485. Bonding Over Bourbon: Dusty Old Crow, Angel's Envy, and Old Dominick

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.

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, welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. It's Todd here today. I am without Jim. He's in... much warmer temperatures than we are today, but I do have a couple of special guests. I've got our Alec Baldwin. I call him of our show, and that's Amzie Winning from the Frankfurt Bourbon Society and Bourbon on the Banks. Amzie, welcome back. Thank you. Glad to be here as always. And I brought back my good friend, and Amzie's good friend, I guess. I don't know. They have this funny AI battle a lot.

He's okay.

Yeah, he's okay. Bo Cumberland, the producer, director, man behind the Frankfurt, the Heart of Bourbon documentary that we had on. Probably should have looked that episode up, but I didn't. But sometime last year, probably about spring or maybe late early summer. But yeah, so I brought them on. We are here. We're going to talk a little bit with Bo because he's got some new fun stuff going on on his YouTube channel. The biggest reason we came here today is to kind of celebrate the Bottled and Bond Act. And you guys may remember this time last year, Jim and I talked to Drew Hanisch from Whiskey Lord podcast and author. And we had four different expressions, bottled and bond expressions. If I recall correctly, one of those was a super dusty from the forties of an old crow, bottled and bond bourbon that we had and flat out amazing. Then we also had The Still Austin, Baldwin & Bond rye, Still Austin being out of Texas. We also had a Laird's Apple Brandy Baldwin & Bond, which is pretty unique. Oh, and now I'm drawing a blank on that fourth one. Oh, I remember now. It was the classic six-year Heaven Hill Baldwin & Bond that used to run about 14 or 15 bucks. It had the white label. Yeah. They took it off the shelves, added a year, and added about 30 bucks to the price. Before we get into talking with Bo and AMZ, let's get to this first bottom line. To keep with tradition, it's an old crow. It is a Dusty. It's from 1992. This was a Japanese export. This is an old crow bonded. Obviously, if you know bonded, it's 50% alcohol by volume, so a hundred proof. At least four years, although you're starting to see, I don't know if you guys have noticed, there's some of those Baldwin bonds out there. You'll see, I know Lerkin has like a seven year and some of the others are, Southern Distilling has a six year. So you know some others that run a little older on their Baldwin bond?

Yeah, Wilderness Trail, the seven year bonded rhyme.

But yeah, let's dive into this.

Cheers, Jim.

Good to see you all.

So like I said, this is from 1992. I have no idea what this would have ran back in the day, but probably not too expensive. It's got a classic bourbon nose, like that rich caramel. Yeah, for sure. And I will say this, it's crazy dark. Like that's a crazy dark four-year-old bourbon, because we had it sitting beside the others that we'll be sampling through today. I mean, four threes close, but the rest, I don't know. It just seems really dark to me for some reason.

Yeah, it does. I wonder if maybe it could be the labels on it, the black labels somehow, or they're black on the inside too, makes it look darker. I can't believe it's four years old and that dark.

Try to remember to take a picture of everything we sip today, but let's, let's sip it. Cheers. Cheers. Oh, that's good. Much better than the modern day old crow I tried not too long ago. That stuff is just, it's rough. Not good. It's really rich. It's got a great mouthful on it. That is, that's great. Like a cherry caramel. Little spice at the tail then. Yeah. Man, I need to bring that back. in that iteration, not a four-year paladin bond.

I should know this because it was in our film that we did, but when did it... Bob Robinson talked about when they messed up the calculation. That was in the 80s, right?

Yeah, it was.

So this would have been post that.

Yeah, but this also, let's see, let's say Frankfurt, it also has Claremont. So this could have been some Jews aged in Claremont, some special Like I said, I feel like as dark as this is, it was either A, way up in the top maybe to give it that dark color, or it could be a little older in that maybe. But yeah, I think it wasn't like the mid 80s or early 80s I feel like.

I'm thinking like 86 or something maybe. But I was just thinking when it switched over and it was supposedly the bad the bad old crow. If this was the bad old crow, I just happen to think the good old crow must be really good.

For those that haven't watched our documentary, we got to chat with a, was he a chemist? Is that correct? Or he just worked in the lab?

He was like the whole manager of the facility.

Yeah. And his name was Bob Robinson and he worked there for many years. He kind of gave us the reason for why Okro went south and they had done an expansion at the distillery and, but they hadn't adjusted the calculator, like the Mashville calculations or something like that to, I guess to, you know,

Was it larger fermenters or something like that?

It was just a mash bill change. Like I guess, yeah, probably larger fermenters were going up and they kind of kept the same or something didn't get adjusted. So he says that's the point. It just kind of turned, turned a little south. I mean, he said, you know, it wasn't bad, but it just wasn't like it used to be. But at the time, I think they were owned by national.

They shot that up the corporate ladder and they said, just put it out anyway. And, you know, so, okay. Yeah.

So I'll say that this is just, it's really good. Like I can't believe this is four years old. Like if this is four years old, it's some of the best four year old I've ever had probably. Yeah.

Yeah. That mouth feels just, it's just rich and luscious.

Tons of caramel. Yeah. You know,

So Bo, I keep looking at our documentary on YouTube, which is pretty fun, because every once in a while you'll get a new comment. But we're up to like 22,000 views, which is pretty awesome, I think. It's only been on there for, what, about eight months? Something like that, yeah, not long. I mean, is that the kind of response you were expecting, or were you hoping to go viral?

I mean, I think my channel, Mostly what I'll get on a video, I'll get a couple thousand views per. There have been a few series that I've done that have reached more than that and I'm very appreciative of that. But yeah, this film has gotten a tremendous amount and I'm thrilled at how successful it is. And like you said, to your point, the comments about it and their I mean, overwhelmingly positive comments about it and sincere questions about certain aspects of it that I think are pretty cool.

Yeah, there was the one guy that kind of made me laugh because he said, we weren't really the heart of bourbon, but he really enjoyed it. And I was like, well, you know, Bartsdown took capital of bourbon. So I'm like, they stole, we are the capital. So I was kind of like having a little go forth, but he was just kind of laughing. So that was pretty funny.

Yeah.

One of the things I've noticed is you've gone to shorter form things. You've got a series about the history of Buffalo Trace with Fred Mozenter.

Do you want to talk about that in a little bit? Basically, it came out of the film that you and I did together. Fred was a part of that film. I love certain personalities in the bourbon industry and Fred is one of those. I mean, he's just, he's always happy to be wherever he is. He just, I mean, he just kind of brings joy to wherever he is. So through this process, and I'd known Fred before we started this, I met Fred several years ago through another friend of mine. And so that's kind of what. what brought me to bring him in on this project. And then through, through working with him on this film, I got to talking to him about, I would love to do something more just focused on Buffalo Trace. And I wanted to use him as a, kind of a subject matter expert on the project that I was doing. So the idea was just for me to be the narrator and talk about some aspects of Buffalo Trace, but have him be the subject matter expert on whatever. So that's kind of how that came about. So right now I'm working on the eighth episode right now. which will be the final episode. So there are seven out there right now. But it just really went from beginning to end of kind of the Buffalo Trace story. And it was really cool because Cory, I'm blanking on his last name right now, but he works out at Buffalo Trace in the marketing department. He's been like completely helpful as far as getting any kind of okay that I could do it, you know, allowing me to go out and film at Buffalo Trace and giving me footage that they have of, you know, drone footage or, you know, still footage, that kind of stuff. So he's been awesome at helping with that part out. And Fred is just, you know, Fred, he was brought just joy to the project. It came from doing more, and I don't know if you remember this, either one of you, but kind of the idea of our film, The Heart of Bourbon, wasn't to be an exhaustive account of everything. It was just to be a conversation starter and to be a beginning of telling more of these stories. That's kind of what came out of it is now starting to tell more of these in-depth stories that we couldn't really fit into a hour or hour and a half film.

Right, right. And did you say Fred's last name? It's Fred Mosenter. Some of you, you may recognize that name from obviously the Frankfurt Urban documentary, but he's been a tour guide that Buffalo chased for like 16 years, 16 years, 17 years. And he's also a Frankfurt Urban Society member and shows up and just a funny guy. I often call him the Wilford Brimley kind of. I don't know, something about that.

If you don't know who he is, if you see him at Buffalo Trace, he's usually wearing some sort of like a, almost like a cowboy hat, a brimmed hat of some sort.

Safari, I think it was like bourbon safari kind of thing. Yeah. But yeah, real jovial guy, really funny.

You'll never, you will never see him without, you will never not see him without a smile on his face.

Yeah. He's a very happy guy. All right. MC, you want to tell us about poor two? Yeah. So this one,

I first had this one in a blind tasting up at Watch Hill Proper in Louisville. It was blind. They said it had a common theme and the theme was everything was from Angel's Envy distillery. This was actually my favorite from them and it is their Angel's Envy cask strength bottled in bond Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. And I remember when it first came out, how do you have bottle and bond and cask strength? Because you've got to add water to get it down to 100 proof. Well, they have an explanation from this. I'll tell you what it actually says on their website. There's a first for everything through a lower barrel entry proof in meticulous blending. The Angel's Envy Cast Strength Bottle and Bond bourbon combines the historic bottle and bond distinction with the contemporary boldness of cast strength bottled at 100 proof. So I guess they went in the barrel at a fairly low entry proof. Maybe some of those barrels lost a little bit of proof. And then I think somehow they were coming out close to 100 proof. Someone had the idea, hey, let's omit some barrels if we need to or whatever, and then blended it to 100 proof. So really pretty unique to have bottle and bond. Um, or water hasn't been added to the finished product. So that is pretty cool.

So this is it only in the three 75 or do you know?

Yeah, it's in the, uh, it's in the three 75. Um, let's see, runs about 64 99. They saw it there at the gift shop, uh, in Louisville. Um, and I believe I read that this was six years old.

Okay. It's almost like an almond thing going on, like a amaretto kind of thing.

So for me on the nose, it's a little bit sharper than the old crow. 34 years will do that though.

Yeah. In a bottle.

You know, I agree a little bit of that kind of cherry almond type thing going on. I almost want to say I still get a little bit of grain though.

Yeah. Like I could see a little bit of grain. Let's dive in. Cheers. Cheers. Another soft one on the palate. Yeah. It's a lot softer than it knows is. Yep. Get a little green apple on that. Or maybe like, maybe not necessarily green, but like a kind of an apple note.

Yeah, I agree. A little bit of apple. I still get some caramel, but a, but a light caramel, um, a little fruitier compared to that. I mean that old crow, but I mean, You know that the caramel on this reminds me, and I've probably described this before in some other bourbon, there's a little caramel candy. It's like the caramel cream that has the little white kind of confectioners stuff in the middle. I'm talking about, it's like maybe even swirled. I get that because I feel like I get like a light.

The cow tail thing? Is that what that's called?

Yeah. No, these are more like the size of like a little peppermint candy or something, but they're caramel and like swirled with like, like the confectioner filling in the middle.

I don't know. Sounds good though. I love caramel. Caramel or caramel, however you want to call it.

I get the caramel and then like a little like, a little like confectioner sugar type thing on this too.

Do you call it caramel because you're from Indiana?

You know, I'm from Indiana, but, uh, close enough to Kentucky that I don't know what to call things.

Should we say Caramel? Should we just say Caramel? Caramel. Caramel. To make Emsi feel okay.

Right. So another little project, I mean, I feel like After the documentary kind of came out, there were a lot of, I mean, not like Hollywood agent type things coming, but it seemed like a lot of people wanted to talk to you about doing things. I know you've got kind of another series called Forging a Bourbon Legacy, which is kind of focusing on Anderson County story in Lawrenceburg, right? So who kind of came to you with that idea and how's that been going?

So right after, right after we, published our documentary and got a little bit of traction with that. A buddy of mine, Jerry Dangles, reached out to me from Stone Fence Tours.

Recently on the show.

Yeah, okay. And I'm embarrassed to say this, but if I don't say it, he'll call me out on it. So he reached out to me one day and we were just talking and he said, I love the film. I love just the, the back and forth and, you know, the E.H. Taylor segment, just whatever. But anyway, he said, would you be interested in doing one in Anderson County? And I said, yeah, I mean, let's talk about it. So he was like, you know, there's just so much history there. And I just, I was like, okay, I mean, there's history there, but I mean, other than wild turkey and four roses, what else is there? and man, was I completely wrong. And I will say this, the history that we're unveiling and researching, I knew it existed, but I guess I hadn't put it together that all that was Anderson County. Like for instance, because of Cave and all, Mary Dowling's popular now, but I had just kind of recently discovered her, Before I even knew there was a Mary Dowling line out, you know, I'd kind of discovered her. So I had discovered a lot of these stories, but I hadn't done enough research to put together that they're all Anderson County. And so when he came to me, I was like, I mean, we could do that. But I mean, really, we're just going to be talking about wild turkey. And I mean, I knew who the rippies were, but I didn't do enough research to know that that was prior wild turkey. I mean, he was kind of like very, what do you want to call it? He was very nice about it. He was like, there's plenty of history there. And I said, okay. So, I mean, and here's, this is the thing, what I'm discovering with this film that I'm working on right now. The one we did for Frankfurt was fairly easy in that all of the history was just linear history. I mean, this history in Anderson County is like a tree root. You think you're going one way, this intersects another. I mean, it's just so hard to keep. together and like Jerry and I will do a bunch of research and we'll follow this rabbit trail down, you know, researching this only to come to find out that it's inaccurate. The internet's full of inaccuracies about, I mean, you know that, but it's so full of inaccuracies that I would literally spend hours tracing out something, you know, this happened here, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, get to the end. It's like, that's not at all the case. So I have to backtrack. Where is it? Did it got off track? And so that's been the hardest part of this, this actual project is keeping it straight. What's actually true and what's not. And I know The bourbon industry is just laced with inaccuracies and false stories. And I don't really mind even telling some of those because it's just part of the bourbon culture. And it doesn't matter if Elijah Craig was the first one to discover bourbon. I mean, that stuff, you take it for what it's worth, but I don't want to falsely report something that's just clearly inaccurate. It's a lot harder to research this one than it was the project that we worked on about Frankfurt. The Frankfurt stuff was just readily out there.

Yeah, but it's still kind of, I mean, it's got its lore. I mean, the Buffalo Trace guys have their, you know, their things like Yates Taylor. There's kind of like this question whether how involved was he with the Baldwin-Bonn Act? I mean, they like to call him kind of like the man behind it, but like you talked to Drew Hanish at Whiskey Lure and he says, he kind of jumped on the bandwagon rather, so.

But, but at the end of the day, I mean, things like that, I don't mind because whether or not E.H. Taylor was at the forefront or a part of it, his name being attached to it brings it all out. So it, you know, to me that, that stuff doesn't really matter, but, but I just want to make sure that, you know, we're, we're telling the real history and, you know, like I've recently just read, um, Fred Minnick's book about old Crowe and he's kind of found that Dr. Crowe may not have even been a doctor. I've seen that before. It's all this kind of stuff. But whether or not that changes the story or not, it doesn't really for me. So it's just that kind of doing due diligence for that. And the other part of it is now that I've kind of opened up this Pandora's box of Anderson County. There's so much that what I'm afraid of is kind of like, it was this way for our film too, but I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to tell enough of the story in an hour or an hour and a half. I try to keep something like this. I try to keep it at least an hour, but no more than like an hour and a half because I don't want to, I want it to be a three or four hour movie. Right.

Hey, Ken Burns does series. What's wrong with you?

And that's the thing. We even talked about doing a series, but to me that kind of, for what I like to do, I like to have a feature film type thing that kind of introduces the area. or the story, and then I'll use that as a catalyst for other shorter or longer form content that goes a little bit deeper, but this one has so much going on that I'm afraid, I tell Jerry all the time, I'm afraid these families, and I will say this, the families that are involved in this are super, super, super excited about just their story being told, but I'm afraid what's gonna happen is when they see the, the piece, it's not going to be, you know, the Rippey family is going to feel like we were much more of a part of this story and the Bond family, we were much more a part of the story. And they are, but you can't. fully tell the whole story in an hour, hour and a half.

I think that's where you could go back and then do a separate episode essentially for each family.

What I'm doing now before this film even launches is I have a series on my YouTube channel, Forging a Bourbon Legacy, And it is telling that these episodes are five minutes, six minutes, but they go into a lot more detail about each family. Like I've done one on Judge McBrayer, I've done one on The Bonds, I've done one on Wild Turkey, even though I'm going to do another one on The Rippies that kind of bring it up to the Wild Turkey. But I've done those and it's got a little bit more, even though they're five minutes long, five or between five and 10 minutes long, even though they're there, it's you know, it's a little bit more information. And so I'm hoping to use these to kind of build up anticipation for the actual film and then use the film as a catalyst to get more information about that, like I'm doing with our film in Frankfurt.

Nice. You know, Beau, I know you and Heather just went on a cruise here recently.

We did.

And I've only been on one cruise, but one thing I noticed was it was a way to visit a bunch of places.

Yeah.

And then several of those places, I was like, Oh, I would like to come back and spend a week here, you know? And I think that's kind of what you can do with something like, you know, the project on Anderson County. For sure. Letting people know the places they want to go back and spend a week, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. So before we take a break, I got to know short form or the long form doc. I mean, what's kind of your favorite or are they, is there good things about both, I guess? So to you.

I prefer short form only because I am very much a creature of instant gratification. And so, I mean, that sounds silly, but if I can look through my database, some footage that I have, interviews that I have, you know, B-roll that I have, and I can put together something and I can start in the morning time and complete it by the afternoon or nighttime and post it. I feel like I've done something I have gone from nothing. And then I've created a piece that tells a story and I can post it. It's it's live. The benefit of doing long form content is. It forces me to slow down and say, I'm not going to have anything on this until the summertime or the fall or whatever. And so I know that, and then that affords me the time to say, okay, I need to step back and do a lot of research on this. I need to really kind of do my diligence in telling the story and figuring out how it you know, kind of work. So I like that, but if I could only do one or the other, I would 100% do short form because I just want to have it out there.

So if you're in Hollywood, you'd be a commercial guy, not a movie. Probably.

Or a trailer guy would do the trailers.

Alright folks, stick around. We've got two more expressions to go through. I'm here with Bo Cumberland and Amzie Winning and we're enjoying some bottle and bond today. So 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. 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've put together to this point. And right now it is going to be going on sale on January the 13th, but it is actually available for pre-order right now at whiskylore.org slash shop. That's Whiskey Lore's travel guide to experiencing American whiskey.

Hey there, Bourbon Roadies! It's Diane Strong with Bourbon on the Banks. I'm popping in to let you know tickets for this year's Bourbon on the Banks Festival go on sale March 17th, and we've made some exciting changes. For the first time ever, special access ticket holders will enter at noon. That means just 300 guests will have the entire festival grounds to themselves for an exclusive one-hour experience. As always, tickets move fast, especially the special access. So set your alarm and mark your calendar for March 17th, 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. And if you're rolling in with a group of 10 or more, reach out to me directly. I'll make sure you receive a special group discount. We can't wait to see you on the river.

All right, welcome back to the second-to-last show. I'm with my friends, Amzie Winning and Bo Cumberland. We've been diving into what's going on in Bo's wonderful media world, if you will. And we also sampled a couple of fun ball and bond expressions. The first one being a 1992 old crow. Yeah, hard to find, I know. But I brought something special for my good friends for us to crack. It's a Japanese export. And then Amzie was kind enough to bring a Angel's Envy bottled in bond, foolproof, which might be the first time I've ever seen those words tied together, I guess. But yeah, great start. And yeah, so I think we're ready to dive into our third pour and then we'll get to some more questions with Beau and Amzie. So what we have in our glass here we're trying to keep it different and fresh with every time we have these bottled and bonds is an old Dominic bottled and bond Tennessee whiskey this time. So this is 75% corn, 13% rye, 12% barley. It does go through the Lincoln County process, obviously be dubbed a Tennessee whiskey, which no longer makes it a bourbon quotation. I got my quotation marks up there. I have my opinion on that, but So yeah, it's filtered through the sugar maple charcoal. It's aged in barrels from, I thought this was pretty cool, West Tennessee white oak. So Tennessee oak with a heavy number four alligator char, and it retails for about $65. And O'Dominic is one of those brands that It's been in Tennessee since like, I think 1866. It was Dominico Canale was the guy who, he was a grocer there in Memphis, Tennessee. And I think what he was doing was kind of like sourcing barrels and kind of, you know, back in that time, they, if you bought something, you kind of either got a jug from them or brought your own jug to fill up and you paid kind of like that way. So, but yeah. It'll craft your nose on this one. I'm getting a little bit more earthiness.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's a good shot.

Yeah.

Well, like, uh, like you're walking through like a dark, damp woods a little bit. Yeah.

With Hemsie right behind us.

We're hiking, right? Yeah. He's not carrying a.

Not just, not just creeping on you.

That's some sort of weird horror movie, right? There's still some nice fruit there too.

Yeah.

Well, let's sip it. Cheers. Cheers. Yeah. That's got some good things going on with it. I hate to keep with that like cherry, but I was just going to say cherry. I'm getting a little bit of on the finish, a little like a nice, just a little bit. Cherry is the first thing that hit me though. Little tobacco, like almost like kind of like sweet, like sweet tobacco, you know, pipe tobacco kind of thing a little bit.

There's a, there's like a little bit of grain there too, like a pleasant kind of graininess to it. Um, I almost want to say I get like a little like green banana. Okay.

A little plant, like plantain or just under ripe banana. Yeah.

Somewhere maybe between those two. I can see that.

I can taste that.

Like kind of on the, towards the finish a little bit.

Come back to the nose a little bit. Now I'm getting a little bit of, just a little bit of nuttiness, like almost like a honey roasted peanuts kind of thing. All right, both. So, You've been working with a lot of different stories. You said you talked with the McGbrayers and things like that. Are those guys coming to you and saying, hey, can we use this as kind of a material for, I guess, for their own social media? I mean, how does that kind of work, I guess?

So the answer is yes. I mean, a lot of them have. not just people that I've worked with on the film, on films, but you know, I've had some reach out, you know, and want to do some stuff, which I think is really cool. But yeah, certainly the, the people that I, that I filmed for, for like the Frankfurt documentary and this film as well, you know, I've let them know, look, I'm here. My number one goal is to, to help promote Bourbon, to help promote the Bourbon history, the stories. So anything that I do, Anything that I shoot, whatever is free, they can use it for whatever they want to promote themselves, their brand, their distillery. So yeah, the idea is that we're all in this together. We're all in this to try to tell these stories and promote this. this product. Yeah, this magical elixir. So yeah, I mean, and they have for the most part, the first one, as a matter of fact, the first thing that I put out the Forging a Bourbon Legacy episode on Wild Turkey, I had sent it to Bo Garrett at Wild Turkey. He's the one that I interviewed at Wild Turkey for their segment. So I put this thing together and I sent it to him and I sent it to him and I said, hey, check this out, see if it tells the right story. I don't want anything to be wrong, whatever. And the next day, Jerry texted me and goes, hey, have you seen how many views that's gotten? And I said, what do you mean? And he said, Bo posted it and got it.

I was gonna say, Bo's got a big following.

Yeah, and it already had like thousands of views. And I was like, Jerry, I had a few things more I wanted to do to it. So I just sent it to him to look it over, but he just posted it. So I was like, all right, let's just go with it. So yeah, I mean, so I think it's good. And like I said, anything I can do to help tell the story and that goes for anybody. If I've never worked with a distillery, I want to tell these stories. So that's awesome.

I wonder, it kind of makes me wonder if like Eddie and Jimmy or Bruce have seen it too.

Yeah. He said, both said he showed it to, um, All three of them. All three of them? That's cool.

Yeah.

And he said, he, Bo told me actually, I had to, we had to follow up, interview him for something else for this project. So about a month later, I saw him again and he said that a couple of times people have come into the distillery and recognized him from that piece. Oh, nice. Yeah. So like they don't really know his story or know who he was, but he said, he said a couple of times people have come in and said, aren't you the guy from that video?

The way I would love to see your product is like, yeah, it's on YouTube for everybody to watch, but I think, you know, it'd be cool for like these distilleries just to kind of like have it running on like a little, you know, loop on a TV somewhere in their gift shop or something. Just, you know, somebody can obviously sit there for five or six minutes and watch this little thing about the history of wild turkey. I mean, who wouldn't want to watch a little bit of that? Sure. They've got their tours and they give the history, but you know, you're doing, You know, there's some people that don't go for a tour. They just pop in the bottle shop too.

So I'll put this out there and maybe this will go somewhere. Maybe it won't. So one thing I do for the Neely family distillery, I did a feature link film about his distillery, Royce's distillery and told their story. And one of the things I've been doing for them since I moved to Kentucky in 2020 is I do the pieces for their distiller, their, their, um, the showroom in their distillery. So anytime there's a new launch at Neely Family or something, I'll do a video about that product and he'll show it on the TV there. And so what I did recently, that film came out I think a year ago maybe. And so I geared his the film that shows in his showroom around, it's got the same theme as his actual film does, but I did it to where it just builds on itself. So every time I do something new, I just add it to the end of what he has. So now his piece that runs in his gift shop is like an hour and 30 minutes right now, because it's just, it builds on each other, but it coincides with his film. So I think it's kind of cool that You know, you can get some of the history, some of that stuff in his gift shop, along with information about his products. And so I'm willing to do that for anybody.

That's cool. I've noticed I'm starting to get a little like spicy. It's getting a little spicier the more I sip on this, which I kind of like. It's like leaving a little like almost like white pepper bite, little maybe oak spice too. I feel like I started to get a little cinnamon from it too.

Now, I may have been busy kind of nosing this and thinking about it. Did you say what the price was on this, Todd?

This one goes for about $65. So, you know, Kraft, that's not too bad.

That's a good bottle. I like it. Yeah.

So, Amzie, you know, we're a bit away from October, of course, but I mean, you know, the Bourbon on the Banks Festival is a wheel that it's always rolling a little bit. I told most of our listeners not too long ago that we just had an event where we You know, checks went out to how many different places? Ooh, I can't tell you that total number. Was it high 30s or low 40s?

Yeah, it was up there.

So different charities that, you know, a little piece of the pie went out to over 100,000. You know, some got more, some got less, but that's just the way it goes. I'm not sure. And then I guess as volunteers, we all got to kind of choose which one we also wanted to donate our hours to is kind of the way it works, which I got. Not only do I set up a, you know, we have our Bourbon Road tent there, but I also volunteer quite a bit. So that's always a, I think that's a really unique and cool way to let the volunteers kind of get back to. I mean, some of them give a lot more hours than I do, obviously, but it's awesome that they can do that.

Yeah, you know, the big thing there is Bourbon on the Banks. You know, it is, I've said it many times on here, it's a charity-driven festival. We have just a couple paid employees, you know, Diane Strong's kind of our full-time paid employee that we have, and then a few other people that we pay just some smaller amounts to do some things. So we couldn't do it without our volunteers. And so, yeah, this year, based on their hours, they could decide where their money went. And so that's probably why the number of charities bumped up a little bit. Some of those may have only got a few hundred dollars. But then, you know, we had charities that got several thousand dollars. And a lot of our main charities, I would say, also are geared towards families and or children that are in need or even crisis. And we kind of have steered it towards that. And that's something that's important to me that we keep doing that. You know, another thing there is that Bo helps us quite a bit at Bourbon on the Banks. So if you've ever seen the Undressing Bourbon series that we share where we In the past, you know, we interview people, we've done it with various topics. We have also just interviewed people in the industry to learn more about them. Also our barrel pick promotional spots. All of that fine work, if you've seen it, is done by Beau and does a great job. Great job with that.

Agreed. So we've got one more pour. Are you ready to move on? Yeah. Okay. So MC and I both know a little bit about this one. This is the, um, old pepper. This is our Baldwin bond rye. This time we're going to, you know, like I said, we're, we had four different, very, very different pours. So this is a fun one to add. We just had them, uh, their head distillery just came a couple of months ago and visited and Cody Giles, Cody Giles, Cody. So if not mistaken, this used to be a 95, five, 100, um, 95, five, 95 rye, 90 or five barley. And then they also did some a hundred all rye and blended it. And now it's kind of transitioned to, if I'm not mistaken, he said it's all 100% rye. So this is, uh, you don't see that very often because I've heard rye is, Not a fun grain to work with can get very sticky. Yeah. So for those that don't know, Oh Pepper is in...

Lexington, Kentucky. James E. Pepper.

James E. Pepper Distillery, yes. Really neat place. That whole little area is a really cool place to check out. There's breweries there. There's Dark Arches there. RD1 is not too far. You've got Ethereal Brewing, Goodfellas Pizza. There's food. There's just a lot going on there. Barrel House Distillery. Barrel House. Across the street is the Borough, which has a lot of music. And they actually have a brewery there. But Pepper is, it's an old brand. It's been around for years. It's a really fun tour. We, when we did our barrel pick and actually all three of us were there for that, for bourbon on the banks. They've got some really neat stuff there, but let's dive in. Oh, citrus.

Yeah. Rye on the nose. Yeah, the mint.

I get the peppermint and I'm getting like a bright citrus note too. Yeah. But they kind of start, the cool thing I think is like they were one of those that kind of started, they used to source from MGP. So a lot of those older bottles you might see out there probably say distilled in Indiana, but I'd say in the past couple of years.

That also specifically would be the 1776 brand was the source product.

I remember seeing some single barrels like back in the day that were Indiana. I feel like I had a few of those.

But now it's nice to see them transition to their own stuff. Cause I mean, we got to try a few things. We actually, that day we tried that, uh, I believe it was a seven or eight year old ride that they had. It was under the barrels that we were sipping on. You're like, you all want to try this seven, eight year old ride. And we were like, wow. Yeah.

No, that like, I think they've really come a long way. Their bourbon, the rye is great. That malt whiskey they make is phenomenal.

Freaking delicious.

But if you're ever in that area, check it out. What's cool is what you see there, all those buildings with all those different places in it, was a part of the Pepper complex. So one of the giant rick houses, like a big stone concrete brick rick house, has what? Dark arts is there. There's some sort of like, I forget what they call it. It's like a bowling, but it's not bowling. I don't know. I've been wanting to take the kids there and check it out. But there's also a cidery. I forgot about this. Wise Bird. Wise Bird. So, yeah. Lexan's really, I think, really blossomed on the scene. And you've got that nice little corridor with bluegrass and Midway and here as well. So I think Frank from Bourbon on the banks tickets are going on sale.

Yeah. Tickets are going to go on sale March 17th.

So probably about a little over a week after this release.

Yeah. So St. Patty's day. So it might be a long night for some of you if you get up early in the morning. I think tickets are going on sale. Double check the website, but it's either 6 or 7 a.m. Eastern time, so early in the morning. That's really cruel to do to those. Irish, big Irish St. Patty's fans. You know, I think one of the differences this year, I think the special access tickets, that's where you have the tent that's going to have some food, some special pours, the fancy restrooms. I think this year they will get in an hour before even the early access tickets. So that's a, I think that's pretty desirable ticket this year. We've already started lining up some barrel picks this year. I think we're going to do, you know, we've tried to grow things a little bit every year, but slowly so that things kind of don't get out of hand. But I think we'll do 15 barrel picks this year.

I don't think you want to go too overboard because there's, you know, there's that number of folks that love that kind of thing and want to have single barrels. But then there's also the ones that are just there to try stuff and, you know, I mean, if you wanted to get all 15, well, bring the American Express card, right? So what are you guys getting on the pallet? This is really, I really enjoyed this. I mean, I almost would say I might enjoy this a little more than their bourbon bottle and a bond. I mean, the mince there, the rye spices there, but it's also kind of soft and not over the top.

I'm a rye fan in general, and this is one of those ryes that just, it's rye, no doubt about it. Ticks the boxes, yeah.

So Bo, you've got one more kind of like series that's kind of going on, and it's the last poor series. What's that one about?

So my last poor series, I've had people A few people, not, not many, but a few people have asked me like your content is different. Why don't you have anything, you know, where you're tasting and giving tasting notes and that kind of thing. And, and my answer is twofold. A I'm not as good at that as other people. I mean, there are people that have way better pallets than I do. So, I mean, nobody cares what I taste when I. drink. But two, I want my channel to be something different that's already out there. And I think there's enough of that already out there where people are doing their tasting notes and whatnot. And so, but I did get to think about it and I was like, you know, most of my content is either about history or I haven't done one in a while, but like the, I was doing these five minute distillery tours where it talks about the distilleries, but, but all that's kind of based around the industry, the history or whatever. And I thought, you know, there is something I need to do to help kind of bring light to these bottles. And, and in some cases, you know, in full disclosure, distilleries will give me a bottle. And it's like, I'm really not being fair to them because I'm not reviewing it or doing anything. So it's, you know, I mean, I've done other stuff for them. So, but anyway, so I was thinking about it and I came up with this idea that to fit, to still fit with the mission of my channel, each bottle has a story, right? So either, either the story of the bottle itself and or the history of how I got the bottle, right? And so that idea kind of came from Freddie Johnson, where he talks about, he drinks a bottle with somebody, they sign it, they talk about it. And so every time he looks at that bottle with all the signatures, that bottle has a story. And so I thought, yeah, but the bottles that I have, even though I'm not necessarily drinking them with people or whatever, they still have a story. So that idea came up where I said, okay, so what I'll do is when I get to the last pour of my bottle, I'll put it aside. And right now I have probably 20 bottles that I have set aside to do a last port episode on. But what I'll do is tell the story. I'll give a little bit of history about the distillery, the bottle itself, but then I'll give some history of how I got that bottle, who gave me that bottle, what the circumstances were, that kind of thing. And so I tell that story. And then through that, I'll give some tasting notes, but it's not about the tasting notes. It's not about what I taste or whatever. It's just kind of about the story of the bottle and it just brings light to that. And believe it or not, I have gotten a lot of comments about that series and people have, there's a few bottles that I've gotten comments that people are like, I never would have bought that bottle, but I saw that episode. I went out and bought it. That's cool. Yeah.

I mean, you just hope you're doing well. And they're like, I went out and bought that bottle and it was crap.

Well, exactly. I mean, but. So yeah, that's how that came about.

All right. What else are you guys getting on this palette? Yeah, I find it very enjoyable. It's just a good hunter-proof rye. It's got a lot going on. That, that rye spice and mintiness.

Yeah, the mint's definitely there and I always enjoy a minty type rye. I get some oak on it, you know, some oak, a little bit of char kind of.

They're one of those with a very low entry proof too, so this probably didn't get cut much. Yeah.

And the mint is what's overpowering it though, for me.

Yeah. But I like that. I do too. I mean, sometimes you'll get some dill, which I don't mind dill, but sometimes an overloaded dill just kind of, yeah. Yeah.

And it's got some sweetness, I think. And I think that kind of helps with the spiciness of the rye when you've got some sweetness there behind it to kind of balance things out.

All right, so I believe Amzie brought us a bonus pour today.

Yeah, I did. And keeping with our...

Bottle and bond theme. Bottle and bond theme and not something typical in the bottle and the bond world.

This is a... Well, it's a bottle and bond gin. You don't see too many of those, if ever, I guess. And so when I was kind of running around the house trying to find some bonded bottles, I forgot that you had already done the... the brandy, the Lairds before. So I brought one of those. But yeah, so I grabbed this bottle and bongein. It is from a small distillery in New Orleans called Atelier V. The distiller there, Jed Haas. Jed's an interesting guy. He was, I guess he still is an artist. And his distillery is in this old industrial building that has sort of been turned into an artist colony with various studios. And his studio is a distillery. The liquid art, if you call that the liquid art. His still, I'm guessing, is maybe like a 50, 60 gallon still. It could be a little bigger than that. But he does rice whiskey, which I know I've shared at least with you, Todd. That's so good. And actually, it's bonded as well. Save that for next time. He does a malt whiskey. Jim Murray, I gave him a sample of it, and he reviewed it in the Whiskey Bible. Absolutely loved it. Almost thought it could have been from Scotland. And I think Jim's reviewed a lot of Judd's other whiskies now. I think he may do a bourbon. He does like three types of absinthe. And the space he does it in is just kind of amazing. But yeah, if you look up Atelier V, if you're in New Orleans, it is worth a tour. It's like I said, it's kind of an industrial area. If you're using an Uber, the driver will usually make sure you get out and get inside before they leave the area. But really, really fun place. And so At one point, the regulations for bonded gin said that it had to be aged or stored in a barrel that was lined with wax, which makes no sense. After they changed that, I think maybe he was already doing a barrel-rested gin. and he decided to do a bonded gin. Last time I was there, maybe a year ago or so, he was actually out of the bonded gin, but he probably has some that's getting close to four years again. It's in a 750 ml, 100 proof. Is he smaller barrels?

He does kind of everything.

He's got a lot of 53s in there, maybe a few smaller barrels. Retail price on this was $65. And I absolutely love it. I wish I had more of it.

All right, let's nose it. I've been cheating. There's like the first thing I've been like Sage or like that.

Like the Russian sage. You know what I get on this is, um, if you take a fresh, like sassafras sapling and snap it, like to me, it smells like fresh green.

It's getting that Russian. It's a ornamental plant. It's got a really strong sagey smell, but I'm also, yeah, I'm starting to get the, I'm getting a lot of pine. It's like a bouquet.

I mean, there's a little bit of lavender in there maybe. You know, I think some people that like gins don't like rested gins because it starts to subdue the botanicals a little bit. But I think in this, once it's in there long enough, then the wood itself, the oak starts to become another, you know, prominent flavor that you get.

It's a very unique nose for sure though. Like potpourri.

You said this was four years?

Yeah. Cheers. Cheers. Oh, there's a lot going on with that. You're like a nice licorice kind of thing is there. There's also some plurality.

Yeah. And I think the, the juniper kind of mixes with the oak wood a little bit and gives you a cedar thing.

I was gonna say juniper and cedar. Yes. I, yeah. And it does, it's got a nice light color from that oak age or the barrel aging.

I know this is stupidly obscure. No, when you're talking about gin, no, I don't think so. I taste like, have you ever had like raspberry lemonade? Yes. It literally tastes like raspberry lemonade.

Okay. I mean, I know I'm from Indiana and I say caramel, but we had raspberry lemonade when I lived there.

Yeah, that's really unique. There's some citrus thing going on too.

It's a lot going on. Yeah. And, uh, Atelier V I think is A-T-E-L-I-E-R-V-I-E, Atelier V. Spelling bee champion.

Use that in a sentence. All right.

Before we sign off, I want to give you guys each a chance to kind of, you know, tell the folks where they can find you. Amzie, we'll start with you.

Uh, you can always find me here at the Frankfurt Bourbon Society. Um, I've been the president starting my fifth year now. Uh, and see how much longer I can handle that. Also, board member for Bourbon on the Banks Festival, so hope to see a lot of the roadies at Bourbon on the Banks again this year. Always look forward to that. If you see me there, make sure you come up and say hello.

I am on Facebook and YouTube under My Journey Through the American Spirits.

I should probably just start making an acronym out of that. Just saying. I always give you grief.

M-G-T-A-S. Yeah. Management as.

All right. Well, I appreciate you guys coming and joining me on the show. Like I said, Jim was going to Florida and I was like, you know, I'm going to get my buddies together and we'll record a quick show.

Jim missed a few good pours. Yes, he did.

But his loss, I'm sure he's really, you know, he's probably like gloating over us because he's probably dealing with some 70, 80 degrees. At least I hope so. But yeah, again, cheers. Thank you guys. Go check out Bo's videos. I mean, yes, I was a part of one and Amzie's been on quite a few. He's the end of a lot of those mini series. You'll see him stroking his beard. I actually got to shoot some for you at the chicken cock that one time. So that was fun. But you do a great job, man. It's awesome to see. You know, we're actually trying to, there's a local station here that hopefully it's going to start running the documentary. And what I mean, I feel like we need to really try to reach out to the bourbon festivals or something and maybe see. And then like the downtown Frankfurt, our museum here has talked about running it, but

You know, it's communication's always an issue, but that's the hardest thing is just the, like you said, communication of getting it locally. And then the one thing I haven't got my thumb on yet is distribution. Like other than my YouTube channel, I haven't got my thumb on distribution. Like just film distribution. Every channel I go through, it seems like it shuts down and like that, you know, it's no longer.

I mean, it's PBS quality to me, I think. And that's where I would, I mean, sure. I would love to see it. Sure. I would love to see it at the Sundance festival, but you know, shoot high aim low, right? Right. But again, cheers to you guys. I appreciate you guys coming on. But you can find The Bourbon Road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, threads. We do all those things every week. Jim and I will drop an episode on Wednesday. Make sure you're standing by for it. We're always having fun. If you want to stay up to date on our podcast, go up to that. podcasts like Apple iTunes and all that and subscribe and also leave a review. We love to see those reviews. It's been a while since we've gotten some. Bo, have you ever left this review? Yes, I have. Okay. Just checking. Amzie?

Probably not. I think I have. You don't want his reviews. I will double check.

But we're always having a good time. Sometimes we're with a distillery. Sometimes we're just hanging out with my buddies, like Amzie and Bo here today. But the one thing is we're always having fun. We're always drinking great whiskey. So one other thing to do is check out our Facebook group, The Bourbon Roadies. Bo drops links to his videos on there all the time. I hope some of you guys click on that and check it out. I think, again, he's my favorite director. I'm very biased. Um, we've got about 3,500 people on there that share what they're drinking and you know, what's going on and ask questions. So it's a great place to, uh, just be a part of a good bourbon community for, I think, uh, you could also go to the bourbon road.com. We've got our swag on there. You buy something from us, which not epic prices, but it gets us down the road a little bit because well, we've been visiting these stories and that's gas money and all that kind of stuff. We also have some articles on there, our podcasts are on there, and it's a great shop placed on the internet. But until the next time, we'll see you down at Bourbon Road.

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