486. The Return of the King: Tasting King of Kentucky Small Batches

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. We're at the Bourbon Road bar, Jim's house. Jim, good to be back in the seat, I should say.

I'm glad to be back. I think you got an episode under your belt when I was out of town. I got to enjoy a little bit of cold weather in Florida.

That just sounds wrong.

No, it's kind of funny. I mean, I went down to Florida and actually the first few days we were down there, it was absolutely gorgeous, 80 degrees, but then it turned cold. It was like 35, 40 for two days. Come back to Kentucky and it's 60 degrees, 70 degrees yesterday, I think.

It's been some crazy weather. I know, it's just wild. I mean, today's pretty nice. Tomorrow, we have a chance of snow. Like literally the day after that, it's going to be back up in the seventies. Yeah. That's just going to be rainy, rainy, rainy.

Yes. All week long. And then, you know what? Get this out of our system. Everything that's going to grow in April needs these rains. So.

Just don't want too much again. Frankfurt didn't, I didn't enjoy all that flooding stuff. Was that a year ago? Yeah.

One year ago. Well, and that was, when was that? Was that March or April? I feel like it's, we're coming up on the anniversary. I don't know.

It's stuff like that. You just kind of like, you buckle, you buckle down and help some folks the way you can. And then you just put, you know, It becomes a memory, but you don't want to remember it too well, you know?

No pun intended, but it kind of takes a perfect storm to make that happen. It's not going to happen just because of a lot of rain every year. It has to come in rapid succession, sort of a rising river followed by heavy rains, right? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I mean, we'd probably flood, you know, once every four or five, six years, something like that. That was one of those just crazy, crazy ones. Yeah.

Well, we hope it doesn't hit again. Glad to say though that, you know, the waterfront survived remarkably well.

Yeah. There were a few houses, I think like 30 or 40 that were condemned somewhere in that range, which I mean... One of the ones I helped out, I think I've said, was condemned, which really sucks. Those people hadn't been in their house, but maybe six to eight months and had a young child. So I guess they had to move on. And I don't know how all that FEMA stuff works and how you get reimbursed or anything like that. But I hope they, you know, I hope they got something out of it because I just can't imagine, you know, moving to house and then six months later, you're What do you do? What you do.

Oh my gosh. Crazy.

But let's move on to better things.

Yeah. Let's brighten up the day a little bit here.

Yeah. Yeah. Enough of this down talk. All right. We've got kind of a comparison pour thing here today, but it's also pretty fresh review. We've got the new small batches from King of Kentucky from Brown Foreman. So what's unique about these is, you know, if you've seen King of Kentucky out there, it's always been single barrels. And these were actually batched. So the story goes, they had about 100 barrels left after this, I guess, some of their single barrels they released. Because they usually do like, those King of Kentucky's come out once a year. And it's like, they'll all be like either a 14-year-old. I think last year's were 17-year-olds. I think we got a sample of maybe, I feel like we got a 16. I think it was 16. A year, year and a half ago or something like that. So had they had these 100 barrels and they decided to batch them and kind of in honor of the 250th anniversary of the United States, which, you know, 1776 somewhere right there at 250, which is pretty, pretty amazing. Yeah. So like I said, these are aged 12 to 18 years. Um, and the mash bill is a little different on these, which I thought was interesting. It's usually they use a 79 corn with these small batches. It was a 75, 15, 10. So 75 corn, 15 rye and 10 malted barley, which I'm like, that's odd that they had those, I guess, sitting in the background kind of, I guess. So 700 ML's on these and MSRP is. 299. And this is considered, this first one we're having is batch one. It's coming in at 105 proof. All right. But they're batch, so it's 12 to 18 years. 12 to 18 years. Yes. Got it.

Great color. I mean, beautiful, gorgeous color. Yeah. Oh yeah. That smells like a elder, old forester. Yeah, it does.

Forrester just has like, it's rare to not have a, you know, that the palette might not be super amazing sometimes, but they're the nose is just, I think it might be one of my most favorite consistent noses.

I think, you know, the way they, the way they toast and fire their barrels and they're not doing that anymore, right? They shut down that whole operation.

But these being the age that they are, they were definitely, yeah. So it's like a, like cherry pie and crust. A little bit of coconut in there. You can get a little coconut.

A little toasted coconut. Nice. Lots of vanilla. Great nose. Uh, sort of leaning into that. Um, is it, is it home and joy? You're going that deep with it?

No, maybe not. I mean, I can get the chocolate, but just a little bit of chocolate. I'm not picking up that coconut this time.

Yeah, I don't want to go too deep into the coconut because it's just a light hint, but there's definitely a chocolate note there. I think one note drove me to the other.

And I got to give a shout out to a friend of mine, John Peets. Uh, he goes by top dog. If you're ever in the whiskey community, um, got to meet up with him for oddly enough, a barrel pick Friday at bluegrass is ceiling. We did a barrel pick there. Um, it's like an Elkwood series where it's some of their source stuff. They've had like some eight, the 18 year old Barton that we had and some of those Spanish oak 12 year olds and things like that. But we chose a. nine-year-old barrel that came from Owensboro. So Wizard of Oz is their clue there to where that came from. So yeah, and he was kind enough to, he gave us some new caps and yeah, he's a great guy. We chose this for a store there in, it's near Nashville. It's called Barrels and Brews. And we had a lot of fun. I mean, barrel picks are always fun. Loving the nose on this though. Oh, it definitely has a little bit of coconut, but it's not over the top. Cause we did get a, we got a media sample of just this one, but he was kind enough to give us, there's spoilers, but we're going to go through batch two and three as well.

Yay.

I know. Thank you, John. Cheers. Cheers. Sip.

Oh, that took a turn. We did warm up a little bit before we started this. So I'm not, I'm not first bourbon of the day here just now, but I did get a little bit of a kind of a chocolate's on there for sure.

But kind of a better chocolate note. I would definitely go, it's not like a sweet and there's definitely not some, um, tannins on that too. Yeah, quite a bit actually.

I would say that's coming from the older barrels, the 16, 17, 18-year-old barrels that might be in there.

From what I read, it sounded like some of these barrels, I guess, didn't even make the cut for single barrel releases because the yields, I mean, if you've ever seen some of these King of Kentucky's, some of the yields are like 60 bottles on some of these. So they were saying that these weren't even worthy of like, I guess, like you're talking like 30, 20 barrels. Yeah. Or 20 bottles, excuse me.

So yeah. Yeah. So this is a, there's a serious lack of sweetness here. Very dark cacao kind of a, uh, yeah, definitely. dry chocolate bite to it. Yep. The tannins, a good call out there for sure.

Tannins, caramel, it's for 105. It's got the, it's got some spice. Yeah. Now let's be honest, this one's going to be hard to find out there, but I mean, I think, I mean, it just, it goes straight past the front of the palette for me.

You should be able to find these at a good, a good bar though. But man, as it sit deep in the, in the, in the back and sort of drys things out a little bit.

But, um, wow. It's kind of odd. Like the middle of my tongue is really dry, but the sides, I'm still, it's like a contradiction. I get a little saliva, but yeah, like nothing up front.

The dry in the middle and then a bit of a bite with saliva. Yeah. Saliva is running and then the sides in the back a little bit. It's kind of wild. Good though. Yeah. It's solid. Not really getting much in the way of fruit. Maybe like some dried cherry, like maybe, maybe like super dry, very, um, um, I don't know. There's just no sweetness. So it's hard to talk about any fruitiness when you have like zero sweetness.

That's why I think you turn to dry when you think of less sweetness. Yeah. So I totally get that. So it said like, there's a little bit of like dried cherry, maybe even like apricots, maybe.

Little tobacco-y. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, another potential cigar whiskey for sure would stand up to a little bit darker, like a Maduro.

And I should have done some homework on, I mean, King of Kentucky has been around a long time. Like I've seen like labels where it was even like a blended whiskey during those like slow times and things.

Yeah. Cream of Kentucky was Cream of Kentucky.

What did I say? Cream of Kentucky. You did say.

Oh, you know why I said Cream of Kentucky. Yes, I did. Well, we warmed up on that.

Oops. Oops. Spoilers. King of Kentucky. That's right. But we kept it kind of on theme, you know, Cream of Kentucky. Now we're moving on to trying the Kings.

Well, I like this. I like this a lot. This is a very dry sip. It imparts a tremendous amount of flavor in a very small sip. It sits very cleanly on the back of the palate and doesn't go away for a very long time.

Yeah. It does sit for a very, very long time. All right. Should we up the ante? So to speak. Yeah. Let's up the ante. Yeah. So this is considered batch two. And the reason it's batch two is for this batch, they up the proof just a little bit. So this is 107.5.

Okay. 107.5. Still the same mix of the ages.

The little differentiated mash bills. Yeah. Yeah. A little darker nose. I've got, I still got batch one in my left hand here. So I want to go back to batch one again too. Yep.

Okay.

Some darker stuff going on there. Yeah.

That's definitely a little bit different. Maybe even your figgy, bigginess on that or dates, dates, figs, dried, uh, palm fruits, dried palm fruits. I've never had dried palm fruits. That's dates and figs. Oh, well then I have trying to think of what other palm fruits there are.

Another, another great nose though.

Yeah.

Oh, Forster should come out with candles like their noses on their brains.

Yeah, this one has a little bit less ethanol in the nose, but it's got more proof, oddly enough. And it does have a little bit more of that cherry note.

Yeah. I'd be curious to know how far they cut these. Cause we'll be getting to expression three or three probably in the second half, but it too. Just goes up the proof elevator a little bit.

Yeah. I mean, if you're saying the barrels had 20, 30 bottles left in them each, it would indicate a lot of evaporation.

Yeah. But we also know what evaporated the most, the alcohol or the water. And then most of those King of Kentucky single barrels are, you know, 125 or higher. It seems like.

That's true.

All right. Cheers. Cheers.

It's very different. This is a little more spicy. It's not as tannic. It's not, but it's got more bite to it. Yeah, this one's got a little bit more kind of a leathery tobacco bite to it, a little bit more spice on the back of the palate. It sizzles on the tongue a little bit more.

Yeah, there's like a little cinnamon spice pepper kind of thing at the tail. Still dry though, still lacking in sweetness.

Go back to the nose. I think I prefer the nose in number one a little bit more.

I mean, there's good qualities in both, though. There are. There are. I'm just, I'm not good. I kind of like that dark, that darker note on B, but. Yeah. Unlike you, I think the, or I said B, I should say on to batch two, but batch one's a little more expressive and a little more robust of a nose, I guess.

So you're kind of plugged into the YouTube and podcast community. What's the general consensus on these now?

they're obviously not getting the love that the single barrels get. I mean, sure. So, um, The crazy thing is on the secondary, like when they first came out, they were right up there at the like secondary prices for the single barrels. And, but I've seen them drop, drop, drop tremendously.

So when you say that they're way up there, are you talking 500 to a thousand? Oh, King of Kentucky single barrels or these.

These started out in like the 15 to 1700 range. Yes. And now they're, I think we're back down to like, five to 600 maybe. Okay. So about double. Yeah. But King of Kentucky single barrels. Yeah. You it's hard to find one of those under 1500 unless you have a good rapport with the store.

Yeah. Now on these, if they're two, you said two 79 a bottle, two 99, two 99. So that's $600 at double market. Yeah. So they're sitting about two times market right now, which said, if you really, really want to, when that's not too bad, I guess. Yeah.

I mean, we're lucky to try them. I'm blessed to try them.

Well, it's like a sheet of oil on the glass though. They're very thick, very, very viscous. This one kind of lacks that kind of coconut note I was getting on the first one. It's interesting because they're really the same.

Yeah. So I think that nose matches a little better though.

Yeah.

Like the rays are like figs and dates still kind of. Are the stars of the show?

Yeah. Well, it's going to be hard to pick a winner today. They're all very close. Well, we haven't tried three yet.

Really close. Yeah. We're talking 2.5%. 2.5 proof. Well, I'm glad to have tried it. No doubt. Yeah. Like I said, cheers to John for Cause we were just going to try batch one and maybe some other stuff, but like I said, I met up with him Friday.

So you know what the distribution was like on these?

It's all over, but I mean, a hundred barrels. I mean, yeah.

I mean, so at a hundred barrels, I think it said something like 36 states.

So each state maybe gets a case and Kentucky gets some, you know, a few more. I don't know.

Yeah, so there's just a few bottles out there. I mean, you've got to be a really good customer to end up with a bottle of this.

Like I said, I think when we have pours like this, your best bet is typically unless you, like you said, if you have a good rapport with the store, you're going to have to seek it out at a good bourbon bar. Wow. That's very limited. Now we may differ on today's rankings.

Oh, you say you're leaning towards number one a little bit. I don't know yet.

We still got to get to three. They're so close though.

Yeah.

I mean, this is like right now it's like darker, lighter and well, I don't know. Tannins kind of, I don't know, turn me off a little bit. If it's too much.

Number one did have a pretty good amount of the tannin.

Yeah.

And this one still has it.

Has it, but.

It's also still super dry, but it doesn't have that tannic bite on the back. But this one has a little more spice on it, on the mid palate.

Yeah. But I would lean that towards like the oaky, oak char almost.

Yep. Well, it is going to be tough and we may be different because we do like, sometimes we do like different things. And that's quite all right. Yep. Shall we take a break and let's do it. All right. All right. Well, we'll, we'll, we'll keep sipping on these. I'm talking about them.

We'll take a save a little to compare them all.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We'll do a winter, winter chicken dinner tonight and we may even do a combined at the end. Huh?

I like that idea. All right. Stick around folks. We will 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 listeners. In the first half, we sipped on batch one and batch two of the new King of Kentucky small batches. Different birds, small proof changes, but yeah.

They were different enough that as you revisit them, you can see the differences. So they're clearly from the same family. In fact, Not identical twins, but... You can tell they're related. They're related. Yeah. They're brother, sister, whatever you want to call it.

Maybe close cousins or something.

Close cousins, yeah. Very, very close. But both delicious whiskeys, both dry, but with different characteristics that set them apart.

Yeah. And like we discussed, that 12 to 18 year can give you some serious tannins going on, I think. But let's move on to, this is batch three. We're going to up the proof once more, just another 2.5 proof. So this is batch three, 110 proof. 110 proof.

Yeah.

All right.

It is just a hair darker, maybe? Yeah, maybe not. Maybe just because it has a little bit more in the glass, it looks darker.

Yeah, I think that's the light playing a little trick on our eyes. Probably so.

All right, hit that nose. But it's possible because they got cut with less water. Oh, I like this nose. Chocolate. I'm getting some more chocolate. More chocolate. Like a little richer maybe. Definitely for me, it's got a kind of a cola note to it. Yes. It indicates there might be some sweetness, but I'm going to take a guess and say there's not. But that call of notes leading me to think that, hey, there might be a little sweetness in this one, but.

Like lemon too, like a little citrus, like, you know how you, like some people like a slice of lemon in their diet Coke. Yes. Like Europeans do.

Um, this is, uh, yeah, there's a little bit of a freshness of brightness to it.

The other ones didn't have that. No. And I've got enough in each glass to kind of compare noses going back to it. Yeah. This is probably the, I'm going to see if it's, it's definitely brighter than batch two. Two is darker for sure.

And I would say it's, it's brighter than batch one too. So this, this is more, I like that you called out lemon for me. I don't know if it's lemon or not, but it's definitely this a fresh, bright, uh, sort of a departure from the darkness. But there's still a little bit of like rich chocolate going on too, which is kind of fun. I mean, I think you nailed it with Coca-Cola with lemon on the side, you know, I took a real deep nose there.

I'd be curious to know if like they took all hundred barrels and then blending them or did they blend like one? I never really saw anything like that. Like did they take 33 barrels of what they had and blend those and come up with batch one or was it all one big blend and they then started playing with their points? Yeah.

Yeah, it could be. Who knows. I mean, there's enough difference in the notes that you would think that there's different barrel combinations here, but no, but maybe not. Maybe not. I mean, there's amazing things happens when you start adding proofing water and add water. Yeah. Yep. All right. Cheers. Cheers.

Okay.

Oh, that's different. That's rich too. It is. And there is a little bit of like faux sweetness there. Like it's, you know, it's not sweet, but it's like tricking me into feeling like there's some sweetness there. That is very interesting. And I'm getting a little bit of the coconut. Wow.

That is a surprise. Still pretty bright on the palate. It's like the chocolates there, but it's almost like cherry covered chocolates almost. There's like a little citrus zing to it. I think that comes from the nose and continues on the palate. I've got a nice spicy tingle like coating the whole tongue this time.

Yeah. This is the first one that's really set itself down on the front of my tongue, just a little bit.

It's more front, but there's a little tickle in the back too.

Yeah, this one is definitely a little more layered, a little bit more going on. They've uncovered a little bit of, I call it faux sweetness, because it's not like a real sweetness, but it kind of complements that cola note a little bit, the chocolate note a little bit. It's still a bit drying and spicy on the back of the palate. But again, now we're getting this impression across the front mid and back of the tongue all at once. The cherry cola thing. Yeah. Yeah. Cherry cola. So cherry cola with a lemon slice, huh?

Yeah, but not sweet. It's almost like the syrup, you know, like you're basically combining syrup with carbonated water when you get it out of a soda machine. So it's like, I don't know, like it was almost out of the cherry cola syrup. But I like that, yeah, that cola note you called out is perfect.

Yeah, this is kind of triggering the salivation glands on the side of my palate again. I love it when that happens. This is more balanced. It's still deep and dark, but it has that tri-cherry note. The semi-sweet cola, not really semi-sweet even, the faux sweetness. I'm just going to stick with that. I'm getting a little bit of that coconut on this one that I got on the first one. Very small amount. Overall, this is a great pour. Really good.

All three have been really good. And very varied, which is fun. Like you said, if we ever get to talk to Chris or somebody from Old Forrester, we need to ask how they... Did they split up the barrels or did they like...

I wonder how much they talk about that. It used to be, back in the day, that you'd get a little bit more information out of Old Forrester. I think I was a person who was at the front, you know. Jackie. Okay. And she would talk a little bit more about, you know, what's going on behind the scenes. Right.

I guess when you're a big corporation, you want to kind of keep a few things secret, I guess. Yeah. I don't know. But that's a good pour. So do we want to tell them what we did for pour four today? Yeah, let's tell them. All right. So for the last pour we're going to have in being the champion blender I am being a blend again champ we took and I'm putting air quotes up equal parts of all three of these and combine them into poor four so this is a Probably a very uneven, I mean, I just kind of eyeballed it of a combination of batch one, batch two, batch three, hopefully in close to equal parts. And I've heard actually that's, you know, you asked what the word is on this, but I've heard the combination is the best, which is kind of interesting.

So this is, this is not just us having fun at the end of our episode. This is, this is documented.

Like I said, my friend John Peets, who was kind enough to give us pours of batch two and batch three, said be sure to blend them too.

Well, the good thing about the combo pour Todd, especially from somebody who's hailed from Blendageddon. I do believe you probably got it pretty close to equal pours.

I mean, our glasses look pretty equal. I don't know about the proportions. It's a nice big pour in this glass. So if it is good, we're going to have a great day. We're in for a treat. We're in for a treat. Okay. What do you think's dominating that nose? Well, I'm definitely getting that cold a note. Yeah, I think so. The three is really. Number three definitely stands out on the nose for sure. And it's another great nose.

Yeah, it's a good nose for sure.

Oh my goodness.

So are we do winner winner chicken dinner? Is this going to be one potential winner?

Or are we going to throw it out because it's like a. I don't know. Let's sip it and see what happens.

I mean, it's because if it wins the day, How many people are going to be able to get their hands on all three bottles? Well, anyway, we'll still have no, no, the rest of them are.

But I mean, one of the greatest things about old Forester is like, you know, what's it, you take the 1910 and the 1920 and blend those equally and make a 1915 and people love that one.

They do love it. It is good.

Now, if you throw in the 1897, then it goes haywire. Why would you do that? It's like 1904 and a half or something, or three repeating kind of thing.

Freshness is coming through too. I would say that number three pour has a heavy hand on this particular blend, at least on the nose.

It's really nice though. It is good. Again, we've had four fantastic noses. Yeah. All right. Let's check her out. All right. Cheers.

Oh, that's good. Oh, and I'm getting a little bit more. I'm getting a little bit of that tannic coming through.

It got a little darker. It's almost like it took three and that darkness of two.

Oh, I'm getting, I'm getting the sizzle too. And I'm getting a little bit of that lemon note. Cola, lemon, chocolate, a little bit of that dark cherry.

Wow. Um, now the question is, do we add it to the mix? Yeah. Coats of tongue, the oak spices there.

Yeah, it's really good. And the coconuts here too. Just, just a hair.

Now, I guess I probably would have probably blended those, uh, Maybe 25 minutes ago, 30 minutes ago.

Which is probably about right. I mean, you really want to, if you're combining some things, we normally don't have that much time when we're doing an episode. We just throw them together and let's try it and see. Yeah. Doing them in advance like this, I think, gives them time to marry.

Yeah. I mean, most cases I'm like months and months before I even check, I'll maybe check it out like in a month. Yeah, that's good.

Question is, is it better than three?

Was that a tell? No, it's no tell. I'm just saying, was it better than three?

I think that the dominant notes in this one are the number three notes, for me anyway. But man, the finish on this one, I think, is more lengthy.

And it does not have the tannins of one like it has more tannins, but not as much.

Yeah. Yep.

Not as drying.

Got a little bit of that cherry dry cherry fruit on it. I don't know if I'm picking up the figs that you got in too, right? Probably not.

It's a little darker, but yeah, I don't think it goes like, yeah, like the bigs and dates. So there you go. I think you go to a bar and you see all three of these, you'll be like, can I have a quarter or half ounce of that, half ounce of that, half ounce of that, and maybe you blend them. There you go.

That would be the way to do it. Cause chances of finding these at a bar, at a good bourbon bar, much more likely than you finding three bottles sitting on the shelf somewhere.

Or find that friend that got lucky too. He could always do that.

How did he get three bottles?

Well, like I said, we did that pick and he was with the story. He does, I guess they were helping the pick. And like I said, it's called Brews and Barrels and they are out of, I did find it out, Nolansville, Tennessee, which is, I think is kind of that. They said that was Northern like Nashville area or something like that. Be on the lookout. I'm going to have a pick drop there and I guess probably, I don't know, like three or four months and it'll be coming from Bluegrass distilling. If you're in the area. Bluegrass is killing it. And I don't know how many Tennessee folk we got out there listening, but go check them out. The owner was, his name was Roo. He was a great guy. Great pilot. And we had a lot of fun. I guess there were, let's see, six of us on the pick. And I did see, got to talk to Sam Rock, the head guy there at Bluegrass. He said, hello. He was dealing with a, um, they were having an issue with, I guess they're the, the works were getting jammed up in the, um, when they were distilling. So the grains weren't spurging out or getting constipation stopped up.

Well, this is really good. I mean, I like the, I like the combination. I'm trying to think of my brain now. I'm trying to put one, two, three, and four. I think we should do all four. All right. I do too. Everybody should understand though, that when we grade this combo, it's just for fun. I'm going back in notes one more time. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to go back to number three here. And then I might sit through them one more time as well. I'll tell you when you're doing a side by side on, uh, three to four pores that are this close to each other. Um, a lot of times when we're doing winter, winter chicken dinner, it's like, okay, they're very different pores, you know, tonight, these are all siblings and they're not very far off each other.

I think the funny thing is since we blended all three, Yes. Again, if it's in equal proportions, the proof should be about the same as batch two, which is 107.5, because you've got 105, 107.5, and 110. So it'd be interesting to know. We had a proofometer. Proof? Proofometer. Hydrometer.

There's a name for that. Hydrometer. Hydrometer's the one that floats, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's one that you stick in the liquid and it does the proof, though. Those are very expensive, I've heard.

All right. Checking out one again.

I do like number two. I do like number two. I do like number three. I do like the combo. I think I'm ready.

Yeah, this should be interesting. I think we're going to be, uh, it'll be close. Yeah. But that depends on if what I think is going to be your number one.

Oh man. It's, uh, I'm ready. I know what I like. We're going to start fourth place.

Fourth place. Or should we just do?

No, let's do four, three, two, and one. So the first one we're going to talk about will be, we call it last place, but that's not fair.

No.

Fourth place.

Again, we're winning today. My fourth place is going to be batch one. Yep. Same for me. The tannins kind of, I like it, but those tannins were a little much. I don't like when, it gave me like those Knob Creek 15 vibes where like, I took a sip and like, you know, your tongue just got dry so quick.

Yeah. So the same for me. I think the tannins were a little bit overpowering. It was way dry, way tannic. It still had great flavor. Yeah. But it was like, okay, too much, a little bit too much in the dry tannic direction for me too.

And which is odd. It's the lowest proof. So you would think that might happen with the higher proof. Shah, number three?

Or you want to go? I'll go number three. OK. I'll go number three. So number three for me is going to be the number two. I'm going to agree with you. OK. Solid. Very solid. Definitely nice to have after tasting one. And you know, just overall, I think when we were sitting here talking about one and two side by side, It was clear to me. Number two was going to be like my, my choice of those two.

Yes. Same. I like the darker things. Like I said, dates figs. I'd like that a little more.

And the proof went up, but the nose was less volatile. So it was kind of well.

Yeah.

Yeah. Are you still going back and comparing a few here?

I want to, I want to do, yeah, I want to do the blend and I want to do three one more time.

Yeah.

Okay. I got it. You got it. Yep. My number two is going to actually be the blend.

Okay. And, and so I'm going to say that mine. It's close. It's very, very close, but here's, here's what I'm going to say. I'm going to say my number two is actually, Oh, the blend. Mine's the blend.

Oh, two is the blend too. So your two is the blend for me too.

I thought you were going to. And the reason, and the reason for me is, is it's a little bit theoretical and it's a little bit palette. Both.

Yeah.

Because, um, number three, who's going to be our winner. Uh-huh. Uh, batch three was, was great because, because it was great. It was great because of what it was. Uh, you know, we, we created number four.

Yeah.

Without them asking.

Is it better? Yeah. I think four is more balanced. I think that the blend that we made is more balanced. But, um, number three has this, uh, this exceptional, um, but what do we call it? Cherry Cola lemon cherry Cola note. Yeah. Which is really good.

Yeah, and I think going back, like three just left this nice little spicy tingle, like not overpowering, just this nice spicy tingle all over the mouth, all over the tongue, I should say. And I just, yeah, it lets you know it's been there and that you enjoyed it.

On another day, could I flip flop three and four? Maybe. Not knowing. that four was a mix. I was going to say, next time I'll bring my graduated cylinder and we'll get real tight. Let me ask you this, Todd. Had number four just been batch four of King and Kentucky, do you think you would have voted differently?

No.

There's just something about three that hits for me. Yeah. It was really good. Yeah. No doubt.

But it's a fun, it's, I'm glad we had the opportunity to play around with that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, I'm sitting here looking at all my glasses, wondering if I should just put them all together.

I don't think it'd make a hell of a difference right now. And I might add one too, but kind of like I said, three, three being the champion. I want to finish it by itself.

I think so too.

You want to finish?

Oh, that would be awesome. Okay.

All right. Great show. Again, shout out to John Peets, aka Top Dog. If you ever get on the WhiskeyTube channels, he pops in there on there quite a bit. Met him for the first time. Great guy. We've chatted in groups and discords and messages and things like that. texts and things like that. But again, he also was kind enough to send us some really cool caps, which in time for St. Patty's Day. Yes, they are green and we will post a good, cool picture of those. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. And yeah, again, John, thank you so much. I had a blast. Thank you for inviting me to the single barrel pick.

And we do appreciate it.

Yep. Well, 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 single week. Jim and I will drop an episode every Wednesday, so make sure you hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss an episode. We'll help you get down the road on your commute to work or whatever it is you're doing when you listen to The Bourbon Road. We'd also appreciate if you took the time to leave us a review on the podcast platform that you use. Hopefully it brings more people to the table if you will. Absolutely. Sometimes we'll have a guest on. Sometimes we're sitting around, playing around and blending things and trying old Forester. And other times we'll have a guest from a distillery. But the key ingredients were always having fun. So one other thing to do is check out our Facebook group, the Bourbon Roadies. It's a lot of great people, about 3,500 or so bourbon enthusiasts that love to drink whiskey, share stories, share pictures, share experiences, share birthdays, all kinds of things. We have a really fun group and it's always a pleasure to have a bunch of those that have my phone number and will text back and forth and this and that.

They come to town sometimes when you hang out.

That's right. Actually, one of them, Adam Dorman, is coming in soon. So hoping we're going to hook up for lunch. And then lastly, be sure to check out the bourbonroad.com. That's where we have our swag. You can listen to our podcast through there. And we also have our blogs, which have we written any blogs in a while?

I was going to say, I was always going to write a blog and maybe I'll start getting busy on that. I did a few, and then I kind of got slacky again on it, but yeah. All right. I'll get to work. I'll crank some out.

I have a lot to say. You don't say. But as always, we appreciate you guys tuning in. But until the next time, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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