit, we'll talk about some of the others, like some single moths that would really wild us. Sure. Yeah. So rye-wise, I think one we just recently had to me was that Southern Star Borrowed in Bon Rye. That was really good.

And for me, a rye like that that pays tribute to the grains so much that went into it, it just stood out. And another one, honestly, was the Brothers Bond Rye.

The blended rye. I think that was our first episode of the season. And that one, I could possibly say, was my

Either my favorite or very close to being my favorite rye of the year.

It was good. We had the new Rift 10-year, which was another nice addition. The funny thing is, most of the ryes we had were of the lower proof persuasion, which was kind of interesting.

Yeah, no rise made it in this year, but there was definitely some honorable mentions there. And were there any others that? The Silver Springs. Yep, from Bardstown.

Yep. I think they're based out of Ohio, maybe, but yeah, Bardstown. Let's see. Oh, the 15 stars, they're fine.

Was it First West? No.

It's like Finest Aged. Oh, Finest Aged. Yeah, right. Which was really nice. I mean, those guys don't put out a bad product.

All their stuff's really good. All their products are priced a little bit higher than others, but they're excellent. They earn their place on the shelf, for sure.

All right, some final notes on the JD-12 here. Should we talk like, leader going into the next poor or keep that to ourselves?

I think we'll, we'll just keep it to ourselves to the end. I mean, we're not going to do winter, winter chicken dinner tonight, right? No, I think, I mean, these are five fantastic fours. Why don't we just talk it out in public at the end and just between the two of us. All right. Works for me. Rather than make up our minds individually, we'll make them up as a team. All right. Sounds good. All right.

All right. Our next pour is the Wild Turkey Master's Keep Beacon. This one really, really floored us because we are both the big turkey guys. This is 118 proof. And you can see I've shared a lot of this because this is one to share with friends. I mean, they're all there to share with their friends.

Getting blessed with a pour of this is a pretty big deal.

You're turkey aficionados. Yeah. All right, let's check it out. This one retailed for $300. Big price tag on this one.

Is this our most expensive?

Yes, it is. And also, according to what they said, this is the last Master's Keep. So I'm assuming there'll be some sort of new iteration. I mean, I kind of think you're seeing the torch. I mean, we talked about the torch being passed a little bit. Right, right.

Yeah, I think that there's no doubt that limited time offerings, LTOs, or special releases, also known as special releases, are still doing very well in a market that's a little soft right now. But those LTOs and special releases are still strong. They're going good. For sure. So distilleries are not going to set them aside. They might reinvent them. They might change the way they do them, but then are going to stop doing them.

Yeah. I think we've talked. There's a lot of bourbon nerds.

Yeah.

And the bourbon nerds love the LTOs.

Absolutely. Oh my goodness. I've got great expectations here.

Yep.

Turkey funk.

Funk is there. Yup. There's that like classic cherry, like I want to say like almost a burnt orange.

Yeah. That, that orange came out. I remembered reviewing this with you and the orange came out early for you. It took a little bit longer for me to pick up on it. I was really getting the toffee nose and the salted caramel.

Yup.

This makes you just want to... I know. It's really good. There's so many notes in a good deep turkey like this. It's a bit of a toasty note too, like toasty oak.

Don't recall that there was like a range of ages on this and I've just got the bottle in front of me. And well, we talked about this one in more detail on episode 467. So I'm ready to sip.

So people are taking notes to go back. Yeah. Cheers. Cheers. Oh my, my, oh my, my, my, my. That is, um, that touches every receptor on my palate. Yep. And then it just breathe out through your nose. Wow. That is so good. This is craft done right.

Being sure to know like how much like, I'm sure Bruce and Eddie teamed up on this one.

Imagine when you get those.

I wonder who had the final say so.

Well, I mean, I think they're probably Jimmy. I don't know.

It gives it like the gladiator thing, the thumbs up, thumbs down.

Yeah. It's good whiskey. No doubt. Wow. That is so delicious. This is like the grand slam of, I mean, just these three alone. I know it's like bases loaded and then we got two more. Yep. We're hitting the big distilleries here.

Yes, we are.

Yeah, I mean. We haven't told everybody what's coming in the second half, but in the first half, I mean, we got Turkey, Jack Daniels, and Jim Beam. That's three big players in the game.

Right. But I think we did a great job of giving a lot of love to the small guys, too. And I think with the times the way they are, they're going to need it. Our good friend Drew Hanisch is doing the Lord's work, putting together his American distillery book, and it's going to shine a light on a bunch of them. Our good friends, Nora Gangly-Roper and Adam Polanski from Los Lantern have kept us in their their tasting loop and have turned us on to some amazing stuff.

Some distilleries we had quite honestly had never heard of. Right. You know, guys, just to put things in perspective here, Todd and I did almost 200 whiskeys in this last year. Altogether in 400 shows, we've probably done 1,500 whiskeys or so. I don't know. We don't have the numbers. But let's just use three to four bottles a show as an average. We're probably somewhere between 1,500 to 2,000 whiskeys. There are 3,500 distilleries in the United States with all we've done since, well, seven years now, five, six, seven, seven years now, and we still haven't hit all those distilleries. New ones coming out all the time. Some of them are dropping off, sadly say, but those kinds of things happen. We're never going to hit them all. I don't think it's possible.

No. I think Drew would tell you the same. He's got going to have a thousand in his book. So, and then, but he's going to update it. And so, but like you said, it's ever changing and some just don't make it. We went to Garrett County and sadly about a month later they were shut down, but we really enjoyed that show. I mean, we had a great time there. They had a great facility and I don't know, you kind of hope somebody goes in there and tries to do something with it.

I can't wait to start traveling with Drew's book. It's going to be so much fun. I think Melody and I have some plans next year for hitting the road a little bit. That book is sure to come in handy.

But since we were talking a little bit about Los Lantern. They really turned us on to some, I thought, some really great single malts this year. St. George that we had at the Malt Migos, that was that one that was kind of really like a citrusy single malt, almost like Condensed hops, I think is what I called it maybe. Southern Star again, their six year old we just had was delicious. It was really, really good. Yeah. I hope he sends us another bottle of that. And then The Warfield out of Idaho. First, I'm pretty sure that's the first product I've ever had at Idaho. Crazy. And it was delicious. It was absolutely delicious. And then Triple Eight. Yeah. I would say we definitely had the greatest number of single malts. this year than you probably definitely had in the past.

Well, I think so and probably makes sense because this was the year that, you know, single malt's got to basically turn themselves loose and under the new category. And yeah, I would expect that, you know, most of the channels out there, whether it be YouTube or podcast or whatever, have probably increased their single malt throughputs this year because there's a lot of great, a lot of great makers out there.

Yeah.

And because they're on the shelf now, means they were making these things well before the new category got approved.

Yeah, a buddy of mine sent me a Stranahan's 10-year reserve.

Good stuff.

If we'd gotten a bottle of that, it may have been in this top five. I'm not kidding. Oh, wow. It was amazing. And Jason loved it, too.

I've been meaning to go to Stranahan's. I go to Colorado once or twice a year, and I just need to get up there. So many things to do, so little time. I know it. I know it. Wow, the beacon is, well, it's a beacon. It is a beacon in the night. It is a beacon in the night. So great. This might be one I have to refill. I mean, I have it in my head of these three. I'm not going to say anything right now. No. But I definitely know the order of these three for me. I do too. All right. Well, let's take a short break, drink a little bit of water, clear that palette. And folks, we'll be back in the second half with two more great whiskeys, a lot more stats on our 2025 look back. And we're still going to announce our craft distillery of the year. And we haven't really talked about American whiskeys yet. So we're going to get into those a little bit. So stick around, folks.

We'll be right back. Hello there, Drew Hanisch, Whiskey Lore, and I am excited to announce that I have a brand new book coming out called Experiencing American Whiskey. Now, if you have checked out my travel guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon, you'll know that I go deep into the details of Kentucky Bourbon. Well, imagine that I've spread this out across the entire United States now, and I'm covering a thousand distilleries, coast to coast, and even Alaska and Hawaii, I have 227 detailed profiles in there from the distilleries that I've had firsthand contact with. I give you all the details that you need to know, like when they have tours, if they do tastings, cocktails, and everything is in a state-by-state format so that you can roll through, find your particular state that you're traveling to, and have all that information at your fingertips. On top of that, I have a website resource where you can bookmark and actually create a wish list of the distilleries that you'd like to visit. I cover state regulations so you know how many bottles of whiskey you can walk out with from a store from a distillery and so on. So it is an exciting book. It is the biggest thing that I put together to this point. And right now it is going to be going on sale on January the 13th, but it is They're actually available for pre-order right now at whiskylore.org slash shop. That's Whiskey Lore's travel guide to experiencing American whiskey.

All right, roadies. Welcome back to the second half of the show. We just went through three of our favorite pours of the year 2025. We started off with the Knob Creek 21. Follow that up with a Jack Daniels 12 year. And then lastly, the Wild Turkey Masters keep beacon. Great first half. Yeah.

It's hard to beat that. I mean, yeah, this is like the Academy Awards of whiskey, right? I mean, it's like everybody's good.

What was the old Yankees thing? The murderers row kind of thing of the baseball players, you know, like it was like Maris and or something like that. Luke Gehrig and that kind of thing.

Roger Maris, Babe Ruth. Yeah. I think it was called murderers row.

I'm not the best baseball historian, but I do recall that. That's kind of like, yeah. I mean, it's, I don't know, the iron curtain, you know, steel curtain. I don't know the steelers.

Anyway, yeah. Fantastic first half. And we've got another fantastic half for you here. And what are we starting off with though?

Well, we're going to stick in the wild turkey family. We've got this year's Russell's Reserve, and this is their 13-year barrel proof. This is the highest of the 13 years that had come out at 123.8 proof. This one retailed for $200. And that might still be a few out there. some of those little hidey holes, but probably not too.

If somebody comes to visit Todd, you've got almost a full bottle.

Yes. Actually, after I think a good friend of ours, Luke Reed gave me a pour of this one and after I had it, I was like, I got to have that. The means I can use, I procured a bottle for us to have on the show.

The means. The secret means. You and Rob both have your secret means. You won't talk about them.

Yeah. Rob's there. I don't know. He pulls them out of a magic hat or something. I know. I know. But this was in episode 454 is when we featured this one.

And this is kind of, I think this is one of those whiskeys that's on everybody's list.

And speaking of Rob, we tried, this is, this was at the Eagle Rare 2.0. That's right.

It was. Yep.

Mr. Rob Carter.

Fantastic.

I kind of, I'm kind of glad to do this because I want to nose it up against the beacon. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm going to do the same thing, but. Oh, wow. The nose is very different. Yeah. The 13 is different for sure. 13's got a little bit more baking spice to it.

A little bit of a, I'm getting like a brown sugar. Like the beacons got like this brighter citrusy nose compared to the Russell's to me. That's really cool.

Yeah. This is a brown crystalline sugar. Nutmeg.

Yeah, clove. There's a little clove going on there. A little salt.

A little salt. A little saltiness. Okay. Maybe I'm just thinking of salted caramel. I don't know. All right. Cheers. Cheers. Wow. That's concentrated goodness there. Oh wow. It was so good.

Some didn't get the love that some of the pass batches have, but man, that's good. That tickles my fancy. Yeah, it's really good.

No, I mean, I've had some 13s that are, I don't know. I think my memory's not good enough. You said it, some people said it didn't tickle their fancy the way that pass batches have, but honestly, I have to have them, I almost have to have them side by side anymore just to keep up. I mean, that's rich.

It's got nice sweet oak, a little bit of that funk. It's sweeter.

Yeah, it is sweeter. Sweeter than the beacon. Clearly turkey. Yeah, I'm getting that crystalline sugar, dark sugar, brown sugar. Yeah, that is so... Go back and sip that beacon. Oh, I don't want to mess with this.

Oh, you don't? Okay. I wanted to compare it, but because they're like... They're so different, but they're so both excellent.

I'm just afraid it'll impact my thinking on this one. I would like to keep it isolated.

You got to do that on your own then after the show. This is so good. That's kind of fun. I'm curious to know if the next iteration, if they'll keep it like that proof will fluctuate kind of like stag. Yeah.

Stagg Jr. I like the idea of it. I do. I like the idea that the whiskey tells them what to do. They don't have some predetermined place they want to be. Instead, the whiskey drives their decisions.

Well, I mean, it took a while to get to that though. I mean, the Beacon Mazaris in that 110, 107. Yeah. Early Russell's 13s were what? I think 1-0-12 had something in that. They weren't super high. 1-0-9 maybe. But maybe they're... Because I've heard tell that there's some hazmat wild turkey coming. Oh, I know.

That could be good. Now these Russells 13s, these are often made available at least for a pour at the gift shop. Yes, for sure. Sometimes they set the bottles out.

They had some, I know our good friend Bo up there, he posts stuff that they'll drop and they apparently dropped some holiday Christmas presents. So they had beacons and Russells 13. You know, people are coming to the holidays. Yeah. It's probably a good idea to, you know, give them something special.

Hit wild Turkey and Buffalo Trace. Right.

Yeah. Buffalo Trace is really up their, uh, release game too. Yeah. So if you're coming this way, check them out.

Yeah. This is a contender. No doubt about it. It has got me thinking how it fits in that first three. It's got a nice texture too. I'm going to save just a little bit. That's what I have left.

That's like the perfect single barrel pick, if it were a single barrel. Yeah. Like the perfect Russells.

Oh, could you imagine? Could you imagine if that was your single barrel?

Nobody gets a 123 single barrel from... No, but it'll be curious to know if maybe they change that up too. Those single barrels have always been 110. staying different, you know, Knob Creek, their single barrel picks were always 120. And now they've got a cast strength version, which is kind of interesting because I saw one, I want to say it was at a Kroger and it was under 120.

No, I mean, a lot of times at Turkey, when you pick your single barrels, they're already too low.

Yeah. So I mean, you can't, you can't add proof. Yeah. Jason and Scott had that scenario where like it came under 110. So they had to make it the, uh, used to be the was like a techie spirit. And now it's just like the, I guess it's what they call it, like the wild turkey selection or something like that.

So it's a shame when it happens because you know, it's not what you had in mind, but you know, you got to live with it.

All right. Do we want to talk about some of our favorite American whiskeys? Let's talk about American whiskeys. These are wheat whiskeys. I had Irish whiskeys. Pretty broad category for us. The bourbon rye blends. I think of that RD1, the Sister Cities, which was the Mizunara. and also French oak blend. That was really, really interesting. Corn whiskeys, which we had that one from Wood Hat that my friend Wade Ward just brought to me because he was traveling here for the Bardstown Blitz, which is Jason and Scott's big gathering in Bardstown. And he grabbed me a bottle and We had a Blue Corn episode and it really, really, really wowed us. Like I said, Irish whiskeys, light whiskey, we had the Gypsy, batch three, the Declaration. Eric Church. Yes. We had had that other, I believe it was batch two, and I don't remember, the Alchemist, I think.

Yeah, it was the Alchemist.

really outside of the box because they took a little bourbon, a little single malt, and yeah, just made magic out of it.

I mean, great whiskeys coming out of that label. Yeah. So yeah, if you see one, grab it.

And then guest-wise, we had featured over 39 different guests this year. Wow. And our first chocolatier. Delicia Chocolatier. Nicole Patel was her name and that was a lot of fun. We tried to brandy with her. I think you had like a Woodford double oak.

She was able to pair perfectly with her.

I even threw the Ardbeg scotch at her and she was like, I got this.

That's a lot of fun. If you ever want to have some friends over and do something really fun, whiskey pairings with food, chocolates, whatever.

That's charcuterie. I was going to say charcuterie is always fun. We have Wes Milligan from Barrel and Dolls who raises a lot of money. He's actually teamed up with Take, Jay West and Rare Bird, David Jennings on a few things recently. So raising money for Alzheimer's, which I think is amazing. I actually have a Cousin in Indiana that was just diagnosed with that.

It's a sad thing to happen to anyone.

But I mean, I think it'd be hard, hard pressed to find someone who hasn't been, you know, been affected by that or know someone that's happened. Of course, we've had some of our regulars, David Sandlin's been on a few times, our good buddy, Amzie Winning, our good buddy, Mr. Rob Carter, some we have roadies on. Diane Strong. Diane Strong.

Yeah, we've had a lot of, we've had a good variety, I think.

Yeah, it is a good mix.

We've been to a few distilleries. We did travel a bit this year.

Yeah, you went to Colorado.

I did. It was fun. Law's Whiskey was amazing. Alan was a true host and treated us to everything available there. We went out and drilled barrels in his rick house. It was so much fun. So always, always great to get out when you're traveling and pop into a distillery somewhere. And we're all traveling sometime or another. We're all always hitting the road. Just find out a distillery along the way and hit it. Especially if you've got that book from Drew, you know, it makes it easy.

We're going to give one away. Yeah. Yeah. I ordered two copies and he's going to sign both ones for me and then once we'll give away on the in the Roadies page, Bourbon Roadies page. So yeah, I'm excited for 2026. We've got a kind of a list of places we need to go check out. There's a lot of local ones, kind of new places that have popped up here and there.

And we have Drew coming on the show here next week?

Yeah, I believe so. Yeah, we're going to have him back on. I still had a few more questions to ask him. I mean, he's a great talker and he can, I mean, he's great for a show because You ask him a question, you get a good 10, 15 minute answer sometimes. But you also catch yourself just listening, because he's such a, yeah, he knows his subject. And I mean, you can tell he loves, I mean, think about that. He's traveling all 48 states to visit a distillery. All 50, right? I don't think, he wasn't going to do Ohio, excuse me, Hawaii or Alaska.

OK.

But I mean, he's going to have them in his book.

He did his West tour, had to buy a new car.

He might have to write some sort of interesting biography too.

All right. So we are moving on to our fifth and final whiskey of the show.

Yeah, this one was kind of a tough call, but I just thought it was super, super unique. And it was actually in the same show as the Jack Daniels pours. So that was 4.39. And this is the Woodford Reserve Chocolate Whisper Redux. 139.4 proof and It's a dessert, if you recall. It kind of blew us away, but we had a lot of the pores that probably could have fit in here. I think we talked about that new riff, the new riff 10-year bourbon really blew us away. whiskey acres. We had a single barrel from them that was, uh, chosen by Los Lander. Tremendous. Yeah.

Yeah. And Los Lander, and again, we'll just restate that folks. Um, Todd and I have, have been, uh, surprised more times than I can count on bottles from Los Lander and been introduced to distilleries we'd never heard of.

So, uh, there was the one in Minnesota, I think far north. Yep.

They get out there. They find them.

It's funny. I sent a message to Adam and was like, thank you for putting this on your list and all this. You've introduced us to a lot of great things. I was like, have you checked this one out? He's like, yeah. Have you checked this one out? He's like, yeah. Hopefully we keep staying on that list and we'll see some more fun stuff come our way from them.

Yeah, definitely. All right, back to the chocolate malt redux. Kind of the history behind this, it's been quite a few years ago, probably six or seven years ago that Woodford made a chocolate-malted rye.

Yeah, the Whisper, wasn't it? Well, no, chocolate-malted rye was one of the master's collection releases.

Now, it wasn't a rye whiskey, it was a bourbon, a rye bourbon made with chocolate-malted rye. And then they had a mistake that happened after that, where after they ran that batch, they didn't thoroughly clean the lines. And then they had 60 barrels that got contaminated with the flavors of that chocolate malted rye. So they ended up having to sequester those 60 barrels and blend them together and make a gift shop only release. And that was the whisper. And then this is the whisper redux. And I don't remember the story behind the redux, but this is basically a nod to that event that took place.

Yes. Apparently they sat on a few for a little bit longer and I don't know how they got this 139.4 proof.

I don't know. But this is $375. And if I'm correct, this is $100 for $375.

We tailed for $100. And it came out some time ago. So I mean, if you're going to find one of these, maybe at a bar. Yeah.

But that's got that wonderful chocolate note. But it's not hitting me like being 130, 140 proof.

No, there's no nose burn, surprisingly. This is another one I shared a lot, as you can tell. Oh yeah. Cheers. Cheers.

Wow. That is so good. The nose is so deceiving.

It's almost like you had a really nice bourbon and you took a fudgesicle. And you just set it in there for a little bit.

It does have this concentrated chocolate note. It is like you have this wonderful marriage of bourbon and chocolate. Yep. It's so good. But it's not like overwhelming chocolate. It's not like.

No, like I said, it's almost like a fudge. The essence of it. Yeah, fudge, cocoa kind of thing.

Wow, it's been a while since I've sipped on this.

Like I said, I threw it in there because it's unique and I definitely deserve to mention this, maybe like our most unique pours or something.

Yeah, and I think, you know, some of the times you get finishing flavors in a whiskey that come from, you know, a barrel that was either used in honey or used for any number of things, you know. But to have one that gets this flavor simply from a roasted rye, chocolate malted rye. So they malted the rye and they toasted it to the point of chocolateness and used it. And wow, it just, so there's no funny business here. This is just grains. Grains, yeah. This is just grains. Fantastic. Well done. And a lot of times I'm not the flavor guy. I'm not the person that likes the flavored kind of things, but this was done with respect. And off a pleasant mistake. Off a pleasant mistake. Started with a pleasant mistake. Fantastic. So you got them in your head.

I do, but do we want to talk about some of the craft distilleries we really enjoyed this year?

Absolutely. Let's give a nod to some of the craft people out there that have got our attention during the last year. Okay.

We talked a little bit about Warfield, that single malt. I'm kind of interested in seeing what else they have.

If we went back and revisited single malts again and tried to pick a winner, Warfield would be in the top two or three for me, I think.

I think so. Really good. But we had quite a few, so who knows, right? We did. Wood Hat, we talked about. Really small, almost sounds like a mom and pop place in Missouri. One of the places I'm very excited about is Minden Mill.

Yeah.

Such a unique place. It's out in Nevada. They've got the temperature-controlled rick houses, which I'm like, it seems like that would cost them a fortune.

Yeah. It's fantastic, though.

They've got one that's for their single moths. It's based on, I guess, like a Scottish airport, if I'm thinking correctly.

And then the other- They're monitoring temperatures worldwide to try and reproduce those.

And then they're bourbon and rye go in one that's, I think, Bardstown's airport or something like that.

How cool is that?

That's a great show. What show was that by the way? Today it's about 60 degrees, but.

What show was that by the way? Did you have that note? I didn't write that down.

So go back folks. That was Joe O'Sullivan. I remember his name. And yeah. The great thing is. I'm hoping they put out some single barrels. It's like that's on my wish list for 2026. Cause I'm, I want to try something a little higher proof cause those were great at 90.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then what do you think? Will we call it our craft distillery of the year?

I tend to agree with you.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Whiskey Acres. Whiskey Acres. Yeah. And this is DeKalb, Illinois. That's correct.

That's correct.

Yeah. So folks, if you're driving across Illinois and you find yourself passing through DeKalb, check out Whiskey Acres. They're our craft distillery of the year in 2025. They really got our attention.

Yeah, episode 450, we had a single barrel from them, again, Lost Lantern, who shined the light. And then surprisingly, we had their Baldwin Bond with Bobby DeMars from Blind Barrels. And we're really, really impressed with that as well. So tip of the hat.

Bourbon Road, the craft distillery of the year 2025. Yep, want to let them know.

Yeah, fantastic.

All right, back to the game at hand. Oh my goodness. All right. I, I think Todd, so I think that, um, we're probably lockstep on this, but I could be wrong. I'm gonna, I'm going to start off by saying what my number five is.

Oh, okay.

Does that work? Good works. But you tell me what you think because we have to agree on this. It's not what Jim thinks and what Todd thinks is what Jim and Todd thinks. Um, start us off. Okay. I'm thinking my number five is probably how it's, it's neck and neck between. the Jack Daniels and the chocolate malt redux?

I would say yes. We can even call those four and five and just move on if you wanted to.

I think we can because, well, I think we should put them in order though. It's not fair on my part because flavor, rich whiskeys, things that have, you know, flavors of something else typically don't get my So I would probably put the chocolate malt Redusk at number five.

I'd be fine with that.

Are you okay with that? It's really a great whiskey.

Agreed.

So that puts number four, the Jack Daniels. Yes. So the Jack Daniels 12 is our number four. And I'm going to let you sort of take over the conversation now. Where's number three falling for you?

It might have the best nose in this lineup today. but I think it gets out-proofed. Does that make sense? Okay. Yeah. So I think the Knob Creek 21, it's really close. Yeah.

And I was a little worried about that myself because I'm like at the end of the first half, I kind of had my idea what the top three were going to be. But then we, we tasted that at Russell's 13 and I think it kind of pushed somebody into the bottom. Yeah.

I love that coconut note because that's a unique note to me, but yeah, that's, I think that's my three, or our three.

And I'm going to agree with you. And I think 21, I think, is, yeah. Oh my gosh, you know what that means? Two turkeys. Two turkeys are in the top. Not surprising coming from us. Two turkeys at the microphone and two turkeys in front of us, yeah. All right, so we've got, let's just recap here, just so we keep everything straight. Sometimes it's hard to follow when you're just listening. Do we want to re-sip these a little bit and make sure? Are you positive? I do want to re-sip them, but it's not because I need to solidify my mind.

Oh, you're good? Okay.

Okay.

I think I'm good as well.

All right. My number two is the Russell's 13. I got to agree. Wow. We are lockstep. I knew it. I knew we would be. I knew we would be.

Well, I think we even may have spoiled it by being so floored by how good the beacon was. I think we even said it might be the perfect turkey.

Yeah. I think the beacon is without a doubt by far my favorite whiskey of the year. I mean, I don't think it was close.

It's stellar.

Yeah, it's really good. All right, so just to recap folks, we have number five, the Woodford chocolate malt redux. Number four, the Jack Daniel's 12 year, the 2025 release. That was batch three. Batch three. The number three was the Knob Creek 21. Fantastic whiskey. Definitely the best whiskey we had out of the Jim Beam distillery this last year.

Yes, and we had some great stuff from them for sure.

We did. Number two, the 2025 Castrink release of the Russell's 13-year. Epic, very good, delicious. I don't know that it was better than previous releases, but it was really good this year.

Try that. Yeah theory. I think I'm missing one though. Are you one of them?

Yeah, but probably find a poor if we wanted one to have that challenge It might be a fun one and the Bourbon Road 2025 whiskey of the year is the wild turkey Beacon, yeah This is the final release So they say. Okay. Well, the Master's Keep has been a great run. I was going to say it's been going on a while. It has been going on a while. I've been lucky to try a few, but not all. Yeah. Yeah. I still have a few. I've had some of the older ones like the diamond and the decades. Yeah.

I've had decades. Unforgotten. Unforgotten. That was the bourbon or the What was the rye?

What was that one called? Cornerstone.

Cornerstone, that's right.

The Cornerstone rye. There's been some great ones, but I have to say, of all of those, the beacon takes the cake. But I have a few. We might have enough of these master keeps around to do a master keeps show.

Yeah, and that'd be fun. I also tried the Triumph.

That was the rum finish.

Tried that when we did the pick.

I still have some diamond. I still have some decades. See, I thought diamond was its own thing. Was that a master's keep? Was it a master's keep or not?

I don't know. You ought to check. You have the bottle. I have the bottle, but I don't remember. That was his 60th, right? It was a 17-year bottle and bond.

What was that called? Oh, that one.

Oh, that was amazing.

Yeah, I've heard that might give this a run.

That would give this a run. That was really good. I forgot all about that one. All right, folks. It's been a great show. It's been a great year. Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. My first full year. Yeah. We are recording this in 2025. Right now for Todd and I, it is the week between Christmas and New Year. We're trying to knock this out because Jim's doing dry January this year, and Todd's got me covered.

Gonna do my best. He'll do a fine job.

But we already have shows recorded for the first part of the year. Obviously, this is one of them. This is our first show of 2026. And next week, we've got Drew Hanisch coming on. We're going to talk about his new book. Yep.

We're going to talk some more about his new book.

Some more about his new book. It has been on our ad rolls at the beginning and mid of the show. But 2025 was a great year. Banner year. Lots of great whiskeys out. And looking forward to 2026 and a lot more fun.

One might say we had a buttload of tastings this year.

A buttload. We did figure out what the description of that was, right?

Yes, I think so. A buttload. It did have something to do with Sherry. A lot of laughs.

It had something to do. A buttload is a... What was it? It's a Sherry cask. It's a Sherry cask size, right? Yep.

Oh my gosh. That was so funny. Lots of fun.

All right, folks. Well, we hope you enjoyed this show. Todd and I certainly had fun drinking through all these whiskies. All of these came from Todd's private collection. So if you're in town, make sure you give them a holler. Yeah. He'd be happy to have a poor week, I'm sure. Love it. Don't come running. Don't come in groves because... It's okay.

They always make more. They always make more.

We are recording today at the Frankfurt Society Corner Rick House. Thanks to the Frankfurt Society for supporting us over the last year and allowing us to use the facility. Studio B. Yeah, it's a great place. It's a great group of people. It's lots of fun. If you have any questions about becoming a member of Frankfurt Bourbon Society, make sure you go to FrankfurtBourbonSociety.com. And, uh, check it out. They do, uh, welcome members from outside of, uh, the city of Frankfurt. So, yeah. 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. Ty and I do a show every single week on Wednesdays. We sometimes have a guest on. We sometimes have a group of bottles we're going through. We're always having fun. We're always drinking whiskey. We hope you'll join us when we do. The best way not to miss an episode is to subscribe. We love it when you subscribe. If you're listening to us now, that means you're on an app that has the ability to subscribe So just scroll up to wherever that button is and click it that way next time we put out a show you'll get a notification and And we can be a part of your day with your headsets on Check out the Bourbon Road website. That's where we sell our swag. You can also find our episodes there. Sometimes we write an article. There are a few articles on there as well. We hope you enjoyed the show. We hope you'll listen to us every single week, but until the next time, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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