496. Summer Sippers: Five Finished Whiskeys for Hot Days and Cool Nights

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.

Hello listeners and welcome back once again. It's Todd and I gather in the bourbon road bar for another episode. It's getting awful close to 500. Yeah. Getting close. Edging closer and closer. All right. Well, I'm back from a weekend Branson. You just rolled in from a soccer game. Yeah. Hot day in Kentucky. Hot day. All right.

A little taste of summer, if you will.

But you have actually whipped up a suitable. gathering of whiskeys for this time of year.

Yeah, we're going to go light proof and they're all finished in some sort of way. So kind of fun. We got some craft stuff and yeah, should be. We've had some other pours from one of the samples we got, but there's a few new ones even to us.

Yeah. You know, it's sad Todd, cause while I was in Branson, I had to watch the UPS driver come to my ring camera three times with a bottle and there was nothing I could do about it. It was terrible. Yeah.

And they got shipped back, but thankfully, thankfully we have about, they sent one to me as well. We're in good shape. Yeah. We're in good shape. But, uh, yeah, I'm excited. Uh, we're going to start off with iron fish distilleries. This is their bourbon whiskey finished in maple syrup barrels. It's 86 proof. They are out of Thompsonville, Michigan. Oh, okay. I'm not familiar. Like the big city, you know, that's close to there. Uh, this retails for about 50 bucks and, um, someone brought this to share. at our out-of-state, out-of-mine bottle share, obviously, the theme being you have to bring something not from Kentucky to share. And well, obviously, that checks the boxes. And yeah, someone brought this, and I sampled it that night. It's kind of a cool-looking bottle. Yeah, apparently they've won a few awards with this one. All right. It's a blend of corn rye and malted barley, and it rests in a fired American oak barrel. To achieve this signature finish, the spirit undergoes a secondary maturation in old whiskey barrels previously used to age maple syrup from the nearby Griner family sugar bush farm, I think.

But yeah. So sugar maples and probably with the picture of the fish on the bottle and the name of it, ironfish, they're probably on the lake up there in Michigan.

Um, yeah, that's gotta be up there. Yeah. We'll have to get out Drew's book and she'll be able to find this one for sure.

All right. Let's check it out.

All right.

Oh, that maple's there. It is, but it's also got a fruity undertone.

Some like buttery caramel. Yeah.

Have you ever had a caramel green apple?

Oh yeah.

Caramel green apple.

Yeah. Buttery though.

Definitely.

I prefer the red apple under caramel though. You know, like the fair, I was a big fairground staple when I was a kid. Yeah.

I love the nose on this. Yeah. Really good. Like zero ethanol staying on it at all. Very smooth.

Let's sip it. Cheers. Cheers.

Oh, sweet.

Confectionary sugar. Yeah. That packs a nice little, like, yeah, packs a nice little punch. There's a bit of a, yeah, that sweet punch, but it's.

Yeah, it's really nice. Ironfish, where have you been all my life? This is good stuff.

They're producers? Yes, they are distilling. I believe it's a farm as well, from my quick research on there.

Nice and sweet. It's funny though, I don't feel like the sweetness is coming from that maple syrup. It feels like it's more of a confectioner's sugar kind of thing.

I mean, there's a touch of that, yeah, the maple is kind of in the background, but I think this is, as is, I think the distill or the bourbon was probably pretty sweet to begin with.

I think so. And you know, it's kind of a light touch with the maple, I think. Sometimes that can be overdone.

Yes. And it didn't say how long it had been in those barrel, those maple syrup barrels. But yeah, you know what would be great in this? I'm not much of an ice cube guy, but like an ice cube to kind of maybe soften that sweetness a little. Yeah.

I think it's really good. I think this, I mean, you're a hot day today. This is kind of a refreshing pour. It's got a nice finish on it too. A little bit of a hug. What was the proof again? 86. Wow. Okay. Yeah. This is a summer sipper. This is definitely nice, sweet summer sipper. This would go good with some, uh, some sweet tea or iced tea.

In it or with it?

With it. Like yeah, in it. I don't know. Um, What would you do? Would you, you would want the majority of it to be iced tea, but I don't know that the iced tea would have to be very sweet. It could be like a half cut iced tea.

Yeah, that might work. Half cut iced tea, a good brewed half cut iced tea with this, uh, with a shot of this in there. And like I said, I think this would be good. Big old ice cube in it and just kind of let it sit a little bit. Maybe cut that sweetness down a little. Refreshing. Thumbs up on the iron fish. Yeah, indeed. All right, shall we move on? Let's move on. All right, our second pour, and we're going to stay with maple a little bit. This is from Company Distilling. That is the distiller that was co-founded by Jeff Arnett, the former master distiller at Jack Daniels. This is a weeded bourbon, so a 30% weeded mashbill blended from three different states, utilizing both column and pot stills, aged between roughly four to six years. rather than using a barrel that previously held maple syrup like the one we just had, which can make whiskey overly sweet, it says. They finished the fully matured straight bourbon by placing maple wood chunks directly into the whiskey. This pulls out the natural toasted wood characteristics of the maple rather than the syrupy sweetness. So this sits at 90 proof.

Wait, let me understand this. So the wood chunks were from a maple syrup barrel? It just says maple wood. So maple wood. So this is not maple syrup finished. This is just maple wood.

Yeah. So maple tree, a red maple or yeah.

Well, like a lot of Tennessee whiskey is put through maple.

Right. The charcoal. Right. But this is actually a bourbon with maple. Yeah. Okay. So they went a different way. All right. And a shout out to Drew Hannah. She gave us the center. Well, thank you, Drew. Thank you, Drew. Appreciate it.

Oh, what's that nose? Maybe it's that maple wood. It's kind of a little smoky. It's, it's, it's just a, it's leaning a little smoky. I think it's a, you sure those maple chunks weren't charred? Didn't say that. Smoked?

Not what I could find. Definitely has a smoky character to it. I think there's green apple on this like that first one a little bit though. Get a little green apple. Cinnamon toast.

Yes, definitely got that other wood nose to it. I think it's a. Little bit of. forest, kind of a forest note to it, but it's kind of smoky. It's almost like you're walking through a forest that maybe two years ago had had a fire.

Okay.

And it's after a rain.

I've done that.

Yeah. And you know, maybe you're walking on the charred chunks on the floor and stuff, but it's the smoke is long since gone. So there's just that light hint of smokiness. Let's sip it. Sip it. Cheers. Cheers. Man, that is like, smooth as can be. I was going to say that is so silky. Silky. Like it, you almost don't get an impression from it when it hits the palate. Go in for a second sip. It's a very light touch.

What's the proof on this one? 90. 90. Like I said, we're staying pretty low today. It's good.

Yeah. It's good.

A hot day like today.

It's nice to have a couple of low proof sippers.

And despite them saying there was not as sweet, it's still pretty sweet. It's got a difference. There's a little zip on the tail end that kind of like cuts that sweetness down. Yeah.

It does settle in on the back with a little bit of punch.

Yeah. And that might be that maple chunk influence, but there's nothing upfront.

There's nothing in the middle. I mean, I'm not saying not flavor. There's no impact. It's very smooth across the palette. You could, you could drink this like water. You know what? I agree. You need to be careful with something like this. You could gulp it. I wonder if those maple chunks did that. They probably did.

I feel like, I don't know with a, and it might be that caught, you know, it said there was a blend of three different states. So that pot still might have that might give it that really silky. I mean, it'd be curious to know the. the percentages of each. Yeah.

Now we've not had company who's telling on before.

I don't think I require a search to be sure. Yeah.

I was going to say that would have been, I did talk to him in Tennessee at a, at event down there where he had a tent and we chatted for a few minutes. But I'm not sure what their situation is. Three different whiskeys from three different states. They're obviously acquiring whiskey and blending it. Are they making their own?

I believe so. Yeah. And I feel like that might be that four and say four to six years on that. So I feel like they've been around. I mean, I feel like he left some time ago. It has been a while. The Fletcher guy took over for him. Right. Chris. I believe. And this retails for about 50, I'm looking to hear about 50 bucks as well.

Okay. Good deal. I mean, that's a great whiskey. I think that's a good separate. We've had two really good ones so far. And yeah, platinum mascot winner. Yeah, I can see it. Yeah. You don't get many that have been that fine tuned to be that, that smooth and that silky and, and just so sessionable.

Yeah. Mike, you, that could be a dangerous, dangerous porch whiskey one day.

Yeah.

All right. Close the pal a little bit because we're going to change finishes here. We're moving on. Yes. And this one, there's going to be a lot of literally buzz about this one. This is the green river honey finish. Okay. Um, but they, they went a little different. This is the one you missed out on.

Um, because you're away and I wonder if they'll send it to me again. Probably not.

You might get kicked off the list, which would be terrible. Oh, I need to contact her and say, I'm so sorry. Right. Um, so this begins as a four year old green river, Kentucky straight bourbon distilled and aged in Owensboro, Kentucky. A custom blend of locally sourced seasonally selected honey is then added directly into the barrel. So honey into the barrel, not a honey barrel finish.

Okay. So this is not a bourbon. It's still called a bourbon. Can't be.

Well, I think they're getting really lax at the TV or something. So, allowing the bourbon and honey to marry naturally through barrel interaction rather than post-production blending. Time does the rest. The result is a honey finish bourbon with genuine depth and structure found in cask finishing, bottled at 92 proof. They literally said they poured the honey into the bourbon?

Into the bourbon barrels. Well, they always do that when they make Yeah. I mean, that's normal for making a honey barrel, but then they pour the honey out and then they put the word in. Let's get this straight. I want to make sure.

Cause I got a lot of respect for green river. A custom blend of locally sourced seasonally selected honey is then added directly into the barrel. Yeah. Allowing the bourbon and honey. Okay. It's weird the way they wrote that. I know.

I'm going to side with the idea that they had a honey barrel and then the honey was no longer in the barrel, but coated the barrel. And then they added the bourbon. I'd like to believe they did that and left a name called bourbon. Well, the package was really fun.

It had like the, what did we decide? I think it's called a honey spoon or something. It's like the stick. And then it was actually a little jar, a small jar of honey with it too. And the packaging was hexagon shaped, like honeycomb. And, you know, we've often said, you know, they're tied into Bartstown. So Bartstown always goes a little above and beyond with their media samples. So this one was pretty fun too.

Well, it's, it's definitely a bourbon finish in a honey barrel. Okay. The nose is good on it. I'm not, it's kind of masking the green river just a little bit. What was the proof on this?

92. 92. Okay. So we're staying pretty low. And this is their standard bottle just dressed up in a different shirt, different label.

I like that different shirt. Yeah.

Kind of light though. Yeah. Very, I hate to say it, but like that's honey colored. It was very honey colored. Right. Yeah. You know, you said you got a little smokiness on yours. I'm getting a little on this one, just a little. I'm not getting it on this one, but, um, I did taste it already. Oh, oops. This retails for 24.99 too, by the way. Is this. This is not like a specialty during specialty it I'm telling you the bottles up there. You can take a closer look. I have to go do that. I'll have to do it after the show. Right.

Well, this is pretty well distributed, so I would expect our listeners to be able to get their hands on it.

Okay. I'm reading a different thing here and it says this expression is a honey finished bourbon made by adding 100% raw, unfiltered local honey directly into barrels of four euro Kentucky straight bourbon. Okay. So it is, they're pushing the limits here. I think so too, but that's, that's flavored. I don't know if there's like two guys working at TTV and they're just kind of giving up.

Well, I'm sure it's probably not in the bourbon category. It's probably in the, especially whiskey category.

It's like a beeswax.

I don't even know what beeswax smells like.

Oh, okay. I wouldn't know. I didn't know what to think. But you've been told mind your own beeswax though. Yeah.

What was that stuff called from Iowa with the midnight rye? Remember that? Remember the midnight rye?

Oh, Pendleton. Or wait, Pendleton or Templeton? I get it. Templeton. Templeton. Yeah.

Midnight rye. Where they just literally upended the... Yeah. Poured some port. The port wine into the barrel. Yeah. But they called it... I don't remember what they called it. They called it a port finished rye.

But that's rye, so... Yeah. It was like a rye specialty drink or something.

Yeah, I think it was especially other, whiskey other.

I mean, if you recall, we had some of those Casey Jones, where they do a little of their barrel aged moonshine basically, or sugar cane moonshine. Yep.

Well, this is very sweet and very honey-like and actually very tasty. Yes. I could see people. I could see the ladies really liking this one a lot. Another summer pour hot day. Summer pour. What could we do with this one? This would be great with an Arnold Palmer. Ooh. So that's Arnold Palmer's half tea, half lemonade, right? Then you add a little bit of this to it and you've got a spiked Arnold Palmer.

I like it. There you go. Cause I love Arnold Palmer. I'm a big lemonade guy. Are you? Yeah. We actually have this, it's cucumber limeade and it's just like the little powder things and can just fix a cup kind of thing. Wow. And it's trying to figure out something to go in it. But I think that would probably be like a gin. Gin mixer for that one. At $24.99, that's going to sell a lot of bottles though. I think it's going to sell a ton of bottles. Yeah. Because you said a lot of folks love honey finishes and things like that.

And that's, I need to, I need to send an email to the, to the, um, media person who so graciously sent me a bottle and then I wasn't here to accept it and just say, please resend it. Cause this is pretty good.

Well, you can hang on to mine just in case. Are you sure? Yes. Okay. And then if you get yours in, maybe we'll give it away. Sounds good. Yeah. On our webpage. On the webpage. Yes. So go sign up.

Go sign up on the bourbonroad.com folks. That's right.

All right. Take a break. Uh, rinse that palette of all this sweetness. We've, uh, you know, we have more sweetness, right?

Sorrow men drinking sweet, sweet bourbons. All right, folks, stick around. Todd, now drink water and 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.

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All right, listeners, welcome back to the second half of the show. We're doing some light sipping, light and sweet. Summer sippers. Summer sippers. Our first pour was the Iron Fish Distillery, Thompsonville, Michigan. This was their bourbon whiskey finished in maple syrup barrels. Our second pour was Company's bourbon finished in, Oh, finished with maple, maple wood cubes, chunks, chunks.

Yeah. Yeah.

And then lastly was the green river, um, honey finished bourbon. Yeah.

Honey bourbon. Honey bourbon. All three very different whiskies, all three light sippers. Uh, each one brought its own special the character to the tasting.

Yeah. And 86, 90, 92 proof in that order. And we're actually going to stick with the 92 proof here. And this is from our friends out of Oak Lore distilling company down in North Carolina. They purchase barrels from our good friend Pete Barger in Statesville at Southern Dispilling. And then they also do, I think they get some barrels, it said Kentucky, but Bardstown, Green River, probably more than likely.

Yeah.

So this is one of their story series and we featured a couple of those back in the, I'd have to- It's been a minute. Been a minute. And this is their pork cast finished for grain bourbon. This spends about an additional 12 to 18 months resting in freshly dumped domestic port wine barrels that previously held port for up to 18 years. So 18-year-old port, filed at 92 proof, retails for $79.95. And you can said you could find it in select retailers in the Carolinas and also directly from their own website. Right. Well, you said this is a summer sepper.

92 proof, but man, port. That sounds like well aged port.

I was going to say, yeah, this might be like a summer night. Summer eve. Summer eve, yeah.

Oh, that's good. I drink some port and Branson and I tell you what, I've been renewed. I think I want to start drinking port again. I love it. It's so good.

The port road, the port road. We've been threatening the single malt road. I like the nose on it.

But it is a little darker, just a hair. It's got like the dark figgy. Yep. It's not super tawny like, but dark fruit, cherry. Yep. All right. Cheers.

Oh, that's good. Okay. Yeah, this is definitely. Evening bonfire. You have all those other three, and then this might be your last one.

You drink the others during the day, either sip on them straight, put them over ice, have them with some iced tea or some half and a half.

Play around with these, have a good time. Then it comes campfire time in the evening.

It's cooling down a little. And you pour a half glen cairn full of this. Wow.

It's got all the berries. It does. It's been stomped on pretty good by the port barrels. It has. I mean, 12 to 18 months is quite a while. Yeah. And especially that old of a port itself is going to... I'm just going to throw the influence on it for sure.

I'm going to say this is what you'll want right after the steaks come off the grill. You eat, everybody's having a good time and then you want to have a pour after that. So this is kind of after dinner at the campfire summer night.

You know, this might even go with like a light cigar in the evening too. I would say it probably would. It's like a fine port supposed to, right?

If it got a little chilly, that would be okay with this. It's, um, it's got its upfront sweetness. It's got a little bit of dryness on the back. It's a little, it is a rich and it's got a, a definite kind of a heavy dark fruit port Kind of a back end, it sits on the back of your palate with that heavy dark fruit. This is a little heavier than like an angel's envy. Yes. Not quite a midnight rye.

No. But definitely well influenced by it. So any port lovers out there, if you want to change over to the dark side of bourbon.

It's kind of got my attention right now because of my port experience over the last week.

Let's call you stepped out of your, uh, you know, usually you go out of town and you guys hit breweries.

So we hit breweries, distilleries and wineries. Now the friends we went with are not huge beer people. They do drink beer, but they're not huge beer people. So we did a winery day. Okay. And then Melody and I stayed an extra day in Branson after they went back to Iowa. And then we did breweries and distilleries. Nice.

So yeah, it was fun. What was the name of the vineyard for our Missouri folk?

Oh my goodness. I don't, I don't remember. We went to so many. I don't remember all the names of them. They were beautiful though. Some of them were in the town and some of them were up on the ridge side, you know, with a view of the. Um, the mountains and the lake. Okay. Sadly, I've not been, I've not been to Brenton. It's a beautiful place. It's a great place to go. And it's, I mean, it's a little bit of an older crowd, but kids, there's stuff for kids to do there.

Um, that's how you got to do it. You got to cover all, you know, it's an eight hour drive from here, so it's not a short distance.

Right. That is a bit of a haul. It's a bit of a haul. But we went to Dogwood Canyon. Beautiful. We stayed at the, we played golf at Cedar Ridge, Cedar something. Big Cedar. Big Cedar. Yeah. Big Cedar, we played golf there. Most beautiful golf course I've ever played in my life. Wow. And I played at St. Andrews. Wow. Yeah. That's cool. I didn't know that. Well, I played it. I played as a tourist in St. Andrews. Right. A little bit different. back in your tour days. Yeah.

Not the same thing, but nevertheless, it was absolutely gorgeous. Beautiful place. Yeah. It's one of my biggest, I guess, regrets of like, I played a lot of golf back in my younger days. Now I just don't have time, but, and we used to take a lot of trips. I played Tennessee, the Carolinas and things like that.

But Todd, we should make time once in a while.

Just do it. I'd go to a putt putt with you. Yeah. They have some of those putt putts down that's like it's par five and things. I played on those. Those are fun. Yep. All right. We got one more from Oak Lore. All right. That even rhymed. One more from Oak Lore. So this one should be fun. Okay. This is their old fashioned finished four grain bourbon. And this is another story series. It is finished for an additional 18 months in barrels previously used to age Oak Lore's old fashioned cocktail mixer. Bottled at 98 proof. This release showcases Oklor's inventive approach to finishing while remaining grounded in classic bourbon structure. And this one actually retails for 89.95. Like I said, this is our highest proof today, 98. And man, that's, it's all day long. Yeah.

It is old fashioned and I love it. So they, they obviously sell a, an old fashioned mixer at the facility. And so they, they take their bourbon barrels and they make their mixer in it. And then once they bottle their mixer, they cut this empty barrel. They're like, let's pour bourbon back in it. And that's this.

Which I think Bartstown does that too, right?

Bartstown does that too. If you go to Bartstown bourbon company, you eat in their kitchen there and you order an old fashioned, it's actually poured from a barrel. That's really cool. Yeah. And man, yeah, this is- Good stuff.

If you love an old fashioned, this is right up your alley.

They got the orange in there? The orange. The bitters? To me, it tastes more like fees, um, uh, old fashioned bitters rather than like Angostura bitters.

There's like a little ginger cardamom, like some of those, uh, those sneaky baking spices, you know. Wow.

They've got their own little flavor going on there. Cheers. Cheers. Okay. It's an old fashioned, because I mean, an old fashioned is 98% bourbon anyway. Right. Right. I mean, it's already 98% bourbon. Oh, that's, it's basically a sugar cube, two ounces of bourbon and five drops of bitters. So if you put it in a barrel, you're, you're almost at old fashioned already. Right. Uh, this is, yeah, this just needs an ice cube to me. This is it. You could literally pour this, uh, put an orange garnish on it, an ice cube and, uh, drop in a cherry and you're good to go. Yeah. Just be careful. Cause it is 98 proof, not, you know,

But I wonder what the typical, say if you're using like a 90 proof.

I mean, it's usually, I do two ounce old fashions and they're literally, there's a sugar cube and. Cause bitters has a little alcohol in it too, right? Not much, just enough to preserve it.

Gotcha. Yeah.

But I mean, it's only if you only put half a dozen drops in there. Right. Shakes, whatever you want to call them. Yeah. I'm just like, throw a cube in this. Yeah. I use fees, um, old fashioned betters and fees, orange bitters. And I use those, uh, dehydrated orange slices. You can get them at the trader Joe's right. And, uh, and then bourbon, whatever bourbon or rye I want to use. So this fits the bill right here. Yeah.

This starts out a little sweet and then gets that kind of like old fashioned Bittery finish, I guess is the best way to describe it. It's good stuff. This is delicious.

Are you going to have to revisit them or you already got them in your head? Man, uh, we had to put paws on. I don't know. This is a tough one.

It is tough. This is, uh, it's all about preference. Um, are you, if you go get a cocktail, are you an old fashioned or Manhattan?

Uh, normally old fashioned, but I do have a Manhattan from time to time. Okay. That sounds like me. Yeah.

Yeah, this is, uh, this is going to be a tough one. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm just going to score on basically how I liked it because there there's, there's so many things out of the box here.

I mean, they're breaking all kinds of rules here, but let me, uh, cleanse the palette. You're going to go back? Yeah, I'm going to take just a little quick sips. They're all really fun. Like I said, these are, if you're looking for something light and different, I don't think there's any losers in this kit tonight.

What was the first one? Ironfish?

It was really good. Second was the company with the maple wood super smooth. And I definitely get the smoke on it. Third was the green river honey.

I like that. I think that would go good in a, what did I say? Uh, that was the Arnold, right? Yeah.

All right. I think it was the old floor. Port. Yes, for the support and then five was the old fashion. Oh, my goodness. OK, I think I'm ready. We're going to do top three and let's do top three.

OK, let's do top three.

My number three. is going to be the iron fish. Yeah. Okay.

So I'm going to go with, uh, our nets, um, a company and, and you know what? I'm going to follow that by saying my number two was the iron fish.

Oh, wow. Yeah. So, um, look, these are both just whiskeys, right?

And what's the iron fish? Anything special there? It's got a little bit of maple, right? Maple syrup barrels. Yeah. It's so lightly finished, right? It's just, it, it wasn't very heavy. Right. And, uh, so I went with the Arnett because with Arnett's company, um, what's the name of that whiskey?

It's just called Company. It's their bourbon finished with maple chunks. Yeah. So, or maple wood.

I don't think I've ever had anything in my life that drank that easy.

Dangerously easy, huh?

Dangerously easy. I could like that. I could like that as a summer sipper.

So, and so my ironfish was my number two. Okay. My number two is going to be the Bardstown honey.

Okay. The green river.

Yes. Oh, sorry. The green river honey. That's crushable. I can think of like 50 different drinks you could make out of that. Like you said, the Arnold Palmer, I'm already like thinking, ooh, Arnold Palmer with it. You know, you could do like a light honey old fashioned or something like that too. And then Yeah. I'm kind of interested to see what our good buddy Dave Sandlin does with that. Oh, exactly. Yeah.

I mean, I'm sure he'll have a blast with it.

Yeah.

I'm kind of torn on number three. I'm torn between the honey and believe it or not, the first time I've ever had an old fashioned bourbon. So it's kind of tough, but I'm going to go with the honey.

Oh, are you? Okay.

Yep.

Okay. I'm actually going to go with the old fashioned. Are you? Yeah. It's that's fine. That's crazy how much it. I mean, it's crushable as it is at 98 proof. Yeah.

I mean, literally all you need to do is pour it over an ice cube and you have an old fashioned. Yeah.

And add some garnishes if you want.

And it's what proof? 98? 98. 98. Yeah. I think it's easy to achieve. I don't think that they accomplished this great thing there because an old fashioned is already 98% bourbon. Right. All they had to do is get just enough influence out of that barrel to get that 2%. So. But it's influenced perfectly to me.

Like I said, that's a blend of, like I said, probably Bardstown, Green River, and then of course, Southern distilling out of Carolina.

So I think between the two of us did, did four of the whiskeys make the list?

Yes. Okay. And I would say my three, four, We're very close, both maple. Okay. I liked them both like tremendously.

And what was the one that didn't really show, um, the other Eau Claire, the port finished.

Yeah. I think it does. It kind of, I don't know if it just kind of stuck.

It didn't fit the true summer theme that we were stuck out.

It's good. It's good. But I also think it may be like, whereas the old fashioned finished. I mean, it's old fashioned, but the port finish was, it's very, it's a lot of port. You got to like port. All right. But I mean, seriously, pretty close race.

Uh, and I hope we didn't confuse the users, the listeners too much. That's on first. That's right. Um, that honey from, uh, green river was, a clear champion, I think. Yeah, yeah, I think so too. Yeah.

Yep. But yeah, that was a fun, like I said, we had other plans tonight, but something happened and we couldn't record some folks. So this was a, I thought, and it was a hot day. I thought I've got an idea for this one.

So this worked out really well. We got through some of the samples. So the backlog is not too bad.

Is it? We've got our, I've got a bunch of cigar finished things that we need to figure out. We've been trying to get Rob and I don't know, maybe some of our roadies that know him well could be like, Rob, you need to do this.

He's been really busy lately and I'm not sure what's going on in his life, but they're buying property and thinking about moving and been on vacation and just a lot of stuff going on in Rob's world. So, but, uh, we may pull somebody else on that one to pull somebody in. Yeah. And just to let everybody know, the new Bourbon Road website is up. It's the perfect time for you to go to the bourbonroad.com and pop in and take a moment and just sign up. Just give us your email address, sign up. We're not going to send you a bunch of emails. That's not what we do. We're too busy doing other things. Right. Jump in there, sign up, get your email address. That will give you access to the Roadie Bar. And the Roadie Bar has got all kinds of cool stuff at it. One of the things is the place where we all hang out and chat. You can also look at our event calendar. We've got some things going on. We've got one event in there already for you to sign up for. It's happening October the 3rd. during the weekend of Bourbon on the Banks. It's a special event that we're going to be having at the Frankfurt Bourbon Society at Corner Rick House. So need to get some people signed up on that list. Right now we don't have a limit on the number of people, but I guess if it starts to take off too fast, we might have to put a limit on it. So sign up, get on there, get on the list.

Another thing I'd like to do- Sounds like we're daring them to

Yeah, we'd love to see everybody come down for the big, that's where the Bourbon Road bar is going to be, right? That's where we're going to bring all our pores from the year. So come in.

Which is kind of what we used to do and I think it'll be fun.

And the other thing is, I was going through my drawers here the other day and I have literally probably 50 to 80 sample bottles of all kinds of good stuff. And I think we should do a sample soiree. Sample soiree. I like that. Yeah. And we'll just, we'll schedule a time for it and we'll just have some people show up and We'll have, we'll do that. All right.

That sounds fun.

So these things get scheduled in the event calendar in the bourbon road bar in the bourbon road bar. We've got a place where you can, you can make your posts. You can say, Hey, this is what I'm drinking today. Hey, this is where I went. Hey, this is my kid's graduation, whatever it is, just like you would do on Facebook. You can post in the, in the bourbon road, uh, the roadies bar on. We also have a bartender there. He's a cool guy. His name's Cooper. He'll chat with you. He's there 24 seven. So if you're bored and got nothing to do, grab a pour, go into the roadie bar and chat with Cooper.

And works for free.

He does work for free. Thank you, Cooper. Cooper hangs out in there. He's a good guy and he's always got good conversation for you. But you can make your posts. You can chat in the real-time chat. You can go to the event calendar, see what's going on. Todd will be doing some giveaways in there. We have a randomizer in the Bourbon Road Bar. We have a sign-up list, which we already told you about. We've got some other things in there. We also have some discounts from our vendors in there. Yep, working on that. So definitely a place you want to be. And we also have some supporter levels. So if you want to help support the Bourbon Road, you can. It's free to be a Bourbon Roadie, so you don't have to pay anything. But if you do want to help us out, it's always nice. Right. We hope you'll check it out. 1,322 tastings now, Todd, that are recorded on there. And every roadie gets their own tasting journal on the site. That's cool. They can record their own tastings and they can share them out to other people. I mean, Jim, you've done some amazing work, is all I can say.

I hope it gets a lot of use. Go there, folks. Yeah, go check it out.

All right. Well, you can find the bourbon road on all social media outlets. You can find us everywhere that social media exists, but you can also find us on the bourbon road.com. You can also find us on the bourbon roadies on Facebook. We try to do all those things. We don't always do them well, but we do do them. So, uh, you know, check us out wherever you can definitely take a minute and go to the bourbon road.com. Todd and I will put out an episode every single week on Wednesdays. Make sure you subscribe so that you don't miss one of those. It also helps our numbers when you subscribe. It raises our rankings and we do enjoy that. It gets us exposed to more people. But until the next time, we will see you down the Bourbon Road.

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