495. Heritage Showdown: Jack Daniel's, Knob Creek, Maker's Mark & Evan Williams

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

And I'm your host, Todd Ritter. We've got a great show for you today. So grab your favorite four and join us.

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. Let's welcome back to another episode of the bourbon road podcast. Todd and I are hanging out today. We are in the corner Rick house in Frankfurt, Kentucky, about a mile down the road from Buffalo trace and a hop, skipping a jump to the Kentucky river.

Yeah. When I came down here during the flood, the wall was up and you could literally touch the water over there. It was pretty scary, but I'm glad it held.

But you've got a great show set up for us today. We've got some nice bottles. I can see them from across the table.

Yeah, we're going Heritage. I've accrued a few new ones, and then our good friend Adam Dorman sent us the first two pours, and we'll always give him a shout out.

Thank you, Adam. Thank you, Adam. You're getting to be a regular on the show, at least for mentions anyway.

I was going to say, it's nice when you can reach out to friends and like, hey, can I borrow a pour? That way, we don't have to come out of our pocket. If you recall, this was, well, I'll go ahead and break the news. The first pour we're going to have, is the Jack Daniels 10 Euro. This is the newest batch. This is batch five. And if you recall, we were supposed to get samples from one of our PR folks and we were supposed to get the 14 and spoilers, we did not get the 14 because they sent it to the wrong address. It was like a few days, like, you know, usually It's like three or four days turned around when we- And nobody came and knocked on your door and said, oops, I got this, right? Like the UPS giving you like dirt. He's like, I'm here again, that kind of thing. So if you recall, I reached out to our PR guy and he was like, oh, I sent it to the wrong address. And I thought he was going to send us another one, which he didn't. But you know, it happens. But yeah, so we've got, this is Jack Daniel's 10 year, batch five. It's 97 proof. The MSRP on this is $90. It's a mash bill of 80 corn, 12 rye, eight malted barley. And like I said, this is the 2026 release, literally just dropped probably end of February, March.

So this is the Heritage show leading off with.

Yeah, we have, I mean, when you speak heritage, you're thinking more of the Kentucky, but I mean, you know, Brown Form and Jack Daniels, it all works. It all works.

It absolutely works. Oh yeah. You weren't going to tell me what the first two were.

I was going to say, but I think you would have guessed.

I think I would have guessed this one.

Some nice molasses notes going on.

It is nice. Now one thing that these, these, these older Jack Daniel's bottle give you is, and what's the proof on it again?

97. So it's a lower one.

But, but if there's a little ethanol on the nose, I mean.

Getting the banana. Are you getting the runts? And I'm not getting the runts, but. I think the runs tend to show up on like the, the, just the regular, I guess, kind of a candy note though. Yeah. A little bit of leather on that. Nice.

Yeah. It's a little darker. It's a little more aged oak.

Yes.

Um, there's some, some character there that's, that sings.

And it's, I mean, Jack Daniel's always like their limited releases always have great noses. I think, I mean, well, Brown Foreman for that matter.

I mean, a little bit of cinnamon, sweet candy, a little bit of cinnamon, some brown sugar and be a hand of chocolate.

Great nose. Yeah. Let's sit.

Cheers. Cheers. Oh, that's nice. That's my first sip of the day. Same. No warmup tonight.

No warmup tonight. We're rolling.

So we have to sort of dismiss the little bit of the bitter note because that's because you typically get that with your first pour.

Yeah, that's the shock.

It's the shock.

All right, going in for a second.

Nice. It's got a nice bite to it.

Now, if our listeners recall, we actually got to try all three batches of the 10, 12, and 14 last year. And I believe our ranking went, we really enjoyed the 12 last year. That was probably our top dog, I think. And then I think the 14 and then the 10.

I think so.

I know the 12 was the top dog because we even do that in our end of the year show.

Okay. The, the palette and the nose are singing the same song. Um, I would add, there's a big push of like brown sugar on this too. Yeah. It has a sweetness, but it, but it's settling down on the back with, uh, a lot of warmth for a 97 proof. Not as viscous as I thought it might be. No, it's not. And the, when I go back to the nose, I'm still picking up that a little bit of an excessive ethanol note on it. It's just a little bit more than you would expect out of something sub 100 proof, but it's nice. Brown sugar, cinnamon, you mentioned a little bit of chocolate. I'm getting that going back to the nose now. Not getting the banana, but I am getting that kind of a candy fruit sweetness. Like candy cherries.

Like, you know how you like, like those, there's like those orange slices, but almost like a, you take like the cherry, like, and make a candy, like gum candy gum, not spice gumdrops. Like you like to say a lot of it, but like a, like a cherry gumdrop to me.

Okay. It's great. Poor really good. A little bit, like I said, on the bitter side, but for me, I think that's pretty much because it's the first pour of the day and I haven't really warmed my palate up. That's not fair to the first pour.

Probably not.

But we have to call it out.

Yeah. I'm kind of curious since, you know, we missed out on the 14, so they're obviously didn't release a 15 this year. So I'm thinking next year, we'll probably, you gotta think of 16s coming down the line. That would be nice. Maybe they're keeping the years even, right? Well, I think you recall their goal was to get to in that 20s, 21. So every other year, release them on the even years. That's what it's kind of looking like to me.

So next year would be about that time, I guess. I wonder why they would do it that way.

I don't know, but they've also been the news lately. I guess you saw where Pernod Ricard, that's a no-go.

It's a no-go, but it seems to be the Brown family's choice, if they were to make one, to go with them, because they like the legacy idea with Pernod Ricard. They don't want to get swallowed up by Cesarac.

I was going to say, speaking of Buffalo Trace right down the road, they, 15 billion. Cash.

I know. I know. They're cash heavy, aren't they? Cash. 15 billion. I can't even imagine like how big the stacks would be.

It's like your own Brinks truck.

I mean, the Brown family is already very wealthy and they don't, I shouldn't say they don't need more money. It's certainly theirs. They're welcome to it. I think they're more concerned with the legacy of the company. It's such a long running legacy and they know that it'll be preserved under somebody like Pernod Ricard and it will get swallowed up and dissolved into the fray with somebody like Buffalo Trace.

I've heard a lot of good arguments for and against both of them actually. What happens, like, you know, Brown Forman's always been a huge sponsor for an event. Does it happen? The Kentucky Derby.

Yeah.

So does, I mean, does Pernod Card say, okay, we want to keep that going? Or are they like, man, someone else talked about they do a lot of charity work in Louisville and things like that.

I mean, you look at other companies that are owned. from companies outside the U S and, and while Turkey for roses was outside the U S look at these companies and they said, they still seem to have a, uh, you know, a national patriotism. So I don't know.

I guess we'll wait and see, won't we? We shall see. All right. We're ready to move on to port two. Let's do it. All right. This is the second highest proof that we've got tonight. And this is the Jack Daniels 12 year old. This is the fourth iteration of that. So batch four, 107 proof. So we've upped the proof, upped the age a little bit. The MSRP on this one is 99 at a hundred bucks.

Yep. Great expectations on this one.

Yeah. I mean, yes, I was going to say this was one of our top dogs last year. So I'm very excited. All right. Cheers. Cheers. Huh. The nose is not a little more muted than it is muted. Yeah. Wow. That's, I was just bragging on how good the nose. I mean, it's there, but, but they tamp down the ethanol a little bit too on it.

So, you know, we've gone up almost, well, we have gone up 10 proof points and to the ethanol has dropped off on the nose. It's a more muted nose. But it still has that brown sugar, cinnamon kind of notes.

Yeah, there's still some of the same notes. Like that molasses is going on. Yep. Like darker fruits. That would probably be the biggest change from that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Go back and nose. I mean, I know we don't like to go back sometimes, but.

Oh, yeah.

So it's a little brighter. Yeah, it is. Yeah.

It is. Lighter fruits, a little bit sweeter, candier. This one's a little more dark. but not a fully dark, not like a plum fig dark. This is a little bit more like a raisin dark.

Black cherries, black cherries. It's starting to express itself a little more.

Yeah. Not as much leather on the nose now though, but it's nice.

Nice nose.

Cheers. Okay. Yeah. Um, more bitter, little, um, a little bit of a bite on the mid palette. No, the funny thing is we're sitting here having these. The other night we had a baby shower at our house and it was a couple's baby shower. So the guys were there too.

Oh, congratulations on surviving that by the way.

Thank you. But Zach and Rob and I were sitting at a table together and we were passing around some of the older, some of the Jack Daniel samples. So from last year. Oh, nice. So it wasn't that long ago. I had the compatriot to this.

Perfect. There's a little more sizzle on the tongue. I took a second sip.

Yeah.

Almost, almost sort of a bitter green note. I can see that. And like, this is not, you know, I got the banana on the, that first one, the 10 year and It's not there on this one.

This is a totally different whiskey. Now no similar, but muted, but on the palate, it's completely different. Um, it's like a dried cranberry kind of vibe. I can get some like bitter, bitter, bitter chocolate. Maybe maybe. So yes, I'm definitely some super like, uh, molasses, cacao chocolate, but not, um, but maybe a super high cacao, not enough to have sort of the toasted notes, but more of the burnt notes.

Hmm. Wish we still had some of the 12, like last year's 12 to compare.

Yeah. So I can tell you right now, that based on my memory, which is not that old, this doesn't hold a candle to last year's 12.

I don't think so either. Yeah. I mean, just going, like you said, gone by memory, I don't think so either.

It's definitely a dryer and a little bit more. Yeah. It's, it's missing that sweetness. It's missing that companion sweetness that it needs to sort of break through on the palette. So agreed. Okay.

Well it is what it is. Yeah. Still a good poor. Yes. But yeah, I'm, I'm like you. I think, uh, I think it falls a little short compared to last year's.

I'm going to hit some water though. Cause I just feel like I haven't given the Jack Daniels a fair shake tonight. High quality H2O. back for another sip just in case.

All right. We're going to come back over the border, back into Kentucky, like I said, heritage. We've got Jim Beam's Knob Creek Blender's Edition. This is Blender's Edition 01, and it's called the Sweet Bourbon Blend. It is a 10-year-old Kentucky straight bourbon, 106 proof. Approximately $45 out the door, great price. So the plan was Fred and I wanted to focus more on a sweeter flavor profile with this blend. And I'm assuming since there's a zero one behind it that we'll see some more iterations. Like I said, yeah, 10 years, 106 proof, $44.99. MSRP should be out there pretty much everywhere, I would say. And yeah, I'm kind of excited to try this. I've heard a lot of good things.

Well, you can always tell how excited they are about an expression by the numbers. They start with like zero one or zero zero one, right?

Right. Or zero zero zero one. Maybe they're like, well, this is going to be big, right?

Right. I don't know. All right. Let's check it out. Always love a good Knopp Creek. Yep. And they, they can blend their, they can blend suburban and they, they have some amazing Rick houses to pull from. So,

Okay. There's not a lot of peanut there, which is different. It is a little sweeter nose. There's not a lot of nose there. Yeah. It's a little faint.

This hasn't been in the glass that long. Yeah. A bit of a Rick house funk to it. Yeah. A lot of vanilla. Yes. Like this wafts. This has got some, did it say the components at all? Like, or not? It really didn't talk about the specific components. Yeah.

I didn't say where, you know, like they had that, they featured the, in the recent Hardens Creek didn't feature like, you know, those featured different warehouses, but I'm guessing this is just, uh,

This has got some whiskey in it that is probably, uh, has a little bit lower age to it. Um, not now when I say lower age, I don't mean four year, but I mean maybe six.

No, it's all, I mean it's age stated at 10. It's all age stated at 10.

Then they've picked some barrels off the lower floors here.

I think so.

Yeah. Sip it. Cheers. Cheers. That is light. Oh, but that is different for Knob Creek. It is. That is not a Knob Creek, damn it. Somebody put something else in that bottle.

That one's a curve ball.

Nope. Not getting a lot of that nuttiness that you'd expect. I'm going to venture out and say these are bottom floor barrels. They've got to be. Yeah. Wow.

So it's here and this is on the little neck tag thing. It says a sweet bourbon blend crafted with hand selected barrels of knob Creek to highlight rich vanilla and confectionary notes bottled exactly as our blenders intended. Okay. So we're going for like a cake batter. Yeah. Kind of. I could see that. That vanilla is very prevailing on this.

Boy, if I had to guess the age on this, I would not have said 10 years.

It doesn't taste like it's ... I'm curious to know if they watered it down a little bit though. What was the proof? 106.

Man, they must have really ... I don't know. These must have been some barrels that took on a little bit of maybe lowered proof in the Lurk House.

Yeah, maybe so. I don't know. I don't have this great deal of maturation knowledge.

It's not like I know exactly what happens to barrels in the Rick house, but when you take a 10 year knob Creek, which we can pretty much pinpoint what it's supposed to taste like and you get something like this, the few variants. Yeah, for sure.

But not like this. I like it. It's nice. What was the price on this? $45. Yeah.

So this is a sipper. This is just an average daily 10-year. They've blended it for average Joe.

Yeah. And it 106 proof. It's a good introduction if you want to take a step up in proof, get away from the nine-year. I'm impressed.

Yeah.

Um, so obviously there's going to be more of these to come.

So it's going to be interesting to see what at least 99 more, right? And I do love their batches.

Like you said, Booker, the Bookers, you know, sometimes they release three or four. So, I mean, Are you seeing like, do you see this trend of like, like there's like new release after new release, after new release. And I mean, there's obviously the high end LTOs, but there's also things like this where it's, I mean, there's probably a lot of bottles of this, but it's still pretty limited, you know?

Kind of trying new stuff. You know, it's like trying to shake up the, shake up the world a little bit. Yeah. Take another look at bourbon. Right. You think?

And that and just kind of keep, keep the bourbon nerds on their toes and alert and interested?

Yeah. I mean, you know. Well, this is a whiskey that would appeal across the board to the masses. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't know that this, do you think this is a bourbon nerd whiskey or do you think this is, gets bourbon nerds to talk about it, but it's the average Joe that's going to buy it?

I think a little bit of both. Yeah. I mean, I think this is one, The bourbon nerds will buy and put out for like if someone's not like kind of starting to dip their toes into different stuff, maybe. Like I said, this is a nice segue into getting to a little higher proof. Yeah. So I got another question for you, hypothetical question. All right. So you go to the store. Are you going to grab? It might not work. So of the four beam expressions, and I'm talking the basal, knob, bookers, and the bakers, what are you most likely to purchase just out of curiosity?

For me? Yeah, just- For me, well, it depends on what it's being purchased for. Is it being purchased for Jim on the back porch by himself?

Yeah, just entirely you. Probably, I mean, I'm talking like, you know, nothing super LTO, but like say a Knob Creek pick or a Booker's, you know, one of the different variants of the Basel Haydn's has all those different ones. Yeah.

I'm going to go for deeper.

I'm going to go for a Baker's seven or maybe 13.

Yeah. I would go for a Baker's 13. I would go for a bookers, I would go for a Knob Creek pick of elevated age. I'm still of the mindset to try and find something that's richer, deeper, darker, darker, more. I mean, Knob Creek is known for one thing, right? Bold whiskeys, right? And that's what I've come to love about them. And you always get that in a bookers. They're not always the same. They're not always at the same premium level. They vary a lot.

Yeah, for sure. Apparently the new one's one of the higher proofs in a while. I've seen it. It's a matter of getting it and reviewing it, I guess.

Baker's 13 was great. I liked it. All right.

What do you think? Take a break. Come back for two more pours and then we'll chicken chicken. We'll chicken them out. We'll chicken. We'll winner winner chicken dinner.

All right. Yeah, let's do that. All right. Stick around folks. We'll be right back.

Hey there, bourbon roadies. It's Diane Strong with Bourbon on the Banks Festival, and I want to give you a quick update on Bourbon on the Banks. General admission is officially sold out. But don't worry, we've still got Twilight tickets, and they're absolutely worth it. You'll catch the final two hours of the festival. The energy is high, the crowd is buzzing, the music's going, and the bourbon is flowing. With over 70 distilleries to sample from, you don't want to miss it. It's all happening October 3rd in Frankfurt. Grab those Twilight tickets before they're gone. I can't wait to see you on the banks.

All right, Roadies, we finally, finally released our brand new website. We hope you get a chance to check it out at TheBurbanRoad.com. It is a total rewrite, remake, revamped. We've done it for you. We have all 500 or so episodes on there with all the details, searchable, all the show notes, everything. You can search by it. You want to go find out what we talked about on an episode way back when you can do it. We've also got our tasting notes, our reviews of over 1,320 whiskeys. They're all on there. Our tasting notes, our rating for the whiskey. We even cue up the episode on the tasting notes to where we tasted it on the show. So as you're reading our tasting notes, you can play it and listen to us talk about it. So I think we're the only podcast that does that. That's pretty cool. So another thing we have on there is our blog articles. We've got over 250 blog articles on there. We're putting new ones out all the time. And the all new Roadie Bar is now on the Bourbon Road website. So if you're a Roadie, come on, sign up, get in there. We have a chat room. We've got a place where you can post what's going on in your Bourbon world. We have a calendar of all the events that are coming up. We'll be posting in there our drawings. So as we're giving things away, you'll be able to come in there and sign up for the randomizer to get picked. You'll also be able to sign up on lists to come to something that we're sponsoring. Todd's got a great event that we're putting on in the fall and everybody can come in and sign up for that. And we've also got coupons from our vendors for percentages off on stuff. So Definitely take the time to come to the website. Check it out. We do want you to come in and sign up and join in. It's a lot of fun. It's free. It doesn't cost you anything. You're certainly welcome to donate if you want to, but it's free for all roadies. So come check it out.

All right, listeners, welcome back to the second half of the show. We've been diving into some of the old heritage distilleries, if you will, and we are including Jack Daniels in that. Our first pour tonight was the Jack Daniels 10-year. It's a 97 proof. This was batch five of that. We followed that up with the Jack Daniels 12-year, which was batch four of that particular iteration. And then lastly, we had the Knob Creek Blenders edition, batch zero one, a lot of batches. Yeah. And that's, they were going for the sweet bourbon blend rather than their, you know, kind of that nuttiness. Definitely.

They definitely stepped out of the knob Creek box just a little bit. For sure. Which was kind of fun.

Yeah. But we've ready for port number four. Let's do it. And speaking of batches, I guess, kind of, this is a part of the series. This is maker's mark. This is their Stewards release. This is from just released I think February, March again. These are all fairly new. Clocks in at 109.8 proof. The Steward to Release is Makers Mark's wood finishing series. I think this is version three or batch three of five. I think the plan is to end this series soon. I think we had the, what was it, The Heart? We did. Which was really good. Now, I do think the second one was The Keeper. I've seen that around and we just never picked that one up and got on the show. MSRP is $75 to $80, and it features 10 toasted American oak staves. And you know what's interesting? I guess there might be some variance in proofs, because what I'm looking at in my notes says there might be some out there that's like a little higher proof, 113.3, actually, which is interesting. So maybe there's some variance. It's just kind of a shout out to their folks at work there at Maker's Mark. Right. Good deal. Yeah.

Well, I love the bottle always. Yeah.

You don't need to be facing the label to know it's Maker's Mark. I was going to say, the round one was kind of fun for a while, but I like this. It looks like they took the regular Maker's Mark bottle and just kind of elongated it, stretched it out a little bit. Yeah. All right. Let's check it out. This might be the darkest of the five fours we got tonight. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. It's a very expressive nose.

Yeah. It's a lot of baking spice in there. Definitely. It smells deserty. It does. It smells sweet and, uh, and syrupy smells, smells like, uh, It smells like syrup.

Yeah. Like, uh, I hate to stay on the cherry thing, but it's like a cherry pie filling almost.

Oh, wow.

It is cherry.

Like great nose. Yes. A little bit of cinnamon on that.

I'm getting all the cinnamon tonight. This might battle poor one. It's like the best nose. It's really good. Depends on what you like better.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Good. Oh yeah. Nice. Sweet. Very, very balanced across the palette. It's like a vanilla custard. Now this is the cake icing kind of, kind of got the icing component to it. The vanilla cream, vanilla cream and a little bit of chocolate. Yup.

I could see a little bit of honey in there too. A lot going on here. Baking spices are big. Like that cardamom, allspice. Cause there's a little, just like after it kind of finishes a little savory to me.

Yeah. Nice. Nice. Wonderful. Back of the Palate Oak note. Sweet and savory. Really nice. It's a fun combo. So these are all American oak staves in this. Okay.

10 American, yeah. Okay. Toasted American oak staves.

So that's where the sweetness is coming from.

And they wanted to create a vibrant oak driven profile, which makes sense. That it is. Yeah. I'm getting like a little like stone fruit now too. That's good. Yeah. Um,

Yeah. And, and there's a little bit of, uh, it's not like all ultra mature oak. What were the ages on this?

If any, I couldn't find anything, but you figure seven to 10, maybe a few older ones.

This has got some new oak kind of flavors to it, some younger oak flavors to it. But, uh, I guess that's where that sweetness is coming from. Those toasted, toasted staves.

It's my understanding there's a new iteration of the wheat whiskey, which we got to try. That's out too. But that'll be hard to find. Everyone loves that one.

Loving it. Yeah, this is really good though. This is really good.

Agreed. That's dessert in a glass. Yep. All right, we got our last pour and an honor. of the 250th birthday of America, which is coming up. This is Evan Williams' Single Barrel. Yeah, it's got the America 250 commemorative edition. There's no batch on this one. This is the first one without a batch or a series. But unlike most Evan Williams, they proved this one to 117.76. Oh, wow. Yeah, you hear that? 1776.

So that's a pretty neat idea.

So obviously, these are single barrels. And you're going to get a lot of variance, I'm sure. So I'll read off the stats of our own particular bottle here. It was barreled on 12, 15, 2018. This is barrel number 233. And it was bottled on March 2nd, 2026. So pretty fresh. Right at six years. No, right at eight years. Yeah. Eight and some change. Eight and some change. Yeah. Okay. Good. There goes our bourbon road math or bourbon road math. So this retails for about 45 bucks. It was hard to beat those. We just had copper and cask. And these are on the shelf? Yeah, they should be out there. Wow. Okay. I actually got to give a shout out to, I've not seen them sadly, but a good friend of mine, Jeff Gamel, he lives in Virginia area. He grabbed me one out of the kindness of his heart. Well, fantastic.

Great looking bottle.

Yeah, it's got the, it's a really cool bottle. The wax was, I think, extra thick on this one for some reason. Sort of Knob Creek like. Yeah. But you know, funny thing is we had two Jack Daniels and three wax bottles too. And that was another little mini theme. It's got blue wax. Yeah, it's a... Great looking bottle. Neat looking bottle. $250.

I remember $200. Do you remember $200?

I do. Yes. Let's see. I would have been seven, I guess. But I'm trying to remember. It's been a while, obviously. But I feel like we went to the parade, probably here in town or something like that, and of course, fireworks. And I've actually gone to a few of those little city 200 birthdays, which have always been kind of fun. But yeah, there's a lot of distilleries out there putting out some really cool commemorative bottles and things. I saw where Casey Jones put out one for Paul Revere. Oh, OK. Yeah. I think Drew Hanish, our whiskey lore buddy, was going to review that or something, too. I think he was talking about it.

OK, let's check it out.

All right, Heaven Hill product, obviously. And I'm assuming you could probably get them down at the distillery and then the Evan Williams experience there in Louisville. Sure. It's like a toasty note on this.

Yeah. Open toasted caramel. It's a lot of caramel on this one. Get a little bit of peanut shell.

I'm picking that up this time. Oak, a little spice. But yeah, that heaven hill, I mean, just smells heaven hill. Yeah, a little bit of stone fruit. You're getting stone fruit? I was going to say there's some like a little bit of berry maybe. Like some raspberry, blackberry kind of thing. Nice nose though. Yeah. Cheers. Cheers. Ooh. Yeah.

Yeah. That was good. The berry, the berries coming through. What berry were you going to call out? Berry white. No, I'm kidding.

Berry white. I'm going to end it for another sip because I want to.

I'm definitely getting the peanut shell and berries and I'm just, I mean that peachy kind of thing going on.

Ooh, getting some peach. The oak spot, sweet oak is really nice on that, which is kind of crazy for eight year. The barrel has really done a nice job. I was gonna say, we got a good barrel here.

Yeah, the barrel influence on this is phenomenally good. It's really good.

be interesting to know like, you know, where like the Evan Williams Is it like, do they sit like, how do they go through there and say, okay, this one's going to Elijah Craig. This one, you know, is it like there are certain areas and if they find an outlier, they're like, okay, let's do something special with that.

You know, I think that they have their tasting profiles and they select barrels based on how they meet those profiles. So it's just, you know, at 13, at one time they were doing 1300 barrels a day. That's a lot of tasting.

Yeah.

I wonder if you do taste them all, but I guess you really do, right?

Yeah. Now, I know their rye's are like the, is it Rittenhouse Rye is the one they do in Pikesville. Those are different floors and different ages. So, oh yeah. This is nice.

I want to take a fresh take on this. So, I had a pretzel and I'm ready to go. Let's see. It's wonderful. That is good. That's really good. That's a good whiskey. Yep. How much? $45. Oh my gosh.

That's crazy. It's a new world.

It's a totally new world.

It's a new world guys. Happy birthday America. Thank you. Happy birthday to me. Yeah. That's a winner. All right. All right. You know, sometimes we maul this a little bit, but I think I, I'm ready.

You're ready, ready already? I am ready, ready already. Okay. You need a minute? I think that... I think I am. I think I am.

Great pours again, as always. No bad ones here. Okay. I'm going to go first. Okay. My third place is going to be the Jack Daniels tenure. Pour number one. Actually, before we dive into this, let's go back through them one more time. So pour one was the Jack Daniels 10-year. This was the fifth iteration or batch five of this. Comes out annually. 97 proof. Retails for about $90. Second pour was the Jack Daniels 12-year, which is this was batch four. 107 proof and retails for about $100. Pour three was the Knob Creek Blender's edition. H01, retails for about $45. We followed that up with the Makers Mark wood finishing series, the Stewards Release, which retails for $75 to $80. That was 109.8 proof, but I did see something on the internet said some of them run 112, yeah, 112, 113 proof. And then we followed it up with the Evan Williams America 250th commemorative edition. This is a single barrel, so taste will vary and it clocks in at the very cool and it's awesome. They did that, the 117.76 proof.

So you chose for your poor number three, cause we're only going to do winter, winter chicken dinner on the top three pores. Yeah.

I think, you know, sometimes we'll go all the way through and, but yeah, I think let's just do top three tonight.

Yeah. I'm the only reason I'm going to agree with you on that is the nose.

Then one by nose after the derby.

Yeah. Jack Daniel's 10 year one by a nose. Uh, the nose was really good on it. Now it had a little bit of an ethanol hit to it, but it was good. It was really good. But the other one that didn't win was pretty darn close.

Yes, agreed. And speaking of the Derby, you didn't pull up in a limo tonight, so I guess you didn't bet the house on the winner.

Yeah, we didn't. I won a couple of Exactas and then I lost everything I won throughout the rest of the night. So I basically came out even. I didn't even come close on the Derby. I don't think a lot of people did. I know a few. Really? Surprisingly, yeah.

They're betting on the female trainer?

Yeah.

Well, actually, I saw some friends of mine, like they asked chat GPT to pick the winner. And for some reason that one came up a few times for people. But I also saw like people saying, well, that didn't come up on my asking it. So that's kind of funny. It was just distributing the odds a little bit. Yeah.

But what an amazing race to watch that horse come from that far back. All the way in the back, all the way to the front. In such a short space. I love seeing a winning horse covered in mud.

Yes.

You just know it fought for it.

Yeah. Yeah. Earned it for sure. All right. You going to give your number two?

Uh, yeah. So my number two is going to be the, um, the, uh, maker's market.

I'm going to agree with you. I have a feeling we might, we might go a joker, joker, joker kind of thing. Yeah, it could be. It could be. But really nice. I really liked that one and very different than the heart. It was very different.

Now I will say this, I kind of missed not having some of that French oak in there because I love what it does to their whiskey, but you know, that's what variety is about. Try something new. So this was all American.

All right, my number one, and maybe your number one, it's going to be the Evan Williams. Yeah. I mean, wow. No doubt. I hope everyone that finds this gets that good of a single barrel, but this one is fantastic. Yeah. And this is a fresh crack, so very excited to see how this maybe changes a little bit. But wow, rich, delicious. I'm going to go find one because it's worth every penny of $45. $45. Absolutely. Yeah.

A really good pour. Yeah. All five whiskies were good tonight.

Um, I was, I don't know, a little disappointed in the 12 year. Yeah.

Coming off last year's, but I mean, I think it was a let down based on what we had last year. And then the, the knob Creek, fantastic poor, uh, a little bit more of a mainstream bourbon, I think than what you would expect out of knob Creek for me. I just think it's not. They're stepped out of the box. Thank you for doing that, Knob Creek. No doubt.

And I would say that would be a good one for, like, if you have friends coming over who want to step outside their comfort zone a little bit and up the proof, but not overpower them. That would be an excellent, excellent board to give them.

So for me, the Tenure Jack just edged out the Knob Creek. Okay.

Yeah, I was going to say those three, four, and five were all pretty close, but something about that, I like that leather note on that tenure.

Yeah, that Evan Williams though, he took the cake tonight.

Yeah, that really stood out. 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 podcast. We'd also appreciate if you took the time to leave us a review on the podcast platform that you use. The more reviews we get, the more our podcast gets out to other folks just like you. Sometimes we'll have a guest on, sometimes we're just reviewing whiskies. The one thing we're always doing is having a good time and drinking great whiskey. Check out our Facebook group, the Bourbon Roadies. It's a lot of great people, about 3,200 or so. Bourbon enthusiasts that love to drink whiskey, share stories, share pictures, share experiences, share birthdays, and it's just good people all the way around. Also, go check out the newly revamped bourbonroad.com website, the bourbonroad.com website. Jim's made some magic. It's so cool and very user friendly. And yeah, I think you're going to love it. But until next time, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

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