499. Gold Foil Dreams: Wild Turkey, Heaven Hill, Beam & Buffalo Trace Face Off

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, roadies, a warm welcome back to the Bourbon Road Bar, AKA Jim's Basement. We're back with Todd down here. We've got a guest today. Todd, who do we have? We've got...

Well, he's many things to me. He's the one that got me into bourbon, kind of like more so. He's also one of the original owners of Fourgate Whiskey Company. who appeared on episode 289. And he's also married to my cousin. We've got Bill Straub. Welcome back to the show, Bill. Thanks for having me, fellas. It's a pleasure.

Great to see you again, Bill. Great to see you. You always come bearing whiskey though. That was nice. Yeah. I learned a long time ago that I'm a lot more likable when I bring gifts. Well, Todd, you've got something really action packed for us today.

I was going to say, yeah, I didn't bring him in, you know, to talk about Fourgate, but The thing he got started in whiskey was with his website called modernthirst.com. That was his review site. Yeah. Numerous folks like putting in reviews, kind of like you're breaking bourbon, I guess, and some of those others. So he's got a great palette. And I thought I'd, you know, it's been a while he's, you're kind of in between us both because he's up in Louisville and you're here in Simpsonville. And I thought, Hey, we'll drag him in and see if he wants to taste some whiskey with us today.

It's always great to drink whiskey in Simpsonville. Always.

All right. What's that first Todd? All right. So our first pour, this is for the big seven distilleries are represented today. These are all, as we've been talking about lately, it seems like new release after new release, like putting anything in a bottle, putting an age statement on it. So this is the Heaven Hill Elijah Craig 15 year single barrel. This particular barrel is barrel 28, their mash bill, which That's one of the cool things I wanted to tell you, Bill, is when you look for a match bill, you're not sure, which I don't have that memory. If you look up match bills, like. Your website still comes up as one of the first ones to have all the match bills.

That was a long labor of love over several years, I think. And I think it's funny, there's been other websites that come and go, and they will take that table and post it in the same formatting and everything on their own website, and then give it credit to themselves. And it drives me nuts. That's hours and hours and hours of work. They should at least send you a dollar or something. Just send credit on modern Thursdays. That's all I ever wanted.

Just say thanks, Bill.

And thanks for doing all that work. A funny story. There is one of the major distilleries that does not disclose their mash bill. And their master distiller was speaking to a group of people and got drunk and confirmed their mash bills. And I had them on that for a while. And I got a cease and desist email, followed by a cease and desist letter. So they came down. And now I think there's just a potential range. Okay.

That's funny. We had Chris Morris on once and he talked about the tasting wheel and he developed that probably 30 years ago or something, but he never gets credit for it. Everybody else has produced their own tasting wheels and he's kind of a little upset about it.

But yeah, this is the Lodger Craig 15 year single barrel, barrel 28, like I said, match bill 78 corn, 12 malted barley, 10 rye. This clocks in at 108 proof and MSRP is $150. So it sounds like the release of this, I've seen barrel numbers up to about 250. So you figure 15 years, 250 barrels, even if you're say 150, what? Yeah. Five, four.

If they're watering it down, they're probably getting a solid 150 per barrel. Maybe even more. Yeah. I mean, depends on what some of those are coming in. Yeah. I would guess anywhere from 140 to 165 would be the average. Yeah. Could have a big one, could have a small one.

Well, that's a, that's a good number of barrels and, and, you know, for a release like this, I think, and it's, it's, it's pricey, you know? So I mean, there's a lot of dollars coming in off this.

It's right there at that $10 a year though. I, you know, we're starting to see some of those climb up sadly, but it is what it is.

Yeah, the legacy distilleries, the heritage distilleries, they're kind of, they're in overdrive right now. They're kind of in overdrive kicking out these special releases and, and they're, they're kind of ushering in a new phase, sort of a, you know, focus is on the top shelf and it's, wow, things are changing. It's, it's a little nerve wracking, but it's also a little cool. And I don't know, I'm kind of split on it. What do you think?

It's a little overwhelming. Yeah. I think it's the biggest part, but I also see what they're doing. I mean, they don't want to sit on some of this inventory too long. You know, if you do that and then suddenly you've got barrels and barrels of 25 year old bourbon, it probably tastes like an oak tree, I would think.

Yeah.

And I, you know, I think heaven hill is, they're, they're kind of,

In that weird spot for me, peak Heaven Hill, unless you find a rare barrel here and there, is anywhere from 10 to 15 years old. Once you get over 15, I've maybe had a handful of offerings that weren't terrible. And I say that, Heaven Hill is probably my favorite distillery. I absolutely love their flavor profile. I've always gravitated towards their, the nose on those. To me, I get, and I get it in this, in spades, it tastes like circus peanuts or soft marshmallow.

We nosed it a little bit before we started and you said circus peanuts and I'm totally getting that now. It's vanilla and sugar and simple syrup kind of mixed together with that.

Yeah. I, I, this, this for me is, is very good whiskey. This is, this is the type stuff that I really enjoy drinking.

Great nose on it. Yeah. Love it. Very expressive. Cheers. Cheers. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's really nice. Silky. Sometimes that peanut nose transitions to an almond palate a little bit. Kind of get a little bit more of them. Kind of an almondy.

I was going to say, you can dive into like amaretto-ish almost. Yeah, it's a sweet nutty profile, almost a liqueur. I always get with them a little bit of this kind of right at the finish, this pop of black pepper that just kind of sits on the back of my palate, which again, I love that.

It's a nice balance with the oak. It's not overpowering for 15 years. It seems like they soften it up just enough to make it very aware, but not like,

That's a tasty pour. I mean, that's really good. I like it. I like it a lot. I paid $150 for that.

That's a win. That's a really well-done single barrel from Heaven Hill. They can be a little heavy-handed with those sometimes.

And the oak is kind of right where it needs to be, I think, at $15. It's not over-oaked at all.

It's good. And they actually kind of listened. I mean, there were a lot of folks clamoring. They have the, what is it? 18 year, a little lower proof. Complaints about that are it's too low proof, it's too oaky.

So that's the break point, huh, 15, in your opinion?

Yeah, I mean, they've had some releases at 18 that were pretty good, but the old Evan Williams 23 I thought was awful, just from my pal, and I know a lot of people like that. But I think that's probably the case for me with a lot of whiskeys. I tend to think that there aren't a lot of good ones over 15 years old. And if one of the big ones releases a very small amount, it's probably because they found a handful of honey barrels that are excellent at 18 to 20 years old. Sure. Or I guess you keep them on lower floors or in a cooler warehouse, something like that.

Yeah, Knob Creek 21 kind of surprised us a little bit.

Yeah, it's got some good stuff going on and not overly oaky. The funny thing, and we've talked about it, the 15 was just bark to me, the batch I had. The 18 was a little softer and had some nice things going on, but that 21 somehow

It's almost like they, and I don't want to get off talking about Knob Creek right now because we're drinking at Heaven Hill, but it's almost like they learned from 12 to 15 to 18 the mistakes they made. And then I think their barrel choices were guided. And when they put out 21, it just came out. I thought it came out great. I mean, it scored really high on our site, so for sure.

It's interesting that you say that them learning from it, because I think for the longest time, the big distilleries didn't. They just put out what they wanted, and you either liked it or you didn't. And for the longest time, it didn't matter what they put out. Everyone bought it, so it didn't matter. But I think you're on the downside of the bourbon boom, I guess you would call it. You're in an area where the consumer is a lot more discerning. They're not just going to buy something because it's got your name on it. So you've got to be extra careful to put out a good product. Absolutely. And this one, for me, this hits on all of them. I like it a lot. Yeah, it's a good barrel.

Yeah, very distinctive, very, very much Heaven Hill. Just classic.

I'd like to put this up against that Evan Williams 250th that we. Yeah. I mean, little.

What was the proof on that? 117.76.

It's a 250th commemorative bottle. I got a stellar bottle or a stellar barrel bottle from a single barrel, but you know what I'm trying to say there?

I was, Heaven Hill is one of those that I really, I never buy it when someone says that it's a, um, kind of off profile single barrel. A lot of people search for those with other distilleries, but with Heaven Hill, I just want something that hits those Heaven Hill profile, those Heaven Hill flavors at just, you know, times 10. That's what I want. This one is a good example of one that really is kind of amplified everything that makes Heaven Hill good.

Yeah. I think this is among some of their better releases, I think, for sure. And, you know, I try to think of our or scale on the website and we don't do a number of grades or anything like that. We just use words to describe the whiskeys. And this thing definitely falls somewhere between noteworthy. It does not approach perfection, of course, but it's definitely higher than noteworthy. I think it's a good whisky.

You know, there was an Elijah Craig barrel-proof probably four years ago, that was about 120 proof, maybe, maybe be 15, 18 or 15. I can't remember what it is. But it was really popular. It was a low one of the first one that was really low proof. And this reminds me a lot of that. Yeah. Good stuff.

Well, Todd, you're bringing the good stuff tonight. That's right. I'm looking forward to what's to come.

We've got for the big five, uh, big seven. So if it goes, gets better from here, we're in for a treat. All right. Moving on. We kind of handed it Jim beam. So we're going to dive into some Jim beam. And this is once again, this is another new release. This is the old granddad's seven year single barrel. There are no barrel numbers on it. There's like a code, which I could have dove into, but. That's, I don't know, if I got to look that far into something, you know, and figure out the, was it the use of the Julian calendar, which yeah, who uses that these days? But so Mash Bill 63 corn, 27 rye, 10 malted barley, clocks in the classic 114 proof, of course. And this one only retails for 50 bucks.

Wow. They've been doing a lot with this. with his old granddad in the last couple of years. And I just wonder, before I've even nosed it or tasted it, if these single barrels are pulled from their bonded stocks for the seven year.

For the longest time, I thought this was the most underutilized mash bill in bourbon. It was basically Basil Hayden and old granddad, and there was nothing in between. And I'm glad to see them playing that one. It's Bakers. No, Bakers is the... Oh, Bakers actually came out with a high rye version, too, though. Which is probably the same mashbluff I could guess, right? It's got that kind of soapy note on the nose. Soapy, OK. Like dish soap. I don't mean it in a bad way, but it's kind of this... Oh, when you say that, I'm trying to get it.

It's like, I don't think I've ever identified that or picked that out before, but yeah, it does. Um, that's bubble gum. Yeah. Bubble gum.

I can, I can get that a little like a bit of orange marmalade kind of thing too.

Just a little, little citrusy gel jelly marmalade. Yeah. Oh yeah. Now that you say that, I get, I get tons of orange. That's funny.

Not getting that peanutty nuttiness yet.

Be interested to see if it pops on the palate. I don't get the yeasty kind of smell I usually get from old Grandin Beam. I'd get a nice rick house essence off of it though.

The, the old, you know, I'm going to cheer up. I'd be intrigued to know where these came from because for a seven year, it's pretty dark. I mean, it really is.

Yep.

All right. Let's dive in. Cheers. Cheers.

Oh, that texture's nice. Very viscous.

Yeah. Little nuttiness on that palate.

It doesn't really impact the palate a whole lot.

It's kind of washing over. I get more on the finish than I do on the actual palate. It's very one-dimensional.

It kind of passes right over the front of your palate to the back, doesn't it? It's a little one-dimensional.

I get a little nuttiness and a little sweet on the front, and then just the spicy finish. I'm getting some. like rye bread toast on the back on the finish.

Yeah, so the finish really develops and it's kind of nice. I enjoy that finish. That second sip kind of spices up a little bit. As you sit with it though, and you don't take another sip, you just sit and it really builds on the back and it really kind of warms and it it does kind of move forward on the pallet just a little bit but it's that skip the front all together that viscous i guess it just hangs around forever this is a very long finish yes yes yep i was lucky to get this one um so i got

a call from Jason and Scott, Jason Colori and Scott Page. And they invited me up to Knob Creek to pick a, or sorry, excuse me, Jim Beam to pick a Knob Creek single barrel with them for their upcoming Bardstown Blitz. So yeah, we got to try some extra special stuff that day. We got to try the new little book that day. We also got to try something that probably won't see a bottle for another, six, seven years. It was about three years old. So that was kind of fun. It's always nice when they give you those little, you know, sneaky previews that they're not supposed to maybe.

Yeah. Nice warming hug. You know, on, on the front, this is very crushable. You know, it's like, it's like you sip on it. You're like, man, this, this goes down pretty quick, but the finish settles in and just sticks around. So you're not, you're not racing to get that next sip.

I think if you, if you crush this, you're doing yourself a disfavor because you'll miss that, that finish. Yeah. This is definitely one to pour a glass and take some time with it. Yeah. I do miss a little something from the front though. Yeah. Yeah, I get I get almost nothing on the on the very front of the palette. A little bit of oak in the mid palette, a little bit of peanut, and that's that's kind of it.

I go back and revisit the nose and it's just it's a nice match. It's it's one. It's really nice. It's not a big nose compared to that heaven hill, though. No, no, it's a very different, very subtle, very different whiskey.

This was $50? $50.

So, bourbon math.

Maybe Bill's... Bill, do you ever do an article on bourbon math and how it works?

If I did.

A 12-year-old Nob Creek can be 40 bucks and then a 12-year-old Castor Inc. can be, you know...

If I ever did, it's so out of date now. It doesn't matter. I think we started that website in 2012 and none of that translates anymore.

You know, the 40, the 40 to 60 shelf is getting pretty tough, right? I mean, it's, it's getting pretty hard and big players like Jim Bean own that space and they can play with it and do what they want. But a lot of other people are going to struggle trying to get bottles into that, into that range. Even though I like to think their value at you think you're getting value at $40. You're getting value at $50. A lot of distilleries out there putting great bottles out at that price range, but. I don't know.

You know, when we started, you probably could have put one out. I think our original price of our first batch was $199. We probably could have come out a little bit lower, but we didn't know if we were going to have a batch two at the time. So we wanted that batch to be profitable. Not the whole company as a whole for the year, but we didn't want to lose money on the batch essentially. and not have some cash to buy barrels for the next batches. So at the time, you know, bourbon was booming and aged whiskey was expensive. Now, if you look at the market, you could buy seven, eight, nine, 10 year old whiskey fairly cheaply as a non-distilling producer. You probably could put out a pretty solid, not $40, but anywhere from 60 to 85 bucks. You could put out a banger whiskey right now.

What do you think that saddle is going to be? Where do you think it's going to settle out in the next? There's been a lot of movement in the industry, a lot of changes happening.

I read just a couple days ago that overall consumption of bourbon is not really down. We still sell something around 30 million plus cases of bourbon a year. The problem is there's 340 million cases of bourbon aging in Kentucky alone. So, what we've really run into is a supply glut. And people have become a little more discerning with their money. So, they don't just buy everything that comes out that's $200. They want a good value. They want good whiskey for a good price. And that doesn't mean cheap. It just means that they want to see value for the money. But from a producer's perspective, it's kind of a nightmare scenario because they spent tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, the big ones on expanding production in the last 10 years. And now suddenly they're at a stage where they don't need to produce for probably five to six years legitimately. They could live off what they already have. And that's kind of scary when you've sunk that much money in and you've got a, you know, Suntory isn't, they're not going to, they're not going to be happy losing money every year.

These guys have weathered the storm before. I mean, certainly the heritage distilleries, although they may have changed hands, they've weathered the storm. I mean, they've been through these ups and downs. They didn't learn much from them. They didn't learn a whole lot. My heart goes out to those smaller operations that invested heavily into production and leveraged barrels, used barrels as collateral and overextended themselves and they're just not going to survive.

Yep. Some of them aren't.

The smart ones will. They'll figure out how to make it work.

The biggest issue is if you have no other assets, and you borrowed only on your barrels, and you didn't get to unload them before the, I'm not saying crash a bourbon, but the crash a bourbon barrel prices, you're in big trouble because you're underwater in terms of equity right now. And that's a problem. It's also a problem if you build a big distillery and you're planning to source whiskey because now you could probably go out and buy whiskey from the big seven for pretty cheap. So why would you buy? something that you're not sure how it's going to age at this point. But there's some of them out there that just do... I feel for the people like Whiskey House and some of those newer ones, because there's such good people that work there. Barstown Bourbon Company is probably the most professional run place that you can have outsourced bottling and blending operations out there. And they're all getting hit the same. people working hourly trying to put food on the table, or the ones who are getting furloughed right now, and that sucks. That sucks. It's tough. It's tough.

Well, overall, Ton, what do you think? Too good.

Too good pours right there. Too good. Yeah. Very different. And yeah, I've got two more gems coming though, so.

At their prices, I don't think I would be upset on either purchase, to be honest. You know, at 50 bucks. If this was 150 bucks, I probably would have said I wouldn't buy it again. But at 50 bucks, I think this is worth having. Yeah. Now, reminder though, these are both single barrels, so everyone's been, you know,

could have a totally different experience and palette and all that kind of thing. Did we name the barrel numbers on these? Like I said, for the Heaven... Elijah Craig, right? For the Elijah Craig, it's barrel 28. And then like I said, for the old granddad, Uh, there's a code. It just says seven years and then there's a code on the bottom of the bottle. And like I said, it had Julian dates and all that. And I'm like, yeah, I didn't. They're just, they're claiming the single barrel.

I'll tell you which one.

I did really good to figure out the, uh, wild turkey one. I have to go look at, they have a laser code thing, which is very handy.

There's some, uh, allegedly always depose them and, and request the barrel numbers, right? Yeah. Right. All right.

Do a FOIA request or something.

All right. Well, I'm excited to get into the second half, two great pours in the first half. Todd, why don't we take a short break and, uh, we'll chat amongst ourselves, but we'll be back folks and, uh, two more great whiskeys in the second half. So go away.

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 queue 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. 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, welcome back listeners. We are here diving into four of the big seven new releases. In the first half, we had the Elijah Craig from Heaven Hill, their new 15 year single barrel release. And then we followed that up, dropped a little bit in age, but proof went up with the old granddad's seven year single barrel that was just released recently. What'd you guys think?

Both great pours. Oh, one was a little better than the other, but we won't say which is which, right? Cause we're going to wait till the end, winter, winter, chicken dinner, chicken dinner.

Yeah. They were both real treats. The, I think they were both good examples of their respective mash bills and producers, which, which is kind of what you look for in something like that. That's a well said.

All right. But we've got a treat here. This might, this might be the ringer, you know, being, A turkey fan, and Jim being a turkey fan. Just a little bit. Yeah, this could be the wringer. So this is Wild Turkeys Austin Nichols Archive Gold Foil Edition. And I'm going to give a shout out, a very big shout out to my buddy, Jeff Gamble, who was kind enough to, he got a bottle and sent us a two ounce pour of this.

Jeff, we're going to pause for a moment and thank you dearly from the bottom of our heart. We, I think we all tried to get one. We didn't get one. You got one and you shared it. Thank you. I think I see a tear in Jim's eye.

It's welling up. But I did send him, you know, I always like, he's found us a couple other things in the past and I always send him some good stuff. Funny enough, he's a big bean guy. So I sent him a couple of the distiller shares that I've got and a couple of the 14 year, I've got a couple of 14 year old, those Knob Creek single barrel picks from, you know, back when they were that age. So this one clocks in 120 proof. MSRP is a little big on this one. It's $400. Yeah, that knows. I'm going to hold this up to the microphone so your listeners can get a whiff of this. This is special. Let's see. I believe the Mashable is 75, 13, 12. Yeah, that sounds right. That sounds right.

The old high rye wild turkey Mashable. I could look that up on a certain website.

Back when, back when. That was high rye. Right. So what I could garner from this, all the barrels, maybe not all the barrels, were sourced from Camp Nelson Rick House's D, E, and F. So this is a new limited edition annual series designed to recreate vintage bottles from distilleries past, launching after the occlusion of the Master Keep line. This new collection represents the first major series led by Mr. Bruce Russell himself carrying on the family legacy of his father and grandfather. So this inaugural release is called the Gold Foil Edition, a 16-year Kentucky straight bourbon crafted to capture the essence of the highly sought after 1980s and 1990s cheesy gold foil. And for those who don't know what that is, Google it because Might be, I mean, some of the best whiskey ever made. I would, you know, it's up there, but it's also maybe one of the most tacky bottle packages ever.

It looks like the age it was released. It screams late seventies.

It's got that like you, I think the baseball cards now you get like a gold card or Pokemon cards and it's kind of got that vibe to it. So yeah, just kind of paying homage to that. And it'll be interesting to see where they go with this, if this is going to be an annual series. I mean, we were kind of talking during the intermission, you know, you think of like the doughnut, you think of, what was it, Beyond Duplication and some of those other like 80s and 90s releases that the Austin Nichols dropped. But let's get into this nose. This nose is special. It's opening up the longer it's in the glass. I'm getting some red fruit out of that. A lot of red fruit. That funk though.

That lovely funk. Man, this smells like vintage.

Yeah, this does smell like you've opened an older bottle. This is a Dusty that's been opened here. How do they do that? Camp Nelson? Witchcraft. Yeah.

That's a great nose. I mean, I love some Tyrone stuff, but there's something about Camp Nelson that gets, I don't know if it's the spirits of the, what is it? the military camp there that add to the spirits of the barrels aging there. And this is not a single barrel, right? This is a blunt. There's probably a big count of these. I mean, not a huge count, but I figure probably in that seven to 10,000 bottles, maybe. I don't know.

I mean, it's just a little bit of brown sugar, some honey and tea. It's got like a- Oh, tea, yeah. It's got that classic toffee note to it, but there is just a hint of citrus coming from the back.

I get that. It's a nice leather graham cracker pie crust. Oh yeah.

I am so ready to sip this. I am too. Can we stop talking about the news? Cheers.

Oh my my.

This is 120 proof. 120. That is amazing. Wow. That gets better. The longer you just sit with it.

Yeah. That, I mean, the minute it touches your palate, you know, you're in for a treat. Really good.

You know, it's interesting because I don't think it tastes like vintage Turkey, but it tastes like perfect modern Turkey. At least I don't get the dusty note to it on the ground. The nose is more dusty-er.

Perfect.

Just the modern wild turkey.

Sweet tobacco, oak.

Yes, yes, yes.

Yes, sweet tobacco and oak. The citrus is there. Very rich. I mean, it just, it ignites all your salivating glands. They just all want to kick in at one time. It's a, I'm dripping down the sides of my tongue right now.

From the tongue is tingling a little bit. I get coffee cake on the back of the palette.

We like that. Can you tell? Yeah. I mean, it's terrible. Send me your bottles. Yeah.

Coffee cake. That's a great call out. That's really good. If you ever had like those little cakes, breakfast cakes, but they got the little chunks of dark chocolate in them. Like I'm getting just a little bit of like,

I can see that.

Little dark chocolate chunks. You know what's funny? How was that stuff called? That ice cream you get was called Rocky Road. It's got the little chocolate chunks in it.

No one else is going to get this reference but Todd. But that coffee cake my mother-in-law makes with the brown icing kind of on it. It's in the shape of a donut. It just tastes like the cake. It's good. I think it's just standard coffee cake.

Wow. There's so much concentrated flavor in this.

We still let the folks know we actually warmed up with a little eight year release of the wild turkey. And it's kind of funny. We talked about like the clovey spice on that and it's just a, just a tickle at the end of this one too. That cardamom clove, little cinnamon. This has got a lot going on.

Wonderful. I think I could probably drink this exclusively for

I mean, if you had to pick one bottle to live with for a month, I wouldn't complain.

Yeah, no. Well, actually, what's kind of funny is they quietly released another 13-year, which has got a special tag on it that says something. I think it's Eddie Russell's 45th anniversary. So it's kind of a special Russell's 13-year that should be hitting shelves now, too. Wow. This is another show.

So we can round that one up. This is such a night and day difference from the last one, that old granddad that had very little on the front of the palate. This is just front to back flavor bomb. Really enjoy this.

Yeah, I would, I would wonder what Jimmy, what Jimmy thought of that thought of this one. And I think he got it. I think he cracked a smile when he tasted it. I just think he got really happy, but he also might've said too high a proof. Yeah, he might've, he might've said that, but I think that this does bring back. uh, kind of flavors from the age of Jimmy's prime when he was producing turkey whiskey.

You know, I've already finished mine and now regret it. Cause I wish I had saved just a little bit to put just a drop of water in, because I think you're going to, I think you will taste a ton of red fruit if you just, just a drop of water.

And you called that out early.

That was like the first impression you got. Yeah. And I forgot to say that I had planned to from the moment I smelled it. too good to stop drinking. Well, we might be related by marriage, but you're not getting any of mine.

Well, I'll be hunting for this. I don't expect to find it, but I definitely would, uh, being, uh, being a big fan boy, I think I'd probably drop the 400. So I think I would too.

I'm, I wouldn't call myself a fan, but I definitely am a fan boy of dusty Turkey. Mid seventies Turkey is probably the greatest whiskey ever made. I would buy this for 400. No question. It's special for sure.

Yep. Oh my goodness. It's, it's almost hard to move on, isn't it?

It is, but I guess we'll save, I'll save the rest of this for after the show. We have a good tight race here. We've had some good, some pretty good whiskey.

Yeah. Yeah. I almost hate to take a drink of water after that. Cause the finish is still sitting with me. I'm going to wait. I'm going to have some water, but it's going to be a minute.

Yeah. All right. We got another one though. The hits keep on coming. So I got lucky one day, and I believe it was AMSY sent me a text and said, Stagg 26A is releasing at Buffalo Trace. And I was like, eh, I don't like to do the lines. He was like, it was a little late in the afternoon. He's like, there's no wait. So I popped over there and was in and out in 15 minutes. So yes, this is Buffalo Trace's Stagg batch 26A. They're kind of an oddball, you know, where the heaven Hills, the logic, Craig barrel proofs, they do the a one 23, B five 23, or, you know, C nine 25, 26, that kind of thing. So they always have three releases. Bookers is anywhere from three to four, and they code theirs with the, how is that like 20, 25, a kind of thing as well. Well, Stag is kind of different. So sometimes they'll drop two, sometimes they'll drop three in a year, sometimes they'll drop four. So it'd be interesting to see how many more come out after this. I think in fact, in 2025, there were four releases.

So there's a stag 26A.

26A, no age statement, but rumored to be in the seven to nine year range. You think I can say that without getting a cease and desist letter?

I don't know what you're talking about.

Match bill number one, which is the high corn, low rye, and malted barley. I have no comment on that either. Proof is 129.3. So this is the biggest proof. And MSRP quotation marks on this one is 65 bucks. I'll have to go there after tax with like, I guess, yeah, $68. Yeah. All right.

As long as it's not gasoline, you did good. Yeah. Stag, back when, to me it's still Stag Junior. I know I'm old fashioned. No, everybody's that way. It's kind of like MGP. Early on, I remember going to a bourbon bistro on Frankfurt Avenue in Louisville. Great restaurant, great bourbon selection. I had four folks from out of town who weren't into bourbon. We had been to three distilleries and they hated them, hated everything they tasted. We went there and they had a Stag Junior, I think it was the third release. of it, maybe the second. And it was on the menu. And I said, you know what, guys, we're going to try one more each. And we ordered five of them for the table. And everyone sat there and smelled it for maybe 20 minutes and just agreed that it smelled amazing. And by the end of the night, they loved bourbon. And it was because of Stag Junior. So it has a special place in my heart. Wow. Great story. That is a great story.

So what was the bourbon that kind of got you to go, Hey, I want to start a website and there's something that this is going to be the most cliche thing ever.

It was Pappy Van Winkle. I used to be a stockbroker back in the day and probably wasn't a very good one. I probably didn't sell enough to. stay in it that's why i'm not doing anymore but whenever we would get our end of the year you'd find out that if you made the club level you sold enough and if you squeeze through and made a club level you get a bonus and every year we are office was right behind a big liquor store. would go over it. That happened to be the same week that they released the Van Winkles. And this was when they would just be on the shelf and no one, no one bought them. And we went over and bought, we would go over for two or three years in a row and buy the 20 year Pappy. And I loved it. And so I started, I like, I've always loved bourbon since I was in college. And, you know, I started kind of reading into what it was and read that GQ article about the chef who was using it in the sauces and all that fun stuff. And, and this was the old school, probably still mostly Stitzel Weller juice. And And for a few years, I would go over and buy it. And one year, Mr. Van Winkle himself was signing bottles when I went over and convinced me to buy the 23-year instead. And it was terrible. I mean, it was awful. And the next year, I went back and he was signing again on the same day of the year at this liquor store. And he remembered me and apologized. He tried to get me to do it again, and I said no, and I bought two bottles of the 20. But somewhere around then, I finally decided I'd had some journalism background in college and high school, and so I loved to write. And I loved bourbon, and I just called up a buddy of mine, Matt Gates, who helped found that website with me. And I said, let's start a blog. And he said, OK. That was it. So yeah, Pappy was probably it. And then I quickly learned to hate it as soon as everyone else went nuts about it. So this is another one that we're tipping now that has changed a lot in the glass just while I've been talking.

Mm-hmm.

Just opened a lot. It went from a very concentrated kind of brown sugar smell to me to almost lightened.

I think Buffalo Trace, I think brown sugar, though. Yeah, yeah. It's classic. There's a little cherry cola in there.

Yeah, it's very much lightened up into something sweeter. Mm-hmm. Not as dark anyway, I guess you would say. Yeah, that's really good. Sometimes I get a little grape jelly on this too. The weirdest thing for me with Buffalo Trace, at Mash Bill 1 especially, 1 and 2 anyway, not the Wheaters, but 1 and 2 is this. It's really on the finish more than anything else. It reminds me of when you were a kid and it was hot and you drank out of a hose. In the summer, there was this kind of almost like a slight, really refreshing metallic, cold metallic tang. And I get that on the finish of Buffalo Trace when it's good. And I mean, that is a compliment in a good way. It reminds me of those days in the summers as a kid. And that's for me, when I'm tasting bourbon, if it reminds me of some point in my life, that's when I love it.

Well, the ethanol in the nose is not knocking me out, though, 129. So cheers. Cheers. Cheers. Sweet. Yeah, very sweet. Wow. It does have a nice, nice initial sweetness to it. A little bit of fire, though.

A little bit. Got a hug. It does. So this one, unlike the last one, this one isn't quite as full bodied on my palate. It's kind of right down the center of the palate, but it's excellent. Very good. I don't get as much on the periphery on this one.

I think second step starts to make it shine a little more. It still got that kind of cherry cola, like rich cherry coke, like almost like you took out the carbonation and still get the cherry cola syrup kind of thing.

It's kind of funny. You mentioned bill that it's, it's kind of. It's not, it's not on the sides. It's kind of in the middle. For me, it's like a strip down the middle. I'm tasting it, but I'm not getting anything on the side at all. You don't get in the cheeks.

I don't get on the edges of the tongue. That is interesting. Yeah. But man, I mean, straight down the middle is pretty good.

Yeah.

That description was probably the creepiest thing I've ever said about Perfect by the way.

Yeah, the hardest thing in the world to do is to describe what you're tasting to somebody on the other end of a microphone. So, I mean, it's a hard thing to do. And I don't know that we do it well, do it the best we can, but it's a hard thing to do. You know, I'm tasting this, I'm tasting, it's right down the center of my tongue. Yeah. You know, what are they thinking when they're listening to this? Sound off guys, let us know. Post, post in the, uh, in the chat after this show and let us know what you think. But I do think that, you know, where you sense the flavor on your tongue, you know, makes a big deal. When I start dripping down the sides, when I feel that on the, I know I've got something good in my, in my palate.

At least one of them that I did that for me.

Yeah.

Yeah. Maybe two. Are you guys getting a little citrus with this, which is kind of interesting? Almost like brighter. I don't think I got a lot of citrus. Like lemon drop kind of thing? No? OK.

I have one sip left. I might on that one now that you mentioned it, but we'll see.

This is a good batch, though. It's good. I don't think of it as being otherworldly. We did a comparison many moons ago. But this one holds up well. This isn't Stag Junior Batch 10. Well, I think 12 was the winner that day. 12 was the winner that day.

12 was the winner. I'm not sure that Buffalo Trace even expects Stag to be a knocky over, amazing bourbon because they don't want it encroaching on George D. Stag or anything like that. They want it to be great whiskey for the money. And I think this one definitely checks that box.

And it's meant to be, I don't want to sound sexist, but it's meant to be a big boy whiskey. It's meant to be a powerful whiskey. It's meant to be something that carries the flavor for its proof.

Well, you don't put out 129 proof and expect it to be dainty or elegant or something like that.

I say that and the ladies can drink the high proof stuff sometimes better than we can. So I think by and large they have better pallets than we do.

Brown sugar is popping now. Yeah, that's a good pour. It's got a very good finish to it. I'm really enjoying that still.

Todd, I saved like ever so small amounts of each, but not much. Why didn't somebody tell me to do that? Um, you know what, the most important thing is that nose on the empty glass. That brings back everything. That's right.

I think Todd, you should probably go pour me another of everything, including that foil. The foil's gone.

It was two ounces and well, I split it between the three of us as much as I could.

I got plenty of that for you. Are you sure? Yeah. I saved quite a bit. You just said you need a couple of drops. You guys are smarter than me.

I was going to say, maybe the golf club there will get a bottle of that. Yeah, I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. They've got a good selection. They do.

I mean, I remember we were... What was it we killed there?

King of Kentucky.

Oh, yeah. For a song and a dance, for real. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that was... Little bit of a wake thing, but we, uh, they had a King of Kentucky that was probably, I don't know, maybe half full. And I think you and I put the biggest in in it. Uh, yeah. And then we kept bragging in a few others. Yeah.

All right. Are we ready?

Let's get off the downer part. Yeah.

All right. It's time for winter, winter chicken dinner. We're going to see where the four stack up against each other and no shame here. They're all great. Great.

Great.

Great whiskeys. Yeah. Really good whiskey. So, and, uh, and they're all over the place in terms of what you're going to pay for a bottle. So proofs all over the place, ages all over the place. They're all very different. There's no like through line here other than they're. their special releases and their, and I got lucky in most cases. All right. Do you know where you stand? I think I'm going to taste. No, I think I have a ranking. I do too. Okay. I think I do too.

All right. I'll start. OK, Todd. Number four. My fourth place is going to be the O Grandad.

OK.

Solid, solid. I'm very glad I got a bottle while I was up there. It's a great price for seven years. It's under that $10 a year mark. And yeah, if you see that one, grab one, especially at $50. All right. Bill, you want to go next?

Yeah, I'm going to be in the same boat. I think it's a really good expression of that Mash Bill at a good age. And if you're a fan of old granddad, especially anything in that mash bill, if you're a fan of it, you're going to like this and it's worth it. I mean, it's, I think they know what they have. They're not charging an arm or leg for it. It's appropriately priced at $50. It's a great value and it's worth having. It's got a lot of, the finish on that alone is worth 50 bucks.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm in the same boat. I feel the same way. I think in terms of what we drank today of the four, I think fourth place is very clear for me. Still a great whiskey. Still, I recommend to go out and get yourself a bottle because definitely a value. I do think in a different lineup, this could have finished pretty high. Yeah. It was up against some, I was going to say tough competition.

It was just just kind of the way it worked out. It's sometimes it leans a little heavy certain ways is the way it breaks down. I mean, it depends on how you get bottles. And, you know, sometimes we get samples of obviously. But yeah, sometimes.

Yeah, the team, the beam folks are saying, that's not fair.

Sometimes great whiskey just falls in four places, so it goes. By no means should that be a indication that it's bad or anything like that. It's just, it just happened around against three bangers.

All right. I'm going to, let's just keep the same order. All right. My third place is actually going to be this stag, 26A. It's a, like I said, it's a very solid one. You know, I've had others where, you know, like you saw like the, fireworks went off and that kind of thing, but this is just a really good solid one.

Yeah. I have a feeling we're going to have the same rating because I'm the same boat with you. I think it's a, it's a, certainly it's a good whiskey. Um, it's not going to be lined up against a bunch of other of the stag or stag junior releases. It's going to fall right in the middle, probably. It's not the worst. It's not the best, but it's, it's solid. It's good. I like it.

It's a good stack release. I think it's, I think it's solid. I think you should, uh, Find your way to pick up a bottle of it. 26A, I think it's worth the price. It's definitely worth picking up. But today, I think the cards are aligning with a clear definition between one, two, three, and four. Yeah.

And then younger is getting beat by the older, it sounds like. Are you in agreement? Is that true?

Yeah, I agree completely.

OK. Well, keeping in the same order. Numero dos. Number two is going to be the Elijah Craig 15 year. I mean, that's a great barrel. I'm hoping I can maybe find some friends out there that have some other single brails to kind of do like a comparison kind of thing. Yeah. Just to see how the profile changes on some of those other single rails. But that's another, it's a little pricier, but that's a darn good bottle right there.

I'm betting my ranking, I would have number two closer to number one than either you guys would, but it is number two. Yeah. I don't want to say it's a huge margin, but it's a clear number too. But I would probably put it closer than other ones.

And that might be the difference between being a Wild Turkey fanboy and being a Heaven Hill fanboy. I mean, some people lean closer to one distillery more than another. I think that this, for me, this was... And the Heaven Hill was, it was a good pour. It was a great pour at the price. I mean, I would definitely drop 150 for that bottle. It was really good.

I'd do it right now.

Yep. Yep.

So it's pretty much unanimous and we even, it was lock and stop, you know? So the gold foil.

Wow.

Yeah. Like I said, I knew that was probably going to be like the, uh, The shining star of the show. The only one we don't have a bottle of.

But again, thank you, Jeff.

Yeah, thanks, Jeff. But I mean, that's one of those pores that it's almost hard. I mean, almost hard to find something to maybe throw up against it.

I mean, you would probably have to go in the past rather than a newer release for now. I think it would be like, what I would liken it to is some of the better releases of a King of Kentucky. Yes. Some of those that really just kind of surprise you with how different and good they are. You just, sometimes I fall into this trap of, especially with the big distilleries, if I expect something from them and they meet that every time. And then sometimes they blow you away out of the blue. And this is one of them where they just blew me away. The nose on that to me smells like a 1978 wild turkey. And I can't get over how they did that.

I just wonder if we should put it up against the beacon because I know it's going to beat the beam.

We're going to have to beg for another, another pour.

We'll get one eventually, somehow. Yeah. No, I mean this lineup was kind of crazy. Yeah, really good in any other I I am a Heaven Hill fanboy and in almost any other lineup I would have picked that Elijah Craig as a winner yeah, it was really good and And those bottles Todd are relatively available What's that single barrel though?

I mean you might not get that one.

They haven't the Lodge Craig. Yeah. Yeah, they should I mean I

Like I said, 250 barrels is what I'm, I mean, I didn't really say, but like drunk math, 250 barrels times 150 bottles. What are we looking at about 900? Is that 90,000? Is that right?

No.

Yeah.

Yes. 90,000. Yeah. You're working 90 something thousand. Yeah. That's good.

That's, that's pretty decent. So six pack cases, we're looking at 1500 six pack, no, 15,000 six pack cases. That's pretty decent.

It's out there folks. Yeah.

All right.

Yeah. I'll look for it next time.

Gold foil, not so much. Right.

But, oh, man, I saved just is that what you're sipping now? Yeah, yeah. I was glad to find that because I. I wanted to. Find a pork is Jim's a big wild turkey guy, so that's kind of love is his entryway. Oh, man. I think it may even opened up a little more. Are you smelling an empty? No, yeah, I am.

Can I hold that back up to the microphone for you guys? That's right. I had my first legal wild turkey in 1981. When did you have your first illegal wild turkey? Before that. I grew up in Ohio and Ohio at my time in Ohio, when you were 18, you could go to a bar and you could drink 3.2 beer. But honestly, once you were in the bar, you were in the bar. So yeah. So I, I had a, that was one of those fancy bars though.

Oh yeah.

They also sell bait and things. Yep. So, anybody from the Cincinnati area, the Hamilton, Butler County area that's listening to the show here, that was Dixie Electric Company.

Dixie Electric. Dixie Electric.

Yeah, that's where I went. That's awesome. Anyway, I've got one less. I'm just going to save it, Todd. This is it. I know. I wish I could commit it to memory. I just can't do that anymore. I used to be able to do that. Well, our website will commit it to our tasting notes to the internet.

So there's that. You can always come back and listen to this because I did hold it up to the microphone twice.

That's right. And just note to Cooper. Cooper, if you're listening to this, I'm telling you. This might, just to beat out the beacon. I think it beat out the beacon.

Put a little star on this one.

Yeah, put a little star on this one. And when you're putting our ratings up on the site there, Cooper, make sure you keep that, keep in mind of that. Yep.

All right, folks.

Well, it's been another fun show. Todd and I love to get together and do this. We love to drink whiskey. We love to drink whiskey with friends. We love when friends bring bottles. Thank you so much, Bill. Yeah, sure.

I didn't get one on family, so boo. That's right.

I'm sure you've gotten a bottle before.

Well, I know where he lives and I can, it's always good to visit him.

All right. Well, we, we try to record a show every single Wednesday. We usually make it. You get it out there. Uh, Todd and I'll get together. We'll have some guests on. We're always drinking whiskey. We're always having fun. Uh, but make sure if, uh, if you're listening to us on your favorite podcast app, just scroll up to the top, find that subscribe button and click it. That makes sure that every week we do drop an episode. You get that notification, letting you know that we've dropped another one. You put your headphones on and you can join us for an hour of fun. Make sure you check out the bourbon road.com. That's our website. If you're a Facebook person, go to our bourbon roadies page on Facebook. That's where all our fans hang out or Facebook fans hang out. There's a lot of fun stuff going on there, but you can always find us on the bourbon road.com. We've got a roadie bar on there. Join up. It's free. It doesn't cost anything. We come in, we post some chats and events going on there. We're going to do a live broadcast on there here pretty soon. We do giveaways, we run randomizers, all kinds of fun on there. You get your own private tasting notebook on there and you can publish those to the web and share them with everybody else. It's a great time. Check it out. Also, we've got all our vendors are starting to put their discounts on there for our roadies. So make sure you check that out as well. But until the next time, we'll see you down the urban road.

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