511. Reviving a Legend — The Untold History of Chicken Cock Whiskey

It's been a week of Mondays but the weekend's here Dust on my boots and a smile with my beard Neons humming low where the nose our name Same old bar stools but it never feels the same We raise a glass to the miles we've made To the stories told and the dues we've paid Amber light in a crystal glow A little burnin' Where the good times roll Passing bottles like a piece of soul Every pore's a memory, every sip a spark Lighting up the night in the Kentucky dirt Ain't no mail, just the ties we've sewn On the long winding berg

All right, listeners, welcome back to another Bourbon Road show. I'm without Jim this week, but I do have a co-host and that's Drew Hannes has joined me tonight. Hey, Drew, welcome back. Thank you so much. Becoming definitely a regular now. That's right. You're going to you're going to catch up with our buddy Amzie. Nice. We'll have to do some counting to see who's who's in like third most Well, I guess I'm co-host now, so I'm kind of out of that. I did a bunch of guest episodes for a while, but now I'm a co-host. So I guess I get kicked out of that. But yeah, as far as like the Alec Baldwin Award. Nice. But tonight we've got Will Woodington, the National Brand Ambassador and Director of Brand Engagement for Chicken Cock Whiskey. Will, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much, Todd. It's good to see you. And Drew, we're certainly familiar as well. It's great to see you as always. Great to see you.

Yeah, I thought it'd be great to have Drew on because he's got kind of a tie in with you guys and we'll kind of dive into that. But first things first, let's get into that first pour. I'm going to do the straight Kentucky bourbon.

Straight Kentucky bourbon, love it. Yeah, this is our flagship number one bestseller. This was the first bourbon release that we came out with in terms of a core offering after we ended up reviving this brand and taking things back to Bardstown. We're super proud of this bourbon day in, day out, and it's just super well balanced, man. Love this pour. Can have it Monday through Friday. Can throw it in cocktails, can drink it neat, be happy any way you slice it.

Got some nice clove is really heavy on this. Definitely the baking spice. Yes, yes. Got a baked apple kind of vibe too.

Love that. A lot of that has to do with, yeah, it makes you hungry. It has to do with, of course, you know, throughout that maturation cycle and what we're pulling out of that barrel. And yeah, I love it.

Now, unbeknownst to me, when we first met, we came up for the Bourbon on the Banks Festival to do a single barrel pick. And I always thought you guys were just kind of a source whiskey brand. And you kind of were for a little bit, but now you've got your own kind of mashbills going on, right?

Yeah, correct. The initial venture after 2012 was building Chickencock to the point of bringing it back and resurrecting it back to its home state of Kentucky. We did that officially in 2017-18. started laying down our first barrels in the state in collaboration with Bardstown Burbing Company. And throughout that process, we were able to dictate what mash bill that we wanted and the yeast strain and the cooking times, temperatures. even things down to, again, that maturation cycle and we were able to use hand-selected American white oak logs that got a medium plus toast and a level three char. So we were able to invoke really great flavor and complexity throughout maturation because we took that additional step too. But yeah, it's a very hands-on process. Making this bourbon, making our rye, it's a very, very heavily involved process and we dictate how each of these whiskies are made here in the 21st century under the chicken cock brain name. I'm taking a sip. Cheers, guys. Cheers. Cheers. And yeah, this flagship Kentucky straight bourbon, it's a high rye recipe. So that's 70% corn, 21% rye, 9% malted barley. And that's really, I love that mashfield because you get a really, again, great balance of flavor and complexity on the nose. You're getting baking spice on the palate. What I love about our Kentucky straight bourbon here is you can just get a wide variety of flavors and aromas. You know, you can pick out everything from that baking spice, orange zest, apricot, butterscotch, sweet, you know, cereal grains and vanillas. It really is stand out and delicious for those reasons. So what would you what would your ideal cocktail not taste in the whiskey neat? What are you going to throw this in at home if you're whipping a cocktail at home? Who?

See, I'm a bad guy to ask.

Yeah, me too. I'm not really a cocktail guy, so.

I like it just the way it is. Listen, I'm not. You're not going to find me at home with two shakers over the shoulders, you know, doing all the stuff by any means, but I'm a pretty simplistic guy myself. If I am making a cocktail at home, old fashioned, maybe a paper plane, maybe a black Manhattan will be as crazy as I typically get. But I do love the art of cocktail making. I love seeing all the different ways that people use chicken cock bourbon out there. It's fun.

It's got nice sweet notes to it. And that appley note that Todd was getting on the nose, I get that definitely on the palate. But I also was getting like a coconut kind of a tropical note on this as well.

It's really interesting Hmm I get a nice little cinnamon interesting interesting and like a little red hot candies a little bit Hmm, but not quite. Yeah spicy.

It's nice.

I

Yeah, it's nice and gentle. It's a gentle, gentle spice. What we always love to say is that nice Kentucky hug, where it's just a nice warmth. It's not an alcohol burn. You're going to get baking spice and things that sort of stimulate cinnamon and everything, like Todd was saying. But yeah, it's delicious.

I mean, my idea of a cocktail is either rather than pouring a half ounce is pouring an ounce of something. There you go.

So one of the things I really liked about... That does make sense. So one of the things I really liked about our first interaction together, I did research for you guys and I love the fact that there are brands out there that want to know the real origin story of their brands if they're bringing an historic brand back. Can I talk about how the brand was discovered and why it was so important to get that history reviewed? For sure.

I always love talking about this. Drew, as you're very well aware, there's a hundred reasons why Chicken Cox shouldn't be around in the year 2026, but it is continuing to be resilient. It's one of the most resilient brands that I'm aware of throughout history. You know, finding the chicken cock brand, it was around 2012. The founder at Grain and Beryl Spirits, Mahdi, he was looking to resurrect an old whiskey brand. He wasn't really sure which brand that would be or how you start to go revive an old whiskey brand. Uncharted territory for him. So, he was doing a lot of research on his own. Part of that research included going to whiskey museums, and there's plenty of those to be had in Kentucky. And he ended up going to the Oscar Goetz Museum in Bardstown, which if you're from Kentucky, Todd and Drew, I know you guys both know that place well, but that's where the Kentucky Bourbon Festival takes place, too, is on those grounds. So, if you've ever been It's a KBF, right? It's right there. But it's an amazing, amazing place that everybody should go check out. Mahdi was in there in 2012, and he was passing by with all these historic bottles. And he passes by one glass case, and in that glass case is a bottle that says chicken cock on the front label. And it just doesn't matter who you are. That brand name is going to stop you dead in your tracks, whatever you're doing, and you're going to have questions immediately. So, he did his research, found out that not only was this brand from 50, 100 years ago, it was from 1856, its initial inception, and it had incredible packaging and prohibition history, and it was incredibly important in the building blocks of bourbon whiskey, as we know it today, and its popularity coming out of Bourbon County. There were so many things to cling to and, you know, unfortunately, Chicken Cock had not been around in over 60 years at that point because it had just gotten basically dissolved after prohibition and the trademark was dead. You know, nobody owned that. So we were able to come in and Mahdi was able to kick things off. And, you know, we're at the point we're at now. It's taken a lot of hard work and determination and talent to get chicken cock where it is today. However, one of the most important critical pieces to Drew's point is look, we get questions on our name every day and a lot of people may assume that we're a gimmick brand or that a couple of frat boys started this brand name in a dorm one day and it couldn't be further from the truth. And people like Drew are massively important, not just to people like us who have revived brands from the ashes like this and want to do the history as much importance and justice as it deserves. But he is just massively important for carrying on the torch of whiskey history and keeping people educated. And I appreciate people like him who have the talent and the power and the know-how to seek all these things out. When I initially came on with Chickencock, outside of the existing structure and the employees that were there to lean onto for information and history and all that stuff, I delved each and every night into Drew's breakdown of the brand's history to soak up as much as I could. And I'm always finding new nuggets of information. to implement in there. And that's because, you know, a big part in Drew, again, for all the hard work that he did up front. So it's been massively fun to continuously learn more and more about Chickencock's history.

It's pretty amazing, too, that it keeps evolving the more that I dig into it. But, you know, it was funny because the original search was kind of like, oh, does this have anything to do with that old story of, you know, cocktail got its name from the stirring of a drink with a rooster's tail. And it was like when I was asked to do the research, I said, I don't know if I'm going to be able to find out about that. But what shocked me was that it actually had a much deeper history than that, and showed me that Bourbon County actually had something to do with whiskey, because up until that time, I really didn't know that Bourbon County had anything to do with whiskey. And now we're going to the very origins, and now you've spurred me on to work on a book about the history of Bourbon County and its whiskey. So it's been a great find for me as well.

So, Will, you said about the, I guess chicken cock died about what, 50, 60 years ago as a label. Who was like the last to kind of have that as a brand? I mean, you know, back in those days, like they traded brands like I traded baseball cards as a kid. So.

Yeah. And the unfortunate thing in too, Todd, is monopolies were running rampant around that timeframe. And Chickencock ended up switching ownership a couple of times between the turn of the century and post-prohibition. But who ended up with it post-prohibition was national distillers. They were a massive conglomerate that stuck around well past the time, the point in time that they let Chickencock go from its portfolio. But It was around 1950 or so when that occurred. You had things post-prohibition that really took a toll. After it was legal to make booze, all these makers, of course, wanted to make as much profit and revenue as possible and pump out as much as they could. The only way to do that is to cut corners, start reducing the quality of the product you're making. to get it out there, and that's the unfortunate story of chicken cock. It just kind of turned into a blended spirit post-prohibition. People weren't preferring the same things that they had. World War II took a toll on the industry, and the Great Depression did as well. So, you know, chicken cock certainly was not the only brand that that happened to around that point in time.

Well, I wonder what it was like trying to get that bottle design. You take that to a bottle maker. I mean, here you got a sort of, here's a picture of what it was, or you find those old bottles. I mean, was there any difficulty in getting that bottle designed that same way? It's quite ornate.

I, yeah, I mean to anybody listening who has not seen the chicken cock bottle, I implore you to just do a Google search of, of our whiskey bottles because they are exactly one to one replicas of prohibition era chicken cock bottles. When chicken cock was made as a smuggled pure Canadian rye that came in a tin can, it came in with this bottle that was embossed with chicken wire on the outside. And for the 1920s, he didn't see that very commonly. It's extremely ornate to Drew's point, probably cost a lot even for them to mold that and do that. And that's the exact bottle design that we use today. The other bottle design that we have is almost like a sunburst style look to it with a cap on top. And that's exactly what chicken cock looked like when it was made as a medicinal bottle in Bonn bourbon here during Prohibition in the United States. And that cap on top would have been used to measure your medicine. when you got back home. It was for ease of use. Both of those bottles are totally unique to us. Nobody else uses them. You see a lot of other brands out there who share bottle and mold designs, and that's fine. There's nothing against that. But to truly do justice to this brand, we had to capture those exact packages because there's really nothing better in my eyes. There's nothing that catches the light like them. There's nothing like the grip of that chicken wire bottle when you pick it up in your hand. And you're again, you're holding a piece of actual history right there. It's a one-to-one remake. It's not an assumption of what it may have looked like or what we think it could have looked like. It's a one-to-one, so it's really cool.

And you're quite the collector, as I understand it, of chicken cock items.

Man, I am a collector of all things history, but specifically my wheelhouse is pre-prohibition whiskey stuff. And that was the case long before I joined the chicken cock brand. I've been collecting old bottles and signage and documents and fun things like that. But when I realized that I was being brought on to the brand over three and a half years ago, I immediately just started to scour every crevice of the internet. for anything related to the brand. I've been able to find quite a bit, but I remember I was able to obtain an original medicinal pint that still had a little bit of liquid left in the bottom. I found a bill of sale from Montana from 1874 that mentioned the brand. Those were some of the initial things I started to find, and I was just becoming so immediately energized by being able to find these artifacts of this brand that had been so long forgotten. And the relics, when you come by them, are not easy to find. So it's a little bit of a treasure hunt. But when you go to either of our tasting rooms in Kentucky, whether it's in Bardstown or Louisville, our tasting rooms are scattered with original relics between original sealed bottles and signage and documents and all sorts of great stuff that you can look at. to see the chicken cock brand in its heyday, pre-prohibition, post-prohibition, lots of cool stuff to check out.

Yeah, I was going to say, I haven't found something for him, but it was a little pricey.

Yeah, which understandably so. Most things, again, because of their scarcity and because of the fact that, you know, I like to think that we've done a great job promoting the brand and it's much more, there's much more awareness now than there was 10 years ago, even five years ago for it. And because of that, you know, people are hot to trot on the brands, especially the revived brands like ours, when stuff comes out there. So it is not easy to find and it is not cheap to obtain. I will say that. But we try to gain as many original relics for our tasting rooms as we can. I noticed there was an original, it was from the saloon days, 1880s, 1890s era, and it was a match dispenser from a saloon, and it said Merry Christmas on the back, and it was out of, I think, New Mexico, or somewhere out in one of those western states. It had an original chicken cock advertisement on the front. It was incredible. I loved it, but I ended up not getting it because it was too expensive. Yeah.

So probably one of the first times only, we're actually going to have two different pores. So Drew, I think you're going to try the rye. Does that sound good? Yes. And I'm going to sip on. Yeah, we don't have matching pores tonight, but hey, this is great for Will. He gets to talk about more of his products and I'm going to sip on the weeded bourbon. So you want to talk about your rye first with Drew?

Yeah, for sure. So huge fan of rye. And, you know, rye is quintessentially American spirit. You know, it's it's a really old spirit here in America. So I just love everything about rye as well. And chicken cock was made as a rye for a very long time, too, not just bourbon. So our rye right here, we use a 95 percent rye grain, five percent multi-barley mash bill. And we bottle this at 90 proof, just like the blue label bourbon. And again, I really love our rye, it's super approachable. A lot of people out there, if they're bourbon drinkers and they're implored to drink sweeter things, You know, they can be a little bit gun shy of drinking rye whiskey, and that's because there are a lot of aggressive rye whiskeys out there. There's plenty that'll be way too earthy, way too spicy, too aggressive. Ours is much more well balanced. You still get a rye spice, but it's more of a gentle white pepper spice, in my opinion. You get a little bit of those rye flavor characteristics like lemongrass, but it leans heavier into citrus components, a little bit of spearmint that's tucked in there that I really love. So cocktailing this up, I really love using our rye because that little bit of gentle spice comes through and the flavors work really well in a multitude of whiskey cocktails that you throw at it too. Nice.

It's funny, sometimes things will hit me and I go, I gotta say that. It's standing out to me and it's like a bubblegum note. And it's not like an overly sweet, but maybe it's like the fruit coming through on top of like a nice little cinnamon note. that I'm getting there. But I think overlying all of this is, even though this is a two-year whiskey, it has a very nice toasted wood note to it that I think sits on top. So when you say balanced, I definitely get that on the nose.

Yeah, for sure. And again, going back to the maturation and the hand selection of the oak that we used and the medium plus toast level 3 char, all of that makes an impact along the way. Rye whiskeys, you certainly do not need nearly as much time as you do on bourbon in order to get it to that peak maturation either. So while it's a minimum of two years, it floats between two to four, generally, in our blend. It is a standout rye, man. Again, I really love drinking neat and dissecting all those great flavors that way. And then again, if you're a fan of whipping up a cocktail at home that takes a couple of ingredients, right, something like a black Manhattan or an old fashioned, this will work tremendously well in that. And I love using rye in my cocktails too. I don't know about you.

I would think that this would work really well in a Sazerac, too. It almost has a finish that reminds me of a Sazerac. What I find interesting about the history of chicken cock is how much rye actually was involved in their mashbills, and probably the most curious thing, and this is kind of a balance between what Todd will be tasting and what I'm tasting, is that they didn't really necessarily order up barley. I think what they were doing was they were malting wheat and taking malted wheat with rye and corn and making their whiskey out of that. And I have to question, you know, they had something called Miller's, back then it was Miller's before it was Chickencock, and they would call it Miller celebrated old bourbon or they would have Miller's celebrated old rye. So they did have a distinction between the two, but I think it's really interesting to remember that they didn't have rules back then. So you could have called something rye and it still could have had 51% corn in it. And you, you wouldn't know. I mean, how would you know? Even today, I'm starting to see some brands are bottling things they're calling rye bourbons. So instead of saying high rye bourbon, they're just saying rye bourbon. So it's just really interesting. And part of me wants to see one of these days, maybe a mimicking of that mash bill to have wheat and rye with a little bit of corn in there to see what that would be like.

Man, I would love it more than anybody, my friend. I've been so eager to find out exactly to the percentage how they made chicken cock, not to shy away or turn a nose up to what we're making today. It would just be out of pure curiosity. And also, yes, to recreate that and taste that whiskey, get a glimpse into the past of what this stuff used to taste like to a degree as best we can. I think that would be awesome. But it's a great segue because, yes, Todd is sipping on our weeded bourbon expression, which is new to us this year. It's the first time that, chicken cocks, since we revived it, we've ever done a weeded bourbon expression. And sort of the way that this came about was, look, again, when we revived the brand, We decided to go with a high rye recipe bourbon, which is the first porter that you tasted with the 21% rye. Not really understanding or fully knowing how they made it back in the day. As time went on, we then came to realize, well, they were looking to source some wheat to Todd's point. And so to some degree, they were using wheat in the production of chicken cock whiskey. And that really implored us to look into developing and releasing our own weeded bourbon that you're trying right there. So, you know, it's been a phenomenal, you know, few months since we've released this. The reception's been really fantastic. Our weeded bourbon is a bottle at 94 proof. The mash bill is 68% corn, 20% wheat, and 12% malted barley. You swap the rye for the wheat on this one and adjust the corn by about a percent or two, and you're there versus the bourbon. It's really been a really great product for us. Loving the flavor. When you swap that rye grain for wheat, traditionally you get those nice, softer, richer, sweeter flavor profiles. This one is an overly abundantly sweet, in my opinion. It has a really nice balance, but you can definitely tell that difference in mouth feel and finish and everything like that between our 90 proof Kentucky straight bourbon and this new weeded expression. What are you thinking about it, Todd?

I think the big thing that pops out to me on this nose is like this honey break the bed, excuse me, bread. And yeah, and being a Frankfurt guy, I mean, this might give a certain distillery ditch down the road for me, a nice run in the weeded category to me. I really enjoy this. It's soft. There's like this raspberry cream note on the on the on the palette that honey kind of carries over.

Todd, you You and I have similar palates, my friend. I was saying there's definitely a raspberry tartness on this, and I'm right in line with you.

It's the perfect amount of sweetness, too. If anything, I would like to try this at maybe about 105 or 110, somewhere in there, just to see how that progresses.

Someday, right? Maybe? Definitely. Someday. It's on the radar. Trust me, man. Because when I finally got to taste the bottle product here, I was wowed. Again, we've had a great reception from everybody on this new release. And so I would love to expand on it. And that includes consideration for you know, rolling this into our barrel program, considering, you know, ways to innovate upon this liquid. So all of that will come hopefully, maybe some 2027 plays, but nothing definitive yet.

So I think it's probably a pretty good time to take a break and we'll come back and we have some more expressions to dive into. And yeah, so stick around.

We argue notes, vanilla or smoke, but it's all just part

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All right, listeners, welcome back to the second half of the show. We're here with Will Woodington, National Brand Ambassador and Director of Brand Engagement with Chicken Cock Whiskey. And I've got a special co-host, Drew Hanisch from Whiskey Lore. And yeah, that was a fun first half. Will, you guys are doing the Lord's work. It's really cool to see this old brand brought back to life with such care rather than, hey, we got the label and you know, making a cool bottle and then, you know, but you guys are really dug into the story and things. And I think Drew's actually found some new stuff about your brand, right?

Yeah, it was an interesting week for me. By the way, I'm really happy to see the history has been updated on your website. You get to wander through the whole. The thing is, though, as I always say, history kind of evolves as you find something new. And one of the things that I found while I was on my sojourn to Bourbon County last week was that the house that we thought that he lived in before he built the distillery, he apparently didn't live in. That was another James A. Miller. This is, I mean, history research, especially in whiskey making territory, I don't know what it is, but for some reason, they all have to have the same initials. They all have to have Every other generation has to have the same name to it. I think one of the things that drove me crazy was even when I was looking into somebody, like there's three Samuel Clays who are all in distilling within a certain period of time. And the one that's named Junior, his father, his name is Brutus. And you're going, well, why did they call him Junior? And then you find out that they called him Junior because there was another guy that was in the industry that had seniority over him. So they just called the guy Junior and you're like, How am I ever supposed to figure this out? So I was so happy when I was doing this research because I'm like, ooh, you know, the guy started in the 1830s. There's a Louisville Courier Journal article that basically says, James A. Miller is on his 19th annual trip down to New Orleans to take his whiskey and named that he was taking his 12-year-old whiskey down. So, so much information. And when I got that date, I looked and I found that James A. Miller in the records and the title deeds and thought that that was the house that he started. It's kind of dilapidated. It's like it was a log house that was built onto and nothing looked like it was being maintained on this thing. Well, come to find out that this isn't really the same James A. Miller. And then I found James A. Miller's grave site, which was this most unique monument. It was basically a grave that was a tree trunk. And that tree trunk was to signify that he had died prematurely, that he died when he was 43 of asthma. And so it wasn't a pleasant death, but he died a rich man and actually was also known for selling Kentucky bluegrass seed of all things. So he's a really interesting character. And you wonder about this name chicken cock and where that came from and how it would relate to this guy, you know, I mean How how would we ever find that out is the question I

Your guess is as good as mine, Drew. And I mean, I know just from an amateur standpoint, when I first got my ancestry.com account and I was able to start digging into family history, I went from knowing very baseline information into becoming a private detective for six months. And I'm sure in your position, you're trying to get to the true source, the story, so you can tell a clear pattern of this is exactly how it happened in the timetable. And I love that. I love continuing to nail down the specificity of everything. But I know how incredibly difficult that can be because you can go down, you can chase one rabbit hole around one person thinking it's the person you're looking for only to find out that there were 15 other people with the same name right around the block just because everybody named their kids the same thing, I guess. There's all sorts of things to navigate there. And I get caught up in that too, specifically with Chicken Cock history and just figuring out the puzzle pieces, man. And to your point about the history on the website, I like to think that I've become a true champion as has the rest of the team about communicating all this history correctly and making sure that people understand the significance that Chicken Cock had throughout the 1800s and its true story and sort of why it faded away. And it's one of the best parts of talking about this brand is just all that history that's wrapped up in there. Funnily enough too, the Paris, Kentucky plant was around from 1856 and then around the turn of the century, the Whiskey Trust bought it and then they had their fire damage occur and all that stuff. I've been to the original Paris, Kentucky site and there's the front wall of the original front office building and an original Rick house still standing. And apparently I think we've been able to get in touch with that owner and get some of the bricks from that front office wall in that building to maintain. So those will be super cool to have those physical relics from the distillery. That's really all that's left, you know? And you mentioned the seed, bluegrass seed. That's new information to me. So that's really cool. I'd love to learn more about that. And it's funny enough, because you know the connection. The original Paris, Kentucky plant got sold off in 1914, I want to say. And then a seed cleaning company took it over until they burned down in 1961. So it started with seed and ended with seed, I guess, in some ways. But that's interesting.

Well, and the fact that when they demolished that building, they actually found in the cornerstone a bottle of chicken cock whiskey, and somebody took that. Somebody took it. I know the name of the person, but nobody knows where this person went to. They went to California. There's basically a father giving it to his son, and whether his son cared about this bottle of whiskey or not, we'll never know. you know, interesting pieces of history that, you know, and I find it so fascinating that you mention any of this to people around, even in Bourbon County. I was talking to people who lived there, you know, their whole lives that went, we didn't know there was a whiskey history. in Bourbon County at all. And you go, well, where did the name come from? I mean, it seems like it would be a given. But when you think about the fact that that shut down in 1914, and you basically are reviving it 100 years later, that's 100 years to forget about a brand.

Mm-hmm. No doubt. That's 100 years for old side engine bottles and relics and information to get completely lost. The people who were ever tied to the brand, who drank the brand, served at the Cotton Club during Prohibition. There was so much time. where we had to depend solely on old documents, folks like yourself who are obviously very well researched in the subject matter. And it's just taken years. Again, we're always finding out new things about the brand, but that's just what it takes. Because it was gone for so long is diving into, again, every crevice you can imagine to try and uncover those little nuggets of truth and history. And the other thing, too, is we've done this in a multitude of ways. We've done this with Cotton Club Rye back in 2020. We did it with Chanticleer the following year. We did it with Miller's Reserve that you're about to taste here. And we did it with Old Glory in a specific way, too. But really tying that history into our innovation, letting our history guide some of our releases has been really fun. Cotton Club was to pay tribute to when chicken cock was served in that tin can smuggled down from Canada during the 1920s. Chanticleer to pay tribute to all the French-American roots that we have here in America post-revolution, specifically where bourbon gets its name from, where the county gets its name from. So we came out with a cognac-finished bourbon. Miller's Reserve that you're about to try right here. Is this a good time to maybe dive into the story on that?

Yeah, we can do that one. And then Drew can do his double oat after that short.

Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, tying into the history, I had, I had an opportunity to really be intimately involved with the release and curation of Miller's reserve right here. Um, the story goes back to 1860 and this was a year in which chicken cock, uh, was massively successful. James A. Miller had been, uh, you know, running a very successful distillery operation for a handful of years up to that point. He was shipping barrels further and wider. every year, producing more each year. 1860 was a very, very hard year for James Miller and the brand for a couple of reasons. Number one, he was a farmer before he started chicken cock. He was a farmer during it. He actually had a farm tied to the distillery grounds. And so his farming business supplemented the whiskey business and vice versa. And that was the case for many, many brand starters in the 1800s. And we like to think that's probably, assumably where a lot of the name comes into play is from James A Miller's farming roots and all of that. But in 1860, a couple of things, he had hundreds of his hogs die due to a cholera outbreak that year. That was a massive financial hit. He also had 475 barrels of his whiskey that were loaded up on a steamship called the AO Tyler. That steamship was coming down the Ohio, bound for the Mississippi River because as a whiskey maker, you'd ship your whiskey down that river. It probably end up in New Orleans, go to that port and get shipped out across the country. And that steamship never made it. It crashed in the Ohio River along with every single one of his barrels on board. all of which were uninsured. So it was a huge financial burden to the business, of course. And then, of course, James A. Miller died that year in 1862. So it was just a rough year, all in all. So what we did with this release, We didn't go by the standard playbook. We hadn't previously blended a bunch of whiskies together. We hadn't been known for blending multiple ingredients together or anything like that. And we totally changed it up. So again, I was really proud to have a heavy hand in this. And I think it turned out phenomenally. What Miller's Reserve includes to resurrect James A. Miller's whiskey from that river in our own way was to blend together four whiskies from four states that all border the Ohio. And that includes 10 year old double oak liquid from us in Kentucky. Drew, you've got that bottle handy of some of that liquid, which it's phenomenal. Then we've got eight year old high rye bourbon that we got out of Indiana, 10 year old weeded bourbon that we actually got from Ohio, and then eight year old weeded bourbon that we got out of West Virginia. So, four totally different whiskeys, and then we blended those all together and proved this is 115. So, I love the story. There's the cool map on the back of the bottle, which I know you can't see due to the podcast, but there's a really cool map that sort of explains all those ingredients in the map layout. And it's just, it was such a cool release to do, start to finish, so.

I was just going to say, this is like a decadent pour. I mean, I fell in love with this the minute you brought this to the Frankfurt Bourbon Society.

Yeah. It's again, not to try and toot the own, the own horn too, too much, phenomenally. I think that, I think the, uh, the story, uh, the blend, the whiskey itself, we proved this at 115 prove. So it's got. such amazing body and complexity. And the finish goes on for a very long time. There's so much flavor and stuff to think about as you're sipping through this. So that's exactly what we wanted. You know, it's a memorable story. It's a one of a kind story. We wanted to pay tribute to that in a really unique way. And I think it all turned out great. So yeah. On the nose is like this nice dark fruit, some figs, pipe tobacco fig seed. Todd, we're in synergy, man. We're synced up on the nose and palette in every way, I think.

Yeah, I'm sure Jim's going to miss this one because he likes the figs on his. And then the palette is so rich. Yeah, he's a big guy. He'll even pull out the Turkish figs on me sometimes. Wow, that's pretty fancy.

Hmm. Yeah, it's it's got a butteriness to it, too. And yeah, this was last year's sort of. Yeah, love it. This was 2025's year-end LTO, so we actually debuted this at Kentucky Bourbon Festival, which we'll be at proudly yet again this year, so please come visit us if you're planning to come attend. We've got a couple new releases that we'll be unveiling and a single-barrel release with the Kentucky Bourbon Festival. It's another banger like last year, so we're excited to unveil all that stuff. But Yeah, it was super fun unveiling this man and like I said, reception was great on it and it's a really great pour, very proud of it for sure. Drew, I know you've got the Double Oak, which is one of the components in Miller's Reserve. Not your prototypical Double Oak right there, my friend. I know we've hashed into it before, but for all the listeners out there, standard Double Oak whiskeys, the journey that they take is they're aged as normal in the brand new American White Oak barrel. They're then dumped into a secondary, lightly toasted, lightly charred barrel, whatever that maker might do, and there you have your double oak. This whiskey was made as a bourbon in 2014. It's got the Mashbill credentials to be one, so it's 80.5% corn, 11% rye, 8.5% malted barley. However, the producer, during that year, there was a massive oak shortage across the barrel industry. And that left a lot of producers without their normal amount of new barrels that they need. So this producer was forced to dump the distillate back into used bourbon barrels. And that's the only reason why you'll see on the label, it's called a Kentucky whiskey and not a bourbon whiskey. It aged in those used bourbon barrels for the first seven years. And we had an opportunity to acquire this liquid. We thought it had a lot of great legs and a lot of things going on, but we needed to take it to the next level. So after we got this liquid, we decided to dump it back into brand new barrels with a level four char, age those barrels at the very top parts of the Rick House in Bardstown, Kentucky for another three years. And out comes our 10 year old double O Kentucky whiskey. So our initial release of this was eight years. If you see eight years out there, we did do an updated release that is 10 year age stated to be on the lookout for That's a whole two additional years of flavor that those barrels got exposed to. So it's a delicious product no matter which of those releases you get. But yeah, we did a little bit of updating along the way. And you'll also see new packaging from us across our entire course set. Our bourbon, our rye, our small batch bourbon, our weeded bourbon, if you're familiar with how that looks, it looks a little bit different from the other core bottles. That's exactly how the other core bottles are gonna look hitting shelves, if not out there already very soon. And we're excited about that. A whole new look and refresh to the brand. It's been a few years and it's really cool to see the new labels out there. You can check those on our website too if you haven't seen them. But Drew, what are your thoughts on Double Oak?

Well see what I love about this and tell me because if you've added on two extra years are you still doing just one year of a new charred oak barrel or is that three years of a new charred oak barrel?

That's three years. So we took this distillate, we dumped it into those brand new barrels. The initial release again was that eight year age stated. We just simply let some of those barrels continue aging and then updated with that 10 year age stated liquid that you have out there now.

I love this the first time I tried it. I mean, again, I'm not necessarily somebody who's in love with going further with oak if you go too far with it. But I mean, for me, this is really nice. It's a it's got a, you know, those the caramel comes through to me. I get some dark fruit. The coconut comes back again. I don't know why I keep getting coconut. But for some reason, I get a little bit of coconut.

It's very, very tropical tonight.

Yes, you know, but that nice kind of toffee caramel note carries all the way through to the finish. It's just a nice, really nice mouthfeel to it. I'm sort of now that I've talked to a couple of Scotch distillers who have been aging things for 40 years and then putting them into new or not new chard oak but basically newer barrels to try to wake the whiskey up. It now has me very curious as to what this would have tasted like at seven years in that used barrel versus how much it changed with that additional year waking the whiskey up again and really or you know what kind of flavors it's imparting on that.

Yeah, it would be interesting to know. I did not get the opportunity back then. It was before I had joined the team. But you know, assumably look, it's a very high corn recipe. It's 80.5% corn. So you have to imagine that after seven years just in used barrels, it might drink closer to a corn whiskey Not to say that those other grains haven't imparted their own flavors, but it might've tasted closer to that than closer to the, it drinks closer to a bourbon. You know what I mean? It doesn't necessarily drink like a lot of the other double oaks out there because they go through that both brand new barrel cycle. And they can, I've enjoyed many pours of them out there, but they can also be overly rich and overly oaky to some people. And our double oak, because of that used barrel factor, You get that great influence, you get that great flavor, but it's not overbearing, in my opinion. You can come back to this one a couple times throughout the night and be OK, whereas the other ones, I feel like, might be a little bit too strong in that factor. So that's why I really love our Double Oak. It's not your everyday story for the production process on a Double Oak whiskey like this. And again, it's another product that we're happy about and that we took this existing liquid that was here and took it to a whole other level afterwards. So we're proud of the way that it turned out.

Well, and I'd love the fact that you're not afraid to put American whiskey on a bottle. Not everything has to be straight rye, straight bourbon that you're willing to do some experimentation for flavor rather than necessarily trying to stick to a rule.

For sure. Look, and I want to continue to play outside the sandbox. I think that many producers are in the same spot where you see innovations that are continuously sort of breaking the mold. For us personally, were we the first ones to do a four whiskey blend like that? Obviously not. but for our history and tying it in and showing the blending prowess and the abilities that we have in that realm is really important because I think a lot of buyers out there, whiskey consumers and enthusiasts, really kind of are touting blending even if these distilleries aren't necessarily making this stuff at their own brick and mortar distillery. It still takes a lot of work and talent to put something out there like this and spend the time to figure out which components work well at what percentages. You know, something that we just sort of broke the mold with again, and we were talking shortly before we came on air, but it's old glory. We're not tasting that tonight, but That's something that was really, really unique for us, for Lairds, for everybody involved. And we were just thrilled for the opportunity to do that. I met Lisa Laird at Portland Cocktail Week just a couple of years ago. I didn't know a ton about their brand and their history and came to find out that she was ninth generation to do what she does in her family with the Lairds brand. that they were the oldest established, you know, family distillery in America with 1780 as their established date. They served George Washington's army with Applejack during the revolution, all sorts of interesting information. I said, look, this is so cool. We have to find a way to partner. And typically you would think, okay, chicken cock, you're just, you're just going to take some whiskey and finish it in the next Applebrainy cask and call it a day. No, I didn't want to do that because it had been done a thousand times before and it can be easily done. What I wanted to do is something way different. So we took 70% chicken cock rye and 30% Laird's bottle and bond apple brandy and blended them together. That is not your everyday blend right there. And bottle it at 100 proof. And it's again, it's called Old Glory. It's got the eagle and the rooster on the front label to pay tribute to both of our brands, iconography and history. But that has been a really, really cool release. That's out on shelves now. That released in the springtime. So make sure you go try and find yourself some Old Glory out there.

Well, you guys have established yourself in a couple of locations now. And I was talking about it in Bourbon County. I said, when are they going to open up a location in Paris? Come on. We've got to get some people heading in that direction to Bourbon County. But talk about your two locations and what you're doing at both.

Yeah. Appreciate that, Drew. Yeah. We, we opened up circa 1856 in Bardstown, Kentucky, downtown Bardstown, Kentucky, a couple of years ago. And it's, it's just been an amazing ride ever since, you know, that was the first time that chicken cock had had its own physical brand home since the Paris, Kentucky days, well over 100 years once we decided to open up shop there. So it was a really exciting momentous moment. We are in the historic Harrison Smith House. It is a really old yellow home. that's right in the center loop of downtown Bardstown. You can't miss it. If you do, you got to get your eyes checked because it's bright yellow. It's in the town square and it says chicken cock outside of it. And there's a giant rideable rooster out in front too. So it's a really cool place. You can go there. get flights over whiskey, ice cream pairing experiences, go to our patio to get some live music and a food truck experience. Of course, our KBF activity, if you're coming to KBF, we're like two blocks away. You don't really have much of a good excuse to not stop by and come party with us every day after the festival is done and come check it out regardless. But it's Um, Circa Bards sounds been amazing. It's an all female led team over there. We have a small shed in the back where we have a 40 gallon still, um, and Ali over there runs it. And it's, it's just an incredible crew. They give you a world-class experience at either one of the tasting rooms, whether it's in Bardstown or in the new district of Louisville. We just opened up that second tasting room location last year. And that's been amazing to you know when you go to circa 1856 Bardstown, because it's that old home it's it's an intimate feel you know you're actually walking into our brand home literally. When you go to Circa in downtown Louisville, that's a bigger space up front. There's more space to spread out on the top level. We've got a nice bar up there where you can have drinks and enjoy the ambiance. One of the coolest parts, though, is that you open up the bookcase that leads into the coupe. which is our speakeasy at circa 1856 in Louisville. And down there, it's incredible. You can see the original stone foundation of the building. It's dark. It's swanky. Again, we're spinning amazing cocktails down there. We're doing live music down there. Really cool experiences. So either one of our tasting rooms. You have to stop by. We have distillery exclusives there, incredible cocktails, all sorts of stuff to check out. So we're excited to continue hosting plenty of great visitors on the Bourbon Trail at either one.

So one other thing I want to bring up before we kind of end this all is you guys have probably the most unique merch out there. It's some serious props because folks can't see your shirt right now, but your counterpart that came to the Bourbon on the Banks Festival was wearing the lighter colored one and he actually had the shorts to go along with it too. I'm assuming you have the dark shorts with the chicken cock all over it as well, right?

Of course I do, Todd. Do you know who I'm talking to? That's right. No, it's our merchandise. Look, this brand is so merchandisable. 75% of my attire, I think, is chicken cock. And yes, I love the brand, love representing it, but it's just so cool. I love all the merch that our team has come out with, including these pattern sets. So last year, I believe it was, yeah, we came out with the first design of a pattern set. It's a lighter colored one that comes with matching shorts. We then did another whole new pattern set around Kentucky Bourbon Festival that I have that also has matching shorts, but it's more tropical roosters. We also had a matching fanny pack that year, a matching sun hat you could get, a matching bucket hat you could get. And these are our new sets for this year. So a little bit more of a dark blue. You will see myself and the whole team wearing these at Kentucky Bourbon Festival. We'll have these for sale at our booth and our tasting rooms, of course, too. I think they might be available on our website soon, too. So check out for them. But check out our website or go to Circa and just browse the merch. I guarantee you, you're just going to find something that you can't say no to. It's just it's chicken cock. How could you not, you know? We've got one of the most, if not the most unforgettable name in the industry. Hopefully through some of this discussion today, you guys realize that yes, it's incredible. It's fun to talk about, but it's all rooted in history, right? And that's part of the messaging we try to convey is just that we try to have fun. We are unapologetically chicken cock. We love sharing our history and telling people about how that name came about and the great whiskey that we're making today. And some of that comes through wearing incredible merch like this. So I appreciate the compliments, Todd.

Yeah, and you didn't even touch on the fragrances.

Oh, yes, yes. I'll be coming out with my own colognes and perfumes this fall. It'll be an entire set. Be on the lookout for that. But yeah, maybe one day. I'll talk with the team about some perfume innovations that I've been working on. No, I was talking about the Hiker Trash. And we'll see if I can get that.

What's that? The Hiker Trash, the Blue Jay, the Walk of Shame.

Oh, yes, yes. Oh, I'm sorry. I misunderstood. Yeah, we took the fragrances at Circa. Yes. Okay. I was like, I, you know, I haven't been working on any colognes or perfumes myself, but I will. I'm sorry. Yes, we do offer. some really great scents. I have smelled them myself, I know exactly what you're talking about, but we do have some really great scents if you want to walk out of Circa, not just with great whiskey, not just in style, but smelling great too. We've got them covered there.

Now, one thing we didn't cover is, and we'll run through these real quick, was MSRP's on the things we taste tonight. So, bourbon, we did bourbon and rye, I'm assuming they're about the same.

Yeah, bourbon, weeded bourbon and rye whiskey should usually be line priced at around $54.99, $57.99 in that range in most markets. Then double oak would be the next one up from that, which Drew was sipping on. Double Oak and Miller's should be around the same price. Both should be $99.99 on the shelf. Double Oak, because it's worthwhile to mention, because we did source that liquid, it will be running out at some point in time. So if you do taste it and like it, we will be coming out with a new innovation to replace that eventually. But for now, we're still continuing to put that on the shelf. Miller's, like I said, was 2025's limited time offering release. It is still available in some markets that still have inventory available. If you can find it, like I said, that's $99.99 on the shelf, too.

And Old Glory that just came out, it's about that same?

Yeah, Old Glory should be $64.99 in markets that it's available in. Yeah, yeah. It's a great value, again, for such a unique blend. The flavor's tremendous. I came up with that blend sitting at my coffee table with a 50-milliliter beaker and multiple barrel samples from each end. And it was so fun, and I'm proud of the way it turned out. So please either try or, yeah, get your hands on a bottle of Old Glory for sure.

How did where did you find out that and when did you find out that Jim Gaffigan was talking about your whiskey during his comedy skit?

Yeah, you know, that that was a funny one, man. We at some point in time had sent some samples to him and his team. He's a humongous whiskey nerd, as you can see, his passion has grown immensely since COVID. And he's got his own father time whiskey brand out there now, too. But wow, what a What an opportunity I never first saw coming in my life, nor with this position or anything. But we sent him the samples. He ended up really liking the chicken cock brand. Obviously found plenty of tongue-in-cheek jokes to say about it. but really, really loved the whiskey and the cool history and the packaging and everything that we stood for. So he ended up inviting us out when he was going and doing that bourbon set tour in Kentucky. He invited some some makers out that that he liked, one of which was us. And so we got to go backstage and meet Jim. And it was it was it was a who's who of whiskey in that in that backstage area. Right. We got to hang out with him and spend some time with him. And just what a cool opportunity. What an amazing guy. What an incredible comic. And I've had the chance to meet him again after that. And just again, what an unforeseen opportunity that I'm so grateful I had the opportunity, you know, the chance to get. So. He's your Frank Sinatra. That's right. Yeah. Well, Frank Sinatra is my Frank Sinatra. Jim would be my Dino, I guess. That worked.

All right, well, we want to give you a chance to share where the folks can find you on the internets and all that kind of good stuff and what states they can find you available and if you guys have any kind of direct to consumer kind of deals.

100%. Yeah. So if you go to chickencockwhiskey.com, you can find out all sorts of information, including plenty of history that we didn't get a chance to cover today, videos that I've done myself kind of explaining ways you can build cocktails at home and all sorts of great stuff. You can see our full product array on there. And then, yes, you can purchase both merchandise like what I'm wearing here, which I know you can't see, but it's a beautiful pattern set, people. And you can also get a bunch of our great bottle releases on there. If you want to be the first to learn about new releases coming from Chickencock, anything we have planned to release, you got to sign up for our newsletter, right? That's the best way to find out all the information, all the stuff that we've got going on. Please come visit us at circa 1856 locations. Again, we're right in the heart of downtown Bardstown and we've also got our other location in the Nulu district of downtown Louisville. They're open throughout the entire week, so go and visit them for sure. We'll be at tons of great activations throughout the rest of the year, including Kentucky Bourbon Festival, Bourbon and Beyond, lots of other places. We're available in 48 states right now, so we are widely available across the country. Again, if you're not able to seek some down locally, if you're able to get whiskey shipped into your state, we have plenty of online retailers as well as our own website that you can find product at. And please follow along at our socials too. If you want to follow along with chicken cock, it's just chicken cock whiskey on any social media platform. If you'd like to follow along with me personally, my Instagram handle is MashBillWill. So you can follow me on there for what I've got going on across the country too. So massively appreciate everything, Todd, and it's been a pleasure speaking with you and catching up with you too, Drew. This has been a lot of fun, fellas. Same here.

Yeah. It was good to finally get this scheduled. It's been a while. We've been trying for a minute and just, you know, you've been traveling and stuff like that, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Drew, thank you for helping me out on this.

I thought it would be fun for you to, you know, like you said, you did a deep dive into their history and kind of brought that to light. So I thought it'd be cool to have you on here. So once again, give the folks some knowledge on where they can find you as well.

Yeah, well, I will be I'm going to be telling the chicken cock story actually in my new book and I am releasing that book right now on the podcast whiskylord.com chapter one is out. The end of chapter one will be out the coming week. And I'm going to release each chapter as I write it. So people can listen along and then it'll come out in paperback and hardback, hardcover book in the future after I get everything all edited and the rest. But it's a fascinating story, the story of Bourbon County. So I'm looking forward to releasing that to everybody. And then you can find that at Whiskey Lore podcast on your favorite podcast apps. And also you can find anything Whiskey Lore at whiskeylore.org. Awesome.

Well, once again, I thank you both for joining me tonight. You know, it's always cool to get you guys on and, you know, hear the stories, sip some whiskey with good friends. And yeah, I appreciate you both coming on.

Thank you so much, Todd.

If you'd like to know more about the Bourbon Road, you can go to our website, thebourbonroad.com. Jim has made this magical website where you can go in and do a search and you can pull up the, is it nine or 10 episodes now, Drew?

Yeah. And so I think we're still at eight, maybe, maybe nine.

Well, this will be nine. So yeah, you're almost to the double digits. So you can do an amazing search. So like, and you know, if you want to say, Hey, have they ever reviewed anything from chicken cock? It'll literally pull up that episode that that that chicken that will has been on and it's It's magical. It's really cool. So yeah, we've done over 500 episodes. We have over 1,300 reviews, probably getting closer to 1,400 now. And yeah, we just like to have fun and shed the light on some of the smaller guys out there. All the big boys have been around for a long time, so it's nice to shine the light on some of these smaller brands. So if you enjoyed the podcast, we'd appreciate if you went up to that button and hit Subscribe on whatever podcast platform you're on. And until next time, we'll see you down the Bourbon Road.

On the Bourbon Road Where the good times roll Passing bottles like a piece of soul Every pore's a memory, every sip a spark Lighting up the night in the Kentucky dark Yeah we laugh too loud, let the worries go Find a little truth in the afterglow Ain't no man Just the ties we've sewn on the long winding bird Here's to the nights that turned into dawn To the friends who stayed when the rest moved on To the clink of glass and the stories spun And the quiet peace when the night is done On a bourbon road we ain't alone Every mile's marked by the love we've known From barrel to bottle to the hearts we hold there's a fire that never gets old so pour it up let the moment slow a little bit of life in every glow yeah forever we'll call this home on the long winding