494. Wheel Horse and Copper & Cask: Four Bottles That Punch Way Above Their Price

Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road Podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon. And I'm your host, Todd Ritter.

We've got a great show for you today. So grab your favorite pour and join us.

Hey there, Bourbon Roadies. It's Diane Strong with Bourbon on the Banks Festival. We've got another amazing event coming your way this year. Be sure to join us at the half and I'll give you an update on our ticket availability for the event taking place on October 3rd, 2026. All right, listeners.

Welcome back to another episode of the Bourbon Road podcast. I'm your host, Jim Shannon and Todd Ritter's with us today. And Todd, we've got a guest. Who do we have with us?

Hey, Jim, we've got Stephen Corrigan. He is the barrel master. And one of the first times I've heard of this, the spirits production manager for Latitude Beverage LLC. And we're going to learn they actually have two different labels out there. And yeah, I'm very excited. I didn't know much about the first one, which we'll go through, which is Will Horse. But the second one is that they have is copper and cask. Yeah, I'm very excited for you to try those, Jim, because I've already done some sneak peeks on those. But Stephen, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, guys. It's really great to be here.

Yes, Stephen, glad to have you. Now, Todd, I will tell you this. I have had a wheel horse. It's been a minute. But I had a wheel horse in Owensboro probably two, three years ago. Does that make sense, Stephen?

Yeah, so we started the brand in 2020. I came out in 2022. I really was tasked with making sure that we were launching a project out there that was really something we could be proud of and not just taking Green River Juice and slapping our label on it, really being very hands-on with the barrel selection process. And yeah, Green River's always been kind enough to keep us behind their tasting room bar to show us off right next to their own stuff.

All right, so I guess we'd like to get to that first port. Stephen, what is up first tonight?

Yeah, I believe we're starting with our Wheel Horse Barrel Master Bourbon. So Wheel Horse started out with two real kind of flagship products. that were really meant to be your everyday sipper, everyday cocktailing whiskey. So a bourbon and a rye, four-year age statement on them, one-on-one proof. So really something that was nice and robust. It could stand up to kind of any cocktailing you would do, but also be something that was really pleasant to sip on. As the brand evolved, we realized we wanted to have something that was a little bit punchier, I guess is a good way to say it. So smaller batches, all-cast strength, and really hands-on with what we were doing in selecting those barrels. So this is a blend of 14 barrels that went into this batch, five-year age statements, we wanted to put out something that was a little bit more premium as well for these, and 113 proof on the blend. So yeah, just a really nice zipper. Also at a really, you know, approachable price point as well. And that's something we really try to strive for, not only in wheel horse, but copper and cask as well. But wheel horse is kind of where we really drive that point home. So you're going to find this on the shelf for typically under 40 bucks for a cast strength bourbon is we think a pretty good deal.

I know 40 bucks. They're practically giving it away. Make just enough that I can keep my job. There you go. So this is Green River's, what, 70 corn, 21 rye, and nine malted barley.

Yeah, you got it.

Oh, yeah.

Solid stuff. Love that.

Cherry pie.

Yeah, I was going to say that one of the notes that I always loved from the Green River Distillate and something that we picked specifically for as we're going through individual barrels to come up with these blends. It's just a really nice kind of cherry note that goes through it almost boarding on like a cherry cola that has made me fall in love with Green River Juice in general. So it's definitely something we select for.

It's definitely like a cherry coconut. So this is actually your second go around with the batch proof bourbon.

Correct. Yeah, this is the second batch. And we're looking for a fairly consistent flavor profile. So you're not going to see a whole lot of variation batch to batch. But they will vary a little bit in proof and a little bit. So yeah, there's a little code in the bottom right-hand corner of the bottle that will always tell you which batch you're drinking. It'll say BP, in this case, 002.

All right. Now Todd has the actual bottle and I have the, uh, the sample bottle. So what was the expression name again?

The wheel horse barrel master, Kentucky straight rock or Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey. Got it.

And what is exactly is a wheel horse. You don't mind my asking.

Um,

Good question.

That's something I'd have to actually put marketing into to tell you.

Like I said, I came in while this brand was already established. I didn't ask a whole lot of questions about the origin story. So yeah, I'm really more focused on making sure that we put good juice in the bottle.

Jim, any idea? I have no clue. Have you looked it up, Todd? We're going to rely on a roadie to educate him.

Yeah, that's probably something I should have a better answer to, but here we are.

Great nose, great, uh, traditional bourbon nose. Love the, uh, the cherry cola call out. Um, the Oak is, uh, I mean, it's five years, but the Oaks, the Oaks in there. I mean, it's, it's definitely got a mature Oak nose on it.

OK, so it's kind of like a workhorse. But the wheel horse was the horses that were closest to the wheels. So they were like the stronger of the horses. I guess you put your stronger horses closer to the cart. At least that's what Google says.

There you go. I appreciate the quick research. I'll use that line going forward. It's definitely a kind of a callback just to, you know, that the horse culture that's all throughout Kentucky as well. You know, we really wanted to lean into pretty happy into Kentucky on the branding, despite the fact that we're a Rhode Island company. And that's something we always like to talk about as well. You know, most people don't think of Rhode Island as a premier destination for whiskey. And that's definitely something we're trying to change. I think one of the things we do, and this is again across both brands, is that we bring all the barrels into Rhode Island and we typically select a certain portion of those that are going to age for an extended period of time in Rhode Island. And what we found is that especially the cold, wet winters that we get up here, it just does really phenomenal things to whiskey. It not only kind of boosts up the the proof on the whiskey tends to boost up the oak component to it as well so you get a really kind of hard squeeze in the winter where that wood's really contracting putting a lot of that oak influence back into the barrel which has been a really really fun technique to work with as i've been doing this over the last couple years and you guys are obviously closer to the coast than kentucky too so there must be some effects some effects from that coastal Yeah, you know, we've noticed that the kind of damp marine environment, if you want to call it that, really does help drive that oak influence in the whiskey. I've had just recently had a chance to taste through a batch of barrel barrels that were from West Virginia and similar climate in terms of cold that they get, but a much drier cold. And what I noticed just kind of tasting through a lot of those barrels is it was a much more kind of nuanced, you know, grain forward, really delicate profile that that provided, whereas that wetter, colder climate that we experience really drives home a lot of the oak notes that we're looking for when we age things further in Rhode Island.

So what's kind of your background and how did you how did you team up with Latitude?

Yeah, good question. I've had about 100 different careers in my life. I'm starting in the corporate world when I got out of college where I flamed out in that real quick. I was not built to sit behind a desk all day and and crunch numbers and things like that. So I really was looking For a career where I'd be much more hands on, you know, my brain works in a very production focused manner. You know, I'm always trying to craft things and do things like that. So I got into organic agriculture. So I was an organic farmer for about 10 years. Really enjoyed that, you know, being outside, really getting my hands into exactly what I was doing. that led me to pursue that passion between agriculture and alcohol. I worked in the wine world for a number of years. I was in vineyards all throughout Europe, mostly Germany and Italy. Then I got a bug on my ass that said, we're going to make really good wine in the northeast part of the US, which turned out to be a It's very, very difficult to make good wine in the Northeast of the United States, but that led me down the path of looking for how we can have a good epicenter of Call it alcohol culture somewhere in the Northeast. And that really got me into distilled spirits more and focusing on that. You know, we can grow really good grain up here. We can produce really phenomenal spirits, not only from grain, but also from fruit and stuff like that. Yeah, so I took that and helped found a small craft distillery in DC. I was there for about eight years and then decided I wanted to focus much more on working with the end product as opposed to doing a lot of the day-to-day things that go into running a distillery, you know, grinding grain, mashing grain, stuff like that. So we always like to be very upfront with what we're doing at Wheel Horse and Copper and Cast that we're a non-distilling producer. We don't have a still, we're not doing the initial work on this whatsoever. We really get it in as a already aged product and then try to put our own spin on it, whether that be blending like you're going to see across the couple of wheelhorse expressions that we have here today or cast finishing it on site to try to kind of layer flavors. And I know we have one example of some of our cast finish work a little bit later in the episode. So we'll talk about that a little bit more.

Well, I tell you, you know, our listeners can't see you, but, but I can see you. And I'm thinking he's got this long story and all these things he's done, but he looks kind of young.

So I was going to say, Jim, I'm like, good grief. There are days I feel younger than other days. Um, but I appreciate that. Cheers.

This is a great pour, really good whiskey, high quality, $40 barrel proof, five years out of a big boy distillery, but you guys have blended it to perfection. It's great. It's wonderful.

Appreciate that. Thank you.

40 bucks. My gosh. Go out and buy it. I mean, gee whiz, you can't go wrong with this. That oak really settles in on the back in the hug, and it's got this nice medium to long finish, but the chest hug is great. The oak settles in on the back of the palate. It sticks around for a while.

It's really good. Brown sugar starts to pop there on the palate and the finish, I think. A little bit of spice.

Yeah, one of the things that we always look for when we're blending is really making sure that that finish really stays with you. And for this particular batch, we focus a lot on making sure it had a really full mouth feel as well, which I apologize is a term I really hate, but there's no better way to say it. But it's something that kind of coats your tongue a little bit. And really, that really helps contribute to how the finish is going to stick with you as all. And I should say across all four of the pores we're going to do today, Everything is non-chill filtered, so we try to make sure that we're retaining as much of that flavor of that whiskey as we can in the pour.

All right, should we move on to the next expression? Sure.

So next one we're going to do is the bourbon's baby cousin, I guess you could call it that, although it's definitely not a baby in any way by the flavor of it. It's going to be our barrel master rye whiskey. So similar stats to what you saw on the bourbon. It's a five year age statement. Mash bill is going to be 95% rye, 5% malted barley. And really this was an expression that I pushed pretty hard for as much as a lot of what we do day-to-day is focused on bourbon whiskey. That's obviously a much larger segment of the overall market that we're trying to serve. Rye whiskey is just absolutely my passion. And part of that comes from the distillery that I started out with being in the Mid-Atlantic. Grows a lot of rye and really focusing on rye was what I focused on a lot for the early part of my career. So to craft this one in particular, we were looking for a good way to try to get bourbon drinkers to at least try rye and obviously the price point is going to help there but we wanted something that was a slightly sweeter profile but still especially once you get to the mid-pal to the finish of that that's when the spice really starts to kick in that is kind of four-year prototypical rye whiskey. This one proof point is going to be a little bit higher so we're 120.2 on this one and I really think that that higher proof contributes to the overall abundance of flavor that's going to come through on the pour so just really full, really bold, just enough sweetness to entice your typical bourbon drinker, but definitely enough oomph there to satisfy your rye drinker as well.

Yeah. So we just had a rice show, um, last week we just had a rice show and, uh, this would have sat nicely with the, with the others. Agreed.

It's got a nice, uh, like darker fruit, but there's just that hint that lets you know, there's a little bit of rice spice waiting in there too. Now I thought, you know, the internet said you guys were one of the first to put out a green river rye product. Is that. Is that true?

That is correct. We actually launched our Rye 101 before we launched our bourbon. We bought barrels that were about the same age when we were launching and we thought that the Rye came of age a little bit better or a little bit sooner than the bourbon did. So we took our time. a little bit more with the bourbon. But yeah, we are not only one of the first ones to release a Green River Rye 101, to my knowledge, and I'm sure the internet's gonna correct me on this one, we are the first to release a Green River Rye at cast strength.

Yeah, I love the nose on it, really nice.

So what I thought, and that was kind of like where I think you guys kind of made waves really was with that 101. I mean, you guys came out at a very iconic proof, so to speak. Yeah, there was a little bit of a shot fired there. Do you think, I mean, you said you weren't there at the time. Was it kind of like, hey, let's go for it? Or was there a little bit of trepidation?

Yeah. Listen, Wild Turkey has been out there a lot longer than we have, and they've been doing this kind of thing a lot longer than we have. Really what it was for us is making sure we're Expression at a proof point that makes sense. That's going to be bold. It's going to have some level of value to it as well So it's more of a joke that we say we're taking a shot at wild turkey, you know, we're not trying to replace anyone we're all friends around here, but you know, we He drank best at that proof. And at the end of the day, that's what was most important is we weren't we weren't quite ready to go into exploring things at cash strength, but we wanted to give people a whiskey that was assertive and, you know, had had enough flavor profile for what the whiskey deserved to be. We played around with it a little bit at lower proofs. I'm just not an 80 proof whiskey drinking person, so that was never of any interest to me, but we tried it at a bunch of different proofs all the way from 85 to 95, and it was really 101 where the whiskey sang. That's the story of everything that we're going to pour today. Let the whiskey tell you what it wants to be.

Yeah. So I just, I just went onto the bourbon road.com website and I searched out wheel horse and it popped up that on episode two 37, we had the wheel horse one-on-one proof bourbon on, uh, on episode two 37, January of 2022. And our, our rating on that was very good. And a creamy, well-crafted three-year-old bourbon with surprising depth and sweetness that justifies its recognition among the top whiskeys worldwide. So that's a review from 2022. So this stuff is older now and stronger. So hopefully it still holds up. Yeah.

Oh, it's delicious.

Yeah, you know, we've we've had a lot of fortune just, you know, we have a very close relationship with Green River. And that's always a really important thing when you're a non distilling producer to, you know, not just rely on your source distillery too much. You know, when we first started out, we were buying whiskey that they had already been aging. And when you do that, you only have so much influence into the product that you're going to get out. But from day one, we've had a contract where they put barrels down specifically for us. And that gives us a lot more flexibility into trying to craft that into the style that we want. So we're now getting into those barrels that have been laid down specifically for us. It's specific cupers that we want, specific barrel type. We don't have a whole lot of say in the mash bill, but we have some say into where in the rick house it's going to get stored and things like that. So it's a much more bespoke boat product now than it was when we first launched, as well as older.

It's a great Kentucky rye. It's a really flavorful rye. It's, uh, sort of, uh, and this, what was the price point on this one as well? Same, similar?

Same. Yep. So this coming to the same, it's already around 40 bucks.

It's definitely a value. It's a great rye. 120 proof. Gee whiz.

I mean, how can you go wrong? Now, was this about the same, I think you said you used 14 barrels on the bourbon?

This one was a little bit smaller. I want to say we did it at 11 barrels. And the batches of rye are always going to be a little bit smaller. It doesn't quite have the foothold in the market that, quite honestly, I think rye whiskey deserves. But hopefully those will get bigger over time as we make a little bit more of a name for it.

Yeah, I think Jim and I totally agree with that. We're both big rye guys. Yes, we are. So what was the thinking behind, you know, you're known as latitude beverages, but you have two different, you know, separate but. brands, I guess. What was the thinking behind that? Is that due to two different sources or kind of?

Yeah, I mean, that's definitely one reason for it. So everything that we do in the wheel horse line is always going to be Kentucky. It's always going to be sourced from Green River, whereas our copper and cast line is a little bit more amorphous. You'll see both of the expressions that we're going to taste today are both MGP sourced. But we do have a fair amount of wiggle room in there. We've released Canadian whiskey through the copper and cast line. We've sourced from other Kentucky distilleries. I always refer to it as more of our playground brand. Also, typically a little bit more premium as well. Wheel Horse, you know, our typical releases are going to be at that one-on-one proof point. And that's true not only for our core lineup of Ryan Birdman, but also a lot of the limited releases we do. So we do a cigar blend every fall. We do various limited releases throughout the year. Those are always going to be at one-on-one proof. The only kind of standouts away from that are the Sparrow Master Series, which are always going to be at cask strength. Whereas Copper and Cask is always cast strength and is typically much older age statements on it. So I think the ones we're gonna taste today are an eight year and an 11 year. So slightly more premium, slightly higher price point on those as well.

I'm loving like this candied orange on this rye.

Yeah, that's specifically the note that I picked for. I always call it a flamed orange, but like a flamed orange peel.

It's really good. That's a great ride. Really good. This is a sipping ride. You could actually, at your price point, you could still make cocktails with it, make high balls with it. You can still do whatever you like, but it's great just as a neat pour.

Yeah, and that's, again, something we're always shooting, even on our kind of entry-level, one-on-one proof bourbon and rye. They're kind of designed to be more cocktailing whiskeys, but at the same time, I always want to put out a spirit that you would be happy to sip as well. If you're not willing to sip it on its own, then there's probably more work that needs to get done on it. Yeah, that's special.

Good. And I'm telling you, 40 bucks, folks, you need both of these on your shelf.

All right. So, uh, I think what we're going to do now is we're going to take a little break. Uh, we're going to, uh, pause for a moment. Uh, you, all three of us will go into the back room and continue tasting these. Uh, when we return, we've got, uh, two more expressions, but these will be from the, uh, copperings cask line. And, uh, like you said earlier, a little bit elevated, a little bit different than a wheel horse brand. as I'm really looking forward to it. Folks stick around. We will be right back.

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All right, listeners, welcome back to the second half of the show. We're sitting here with Stephen Corrigan of Latitude Beverage LLC. And in the first half, we had the Wilhors five year barrel proof barrel master select Kentucky straight bourbon. And we also had their five year barrel master select Kentucky straight. Right. And wow, Jim, what'd you think?

I loved them both. They're both great whiskeys. Uh, definitely, uh, Among some of the better five-year-old whiskeys that I've tasted recently. So very nice. Well, well composed, well blended. Uh, I was really surprised by the finish on it. So, I mean, I think you said you kind of focused on the finish a little bit, Steven, and that was evident in the, in the poor.

Thank you. Yeah. You know, we always want to crack that sip. That's going to stick with you a little bit. You know, if you take a sip and you're thinking about it 30 seconds later, then that's usually a sign that we've done something right.

Yeah. All right, so what are we sipping on now, Stephen?

All right, so we're going to head into copper and cask. And I gave you guys a sample of our latest small batch release. So let me just take a quick step back and talk a little bit about copper and cask as a brand. So we started in 2021 with copper and cask. And it really started out as just a single barrel brand. So whether it be stores or bourbon clubs or whomever, coming to us to pick single barrels of whiskey and release those. And when I came on in 2022, I really wanted to focus on putting out a series of products throughout the year where we really focused on two things. First being our blending prowess, which was what you're going to taste in this next pour, but also our cask finishing prowess as well. We've done things like cigar blends, we've done double oaks, we've done various different types of cask finishes on both bourbon and rye. It's really something that I've focused on a lot in my career is thinking about how we layer different types of flavor as we're putting together a bottle of whiskey and seeing how that comes together. So, like I said, this is our latest release in that series, Small Batch 16. It is an 11-year bourbon source from MGP. High rye mash bill, so 60% corn, 36% rye, 4% malted barley. quite honestly is the whiskey that I've produced probably in the last five or six years that I was really hesitant to put out. Ultra-aged whiskey, I wouldn't even call this ultra-aged whiskeys, but anything over 10 years you have to be very, very careful with how you select those barrels and how you think about putting them together. They just have a tendency to be super overly oaky, very tannic, very astringent almost. And we were fortunate enough to get access to two different lots of barrels, both laid down in September of 2014. And They were, despite being laid down three days apart from each other, they were completely night and day whiskies. It was amazing. So the ones, the barrels that we had that were three days younger were actually much more kind of austere, showed their age well, lots of oak influence, but that oak influence came through with like a cocoa powder or like a chocolatey note coming through. And then the other lot of barrels that was actually three days older showed a lot more youthful. And when I say youthful, I don't mean like underaged or grainy or anything like that. But it showed this kind of liveliness to it that you don't really get in whiskeys that have that amount of age on it. So I was getting a lot of citrus notes coming through a lot of like a cherry and red fruit coming through and just had a really great liveliness to it. So we blended those two lots together, about two thirds of that older tasting, more chocolatey note, and then about a third of the more lively ones. And I think it came together a whiskey that shows its age really well. You can tell that it's got some decent age on it. There's some depth there, but it also has this I can't think of a better word to say than liveliness that, um, you know, it's, it's kind of jumps out of the glass of you and really kind of dances around in your palette a little bit with those kinds of fruity and, uh, slightly sweeter notes as well.

All right. Let's check it out. I get that cocoa powder for sure.

I'm getting some cherries, but this is like, I would say like the green river, the wheel horse had a little darker cherry notes, almost like, I mean, black cherry, I guess. And this is kind of like, I don't know, like you're being cherries a little bit.

Yeah. I almost described it almost like a maraschino cherry.

Yeah. Less cola too. It's a nice compliment and nice balance to it. I think it, I think you get, you get both. both of those profiles that you talked about, they kind of marry well in here, but I'm surprised at a third that the cherry notes come through so much, but they do.

So the funny thing was I was going to ask you, you kind of told your story about blending this, is it easier to blend odor whiskies or easier to blend the the Will Horse. It's kind of a mixed bag every time.

Yeah, it definitely does depend a little bit. What I typically see in older barrels is you just get a much more of a spectrum of flavor. You know, they can run the gamut of being high proof, very dense, very boozy. You know, you can get, if you're working with barrels over 10 years, you can easily find a hazmat in there and trying to blend with hazmat barrels is not exactly an easy task. I have done it before, but it can try your patience for sure. So really the challenge to it that I find is that You have to figure out how all these barrels are going to work together to make something that's cohesive. So this particular blend was 24 barrels that went into it. Like I said, about two thirds that the more austere, older tasting barrels, not a third of the liveliness. And that seemed to be the sweet spot on it. You know, I first tried to do it with roughly 50-50 and it just, it didn't taste right. You weren't, you weren't, it wasn't drinking like something that was 11 years old. It was drinking like something that was eight or nine years old. And, um, that's obviously not, not the track you want to take with older whiskey, um, of giving people things that, that, uh, tastes underage for, for what you're claiming that it is. Um, so I found, I feel like we kind of hit the nice sweet spot on this one.

Yeah, it's delicious. It is, it is really good. I'm getting kind of a, like a cream soda note and a little bit of like a, like a fruit cake kind of a really nice fruit cake note. It's a little zip of ginger at the tail end.

Like I mentioned, it is a high-rhybe urban CR again, that kind of little spiciness, especially on the finish again. So fruit cake or ginger are definitely notes I could see in there.

And what does this one retail for?

This one, I believe we have on our website for 84 99.

11 years, 84 99 folks.

Yeah. This is a special whiskey. This sits right in that saddle between eight and 12. That is, uh, if done right, can be just delightful. And, uh, this is really good. This is, uh, 116 proof, 11 year old, and it drinks like, it's a little soft up front though. And that surprises me.

Yeah, I want to say the barrels that went into this, and I don't have my notes in front of me exactly, but we had some barrels in there that came in at like 123, 124 proof, and then we had some that were as low as I want to say 111 or 112. So we really kind of ran the gamut on proof there a little bit, but I wanted something. I knew I wanted this whiskey to be sub 120 because that is going to allow you to have that kind of smoothness and creaminess to it.

Wow, this is delicious whiskey.

It's really good. So this is, like you said, Small Batch 16. How many of these have you worked on, Stephen?

All 16 of these are my babies.

Oh, OK. Awesome.

Yeah. This was really the project that when I came on, I wanted to launch. And we really used the Small Batch series as our playground. I've been given a fairly... Fairly hands-off approach from my hires up to just put out whatever I feel like is good at a given time. So we've done some cast finishing projects in here. We've done Bourbons, we've done Rise, we've done Canadians. You know, really kind of whatever, whatever I come across and I get excited about typically gets rolled out through this small batch series. And don't ask me which one's my favorite because it's, it's like picking your favorite kid, right? That's right. But this one's a high contender.

So are bottles of this available to our listeners today?

They, depending on when your listeners are actually listening to this, most likely we did recently sell out about four days ago on our website, but we are going to be reloading the website, which is copperandcastspirits.com. So follow us on social, again, copperandcastspirits on Instagram. We will announce it there when we are restocked on this product. So depending on when listeners are hearing this, maybe, I guess is the best answer.

You know, it's funny, I checked the website just a couple of days ago and everything was sold out. And there's quite a list of bottles on there. But one, I think there was one of the older cigar blends, I think, maybe was the only thing I saw available.

So we try to keep that in stock as long as we can, but it's definitely out there on the shelves. If you're in one of our markets and we distribute, I wanna say to 38 markets right now, we try to spread these releases out as widely as we can. So definitely check your local stores and most likely it's still on the shelf.

Awesome. So having done 16 batches, I guess what's your process of, I mean, do you start with kind of start small and start getting an idea of where you want to take something or how does that kind of work for you when you're blending?

Yeah, I mean, definitely as we were first launching the small batch series, we kept those batch sizes a little bit smaller. Just, you know, it was much more of a proof of concept thing in the early iterations of this. So, you know, we were probably for most of those releases somewhere between two to three hundred and fifty six packs. So, despite having started my current finance. I'm not good with numbers, but 2,000 or less bottles. And then as we've gotten a little bit more comfortable, we've increased the batch sizes on some of these. So this one was just under 500 cases or 3,000 bottles. Yeah. And we don't ever try to constrain ourselves necessarily trying to hit a number or a size to get it out in people's hands. This is going to sound corny, but we do let the whiskey talk to us at a certain point. If i know that these call it eight barrels are going to work well together and i can't find something else that's going to complement them and make them a better product than those eight barrels are what we put out and we know that that's going to be a limited size but if you didn't catch it this time catch the next one. But yeah, so typically the batch sizes we're working with now are somewhere between 500 and a thousand six packs. So still in the grand scheme of things, fairly, fairly small batch compared to some of the bigger boys that are out there. But, um, you know, that's, that's kind of where we found the sweet spot in a lot of these.

Wow. Now I'm really on the edge of my seat for this next pour. I mean, I'm really looking forward to it. Should we dive in?

Yeah, let's move. All right. So this is a fun one. This one was only available on our website and I believe is still there. Todd, you've looked clearly more recently than I have, so if I'm lying, call me out on it. This is an eight year bourbon, exact same match build of what you guys tasted in the last blend. So 60% corn, 36% rye and 4% malted barley. It's a pick that we did with a couple of, or three different whiskey Instagram influencers. So Whiskey Gal, the whiskey, Excuse me, Whiskey Fly and Bourbon Hunt all came out to our facility in Rhode Island to help select this barrel. It is the only one we're going to taste tonight that's cast finished, and it was finished in a Sauternes barrel for memory serves about 16 months. Now, Sauternes is not a super common whiskey finishing barrel that you will see out there, but is one that I've really fallen in love with over the years. Um, so fortified, um, French kind of dessert style wine, um, is going to give you, uh, a decent amount of sweetness, but also just a ton of fruit coming through on this one. So you're going to get like a great penis. You're going to get the raisin notes. You're going to get, um, almost like a little bit of plum coming through there, a little bit of fig kind of leans into that, that dark fruit, um, note. Um, but what I love about saw turn specific that you feel as you're sipping it. It's very viscous, very oily, really kind of coats your mouth. And I always like to pair a saturn with that high rye mash bill because it's just kind of building on that viscosity in the whiskey to really deliver not only a lot of flavor upfront, but also a lot of flavor that's going to linger with you as well.

And it is very dark. It's a very dark whiskey. has great color.

I mean, the whiskey was dark to start with before it went into the finishing cask. But yeah, that finishing cask is going to give you a lot of additional color as well.

The funny thing was he was naming off a lot of stuff like the grape. And I'm like, I'm just sitting here shaking my head. I'm like, yeah, I get that. Grape must, I guess, I guess.

Yeah, plum fig. Definitely.

and I don't know if you said it, but this is 119.8 proof. Yeah, 119.8.

Oh, yeah. It comes across with this, yeah, cheers. It comes across with this impression of sweetness to come, but then it does have a little bit of dryness. To it on the palette, but it's, it gives you this immediate impression. Like get ready. This is going to be sweet, but it's, it's not, it's just well balanced. It's a sort of a half dry, half sweet, nice texture, really thick and silky.

Yeah, I think what you described in the flavor profile is one of the reasons that I always kind of lean something that's going to have a little bit more rye in it for doing a lot of these finishing projects, but Sauternes specifically, because you do get that sweetness on the mid palate. And that's really the almost the finishing cast trying to take over a little bit. And then you have that rye spice come in at the end and really tamp it down might not be the right word, but really control and balance it so that you don't just lean into that kind of treacly dessert kind of sweetness.

It's almost got like a tawny port kind of, I don't know, it seems like a tawny to me a little bit, but I know it's not port, but. It just has that, that, that more meaty, more I'm going to loss for words. Really good.

If I can make you speechless, I feel like I've done my job. Yeah, you're, you're right. I mean, Tony port and saw turn or kind of kissing cousins in a way. So both fortified great. based wines, obviously Port from Portugal and Sauterne from France, but there are a lot of similarities. The one thing that I would say that Connie Port will sometimes give you that I don't usually find in Sauterne is a little bit of that kind of barrel funk to it, a little bit of like Rancio coming through. Sherry really leans into that and Port can have it sometimes, but Sauterne is usually a lot kind of cleaner and fruit forward.

Now with the MGP barrels, are you guys getting them at a little bit of younger age and then aging them for a while yourselves or?

We do a little bit of everything. So like this saw turn finish, we probably bought as like a four year barrel. It aged for a little bit of time. And I didn't actually talk too much about this for copper and cast, but I think it's one of the things that is unique, especially for our single barrel program. We age barrels. in a lot of different locations around the country and we find that that gives you a lot of different nuance and flavor profiles from the different geographical climate that those barrels are resting in. So this one actually didn't age at MGP, it aged at Green River in Owensboro, Kentucky. So they are aging some of the MTP for us. We've aged in Florida, which is a really kind of interesting climate. We've aged in Texas. And then obviously, like I said, we bring some things into our facility in Rhode Island for extended aging as well. So this one probably spent about two years. in our facility in Rhode Island before it went in finishing cask and then another 18 months once it was in finishing cask in Rhode Island. Now we do have some examples where we don't hold on to them that long like the small batch 16 we brought in and basically blended within a couple of months of bringing those into the facility so we bought those as 11 year old barrels and When I get whiskey that's that old, I don't like to keep it hanging around too long because they can go sideways on you pretty quick. And I've had barrels typically like 12 to 13 years. They can they can become super panic, undrinkable whiskey. So I knew we had good barrels that were ready to go. So we tried to move through them as quickly as we could.

So I'm glad you brought up Florida because a friend of ours, Darrell Stewart, I know Durrell well.

Yes, he is the one that's most frequent flyer. I think he's probably our facility once a month.

But he's the one that kind of brought your single barrels to my attention. And that was the thing, was the Florida barrels. Everyone was all about those Florida barrels. What was it about those Florida barrels you think that just tickled some of the true aficionados pallets, I guess?

Yeah, you know, we talked a lot about the climate in Rhode Island being cold and wet and kind of the what that can do. Florida, I feel like, kind of does it on steroids. So obviously hot, damp climate. We saw barrels that absorb where the whiskey absorbed very, very quickly. So if you really like that oak forward profile, especially chocolatey notes, it was it was a lot of chocolate bombs that came out of Florida. typically much higher proof points as well. So typically any of the hazmat releases we've done for copper and cast, those usually come out of the Florida barrels just because they tended to boost proof so fast. For those of us who are in the whiskey business, it also juiced evaporation rates pretty quickly. So what we got out of those barrels was not quite the yield that we might've been hoping for, but Yeah, it's just a it's a really interesting climate and I think does some really interesting things, especially if you're into that kind of dense chocolate notes coming through, which which I love. So I think it did some phenomenal things to the whiskey. I am sad to report that we are currently out of those barrels because they were so popular. But I just, within the last couple of weeks, signed a new contract. So the distillery we were aging with went out of business, so we couldn't age any more whiskey there. But we just, a few weeks ago, signed a new contract with a new distillery who was going to house barrels for us. So it's going to take us a couple of years to get it right, but stay tuned. I promise you they will be back because they have been some of our more popular barrels.

That's awesome. Just out of curiosity, what part of Florida were they in?

They were in kind of central Florida. So the new place we're going to be working with is in the city of Orlando. So we might even try to find a couple of different locations in Florida and similar kind of Gulf states to see if we can see any nuance. I was in Louisiana last week and I talked to a distillery owner who hopefully is going to have some barrels for us as well. It's really what I love about this community, especially when we're talking about producers specifically who are really just kind of will sit down and talk to you and really nerd out about whiskey they're all they've all become great friends to me and everyone's willing to help each other out so I know this new place that we're gonna start aging with in Florida was almost insulted that I offered him money to store barrels for me he just wanted to help me out he's like I think it would be cool to have some of your barrels down here so No, I don't want you to be like, you know, maybe you'll help me out with a barrel here and there. So whatever, man, you're doing me a favor. So it's really just a great community of people all with, you know, watching each other's back and trying to make sure that we succeed all succeed because, you know, we're all kind of smaller names and as much as we can help each other get our names out there, the better we're all going to do. I do truly believe that.

Absolutely. Well, I'll tell you what I've really enjoyed all four of these whiskies today. They're all great. Uh, and all good values. I think that, uh, you know, you definitely, um, provide. To your customers, a wide variety of, uh, spirits that meet both the pocketbook and the person searching for that special flavor note, that special profile. So it's nice to have that. And the fact that you're sold out all the time says you're kind of kind of doing things right.

Let's, let's, let's hope so. Uh, like I said, I'm pretty sure the southern finish is still on the website and I meant to look up the price before we started, but it's either 64 99 or 69 99. So we do try to keep those price points affordable and approachable because a, I want you to try the stuff. Um, I want you to make, take that leap and actually pick up a bottle and take it home and be, I want you to drink it whenever you feel like it. I don't want it to be a special occasion pour that you pull out once or twice a year. I want this to be something you can feel good about pulling off your bar on a random Tuesday and pouring yourself something.

I was going to say, any chance we'll see a wheel and cask or a copper horse blend?

Good question. There may be a crossover product in the works. We're a few years away from having that happen. It would be something where we allow some of these wheel horse barrels to go a little bit longer and then think about doing some sort of collab. on them. So stay tuned. I am neither promising nor denying that that is a project that we might be working on.

You heard it here, folks. And then I have one other thing. Yeah, go ahead. So you guys were kind enough to send us actually six things to try, but we were kind of like, well, let's focus on four because we're going to take two of those and we're going to have a it's kind of its own show. We're going to do like a cigar finish and So what I was kind of, I guess impressed by is like your wheel horse cigar blend is kind of more, I mean, there's no true definition of a cigar blend, but it's a little more traditional. You've got your cognac, your port, your Arminiac and Sherry. Whereas you took this copper and cask batch and man, you went out and left field for this one. And I think you've done it in the past before, but so you went with a Canadian whiskey and it's, what is it? 157?

I think on the one that we sent you. Yeah.

And it is crazy good.

Spoilers. Appreciate that. Yeah, you know, cigar blend being a very amorphous definition is good in some ways in that it allows us to be playful and kind of do whatever we think. It also, you know, there are some people who go real out in the left field with it, you know. whether you're aging cigar tobacco in barrels or trying to roll in an Ambarana finish, which I don't I don't touch Ambarana with a 10 foot pole. It's just way too temperamental of a wood for me. You know, we at least in the finishing barrels that we're selecting, try to keep it somewhat mainstream, kind of keep to the you know, the traditional barrels that you see in kind of Scotch whiskey cigar blends that have been popular for a few decades now, you know, leaning typically pretty heavy into the sherry, but also rolling in some Armenian yak and either some port or some cognac, which like you mentioned in our wheel horse one, we tried to keep that fairly traditional. We also tried to keep it approachable to, you know, there's nothing that's too far out of left field, but Yeah, you know, we found this one lot of 21 year old Canadian barrels. I just fell in love with the profile. It's it's Canadian blended whiskey. So it's a little bit on the sweeter side, but and it's proofy. You know, definitely make sure it's the last pour you do on that tasting, because it's going to wreck your palate a little bit at 158 proof. But it is it doesn't drink that hot, which is, in my opinion, maybe a little dangerous. You know, you can tell it's 120 plus. But if I were blinding that, I wouldn't guess it was more than 125, you know, despite being almost 160 proof. So, yeah, that one was a lot of fun. We had a lot. We had a lot of fun with that project.

All right. Well, Steven, we'd like to give you a chance to let everybody know who's listening to this, where they can find you guys on the internet, on social media, um, where you might be showing up soon at some event or whatever. Take a moment. Yeah.

Yeah, thanks so much. So like I said, you can find us on our website, wheelhorsewhiskey.com and copperandcastspirits.com. Both of those have a storefront on them where you can pick up some of these bottles when they're in stock. Wheel Horse is pretty well stocked and copper That's the first place that any of our new releases get released. And definitely check us out on our Instagram page, at Wheel Horse Whiskey and at Copper and Cast Spirits. And that's where you'll get the most up-to-date information on anything that we're dropping in the future. So yeah, thanks so much, guys. Really great talking to you.

Now, do you guys have any kind of tasting room there in Rhode Island or anything?

We do not. We are a little bit anti tasting room. We're very much a production facility that is not. Should we say the most aesthetically pleasing for welcoming the general public into taste? You know, I'm definitely out doing events at various times throughout the year. So I'll be down in but we try to get out into the market as much as we can and a lot of our retailers are really helpful with us as well, always keeping open bottles behind the counter if there's anything that you ever want to try out there. We are moving into a new facility hopefully in like three or four years and a tasting room is part of the vision for that, but unfortunately we don't have a tasting room open these days.

All right. Well, definitely Steven was a play. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. It was great to have you share your whiskies with us. We invite you to come to the bourbon road.com whenever you have a chance pop in there, feel free to post and, uh, join up. And, uh, if you've got some great news for our folks, uh, and extend that invitation to your team, they're more than welcome to come on the site and, and join in with our, with our listeners and. and post and, and do all those things. Uh, we hope, uh, we get a chance real soon to have your, uh, your whiskey's on to our cigar show. Todd's got that, that plan to happen right here real soon, I think. So we're looking forward to that as well. All right. Well, you can find the bourbon road on all social media outlets. You can find us on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, tech talk, Facebook threads, but the main place you're going to find us is on the bourbon road.com. You can also go to our Facebook group, the bourbon roadies. That's where a lot of our 3000 plus listeners hang out, but, uh, feel free to come to the website, the bourbon road.com on there. We have all our tasting notes over 1300. Uh, tasty notes over almost 300 articles, 500 podcast episodes, all kinds of stuff. We've got a chat room and, uh, event calendar and all kinds of things going on. So make sure you check that out. Uh, every Wednesday, Todd and I get together, we put out a new episode. Make sure you scroll to the top of that app. You're on hit that subscribe button. That way you're sure to get that notification, let you know that, uh, that we've dropped another one and you can put on those headsets and join us again for another show. We always love having you along for the ride. It's always fun out on the Bourbon road. We're always drinking whiskey. We're always having fun, but until the next time we'll see you down.

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