72. J.W. Kelly - Old Milford Single Barrel Select

Welcome to another trip down the Bourbon Road with your host, Jim and Mike. So grab a glass of your favorite bourbon and kick back.

Welcome back for another installment of Craft Distillery Monday here on the Bourbon Road. We would like to thank our friends at Premium Bar Products for sponsoring this episode. If you're ready to step up your game at your home bar, check out premiumbarproducts.com to choose from their wide selection of glassware, all of which can be custom engraved with your personal message or logo. And there's no minimum order. So after the episode, head over to premiumbarproducts.com and check out everything they have to offer. Now let's get on with the show. Hello, everybody. I'm Jim Shannon. I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is the Bourbon Road. And today, Mike, we are reviewing another craft distillery.

We are. We're going to review J.W. Kelly and Company. They're a small distillery out of Chattanooga, Tennessee. They rebranded in 2017, I guess we'll just call it. J.W. Kelly was born 1844 in Waterford, Ireland. So he's got that whiskey history probably with him and stuff. He immigrated when he was 19 in 1863, which is weird, right? Why would you come to the U.S. right in the middle of the Civil War? Well, there's a lot of stuff going on in Ireland at the time. And then we're still immigrating. You know, they were taking immigrants right off the boat into the union army to fight and stuff. How he escaped that, I'm not sure. And it doesn't go into his history, but that, so he makes his way to Chattanooga from New York somehow in 1865. That's where he finds himself by 1866. At the end of the civil war, he establishes a distillery with 12 different labels. Wow. So, he started up with 12 labels. That's pretty cool. So, think of that age there. So, he's at 19 in 1863, right? Three years later, he starts a distillery. That's pretty impressive for a young man. So, what's the whiskey we're trying today? So, this is the Old Milford Straight Bourbon Whiskey. It's a single barrel select, double proof, 109. It's got some punch to it. Yeah. It has a little bit of punch to it. Yeah. So it's not their bourbon. They told us that they sourced it from Texas. Five, six, seven and eight year old barrels. And then they took that blended together and come up with this right here. They stuck it in one of their barrels. age a little while longer in that Chattanooga heat down there. And that's what we got today.

Okay. So this is, it's called a single barrel, but it's a single barrel because it came out of a single barrel of J.W. Kelly's re-barreling. Re-barreling. But it is a blended, it is a blend of different barrels, five, six, and eight years that went into that barrel in the first place. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, it's still a single barrel, but it's made from a blend of other barrels. Yeah. Okay. You know, some strange things happens in the re-barreling world, you know? And so this is a fairly dark whiskey.

Not surprising for a Texas bourbon, but what does surprise me, because, you know, we've had a couple of Texas bourbons on lately, right? Yeah. Is the age. Now, talking to most of the distilleries there, They'll tell you it's almost impossible to get an eight-year, but... Maybe this came out of a controlled warehouse. Could be. That's the only way I could see.

So we don't know the source of this. We just know that it came from the state of Texas. Yeah. Well, JW Kelly also has a 94 proof straight bourbon. And then they've got a rye as well that they call their Melrose rye, which is kind of a finished rye, finished in some wine barrels. I think it's called an Amarone cask wine, Amarone wine casks. Yeah. So, but today we just have the single barrel bourbon.

Well, we'll get in trouble if we review anymore one per show, right? That's right. Well, this is a good one to review.

So like I said earlier, nice dark color.

Yeah, that's almost like a 12 year old look to me when I look at it.

Super dark. It hangs on the side of the glass like a pot still whiskey.

Now they did say they had a 3000 gallon pot still.

Okay.

That's a big pot still. That is a big pot still. But that is definitely coating the glass. I get some oak on the nose. Not surprising out of a Texas bourbon. Maybe that oak is coming from that second barrel too.

Yeah, there's definitely a lot of oak on the nose. It's just a little sweetness hiding in there too.

Maybe like a, not a burnt caramel, but you know, I've talked about it in the past is that kettle corn. I get maybe a little bit of that kettle corn when you're walking up and you smell that kettle corn coming across the parking lot. Well, heck, let's taste this thing, Jim.

All right. Boy, there's some sweetness on that. I get that same corn coming through though. Yeah, the corn shines a little bit. It's kind of a little popcorn-y for me. A little buttered popcorn in there.

You like that buttered popcorn. I do like buttered popcorn. I personally don't like it, but I like the sweetness of that. What do they do to make kettle corn? How do you make kettle corn?

I think it's just you pop popcorn and then you toss it in caramel, right?

I've never stick around long enough to Watch it make it, I guess. Maybe some caramel or sugar to make caramel out of it.

Now, I can tell you this, after taking a sip and it's got quite an impression on the palate. I mean, it's a bold whiskey. But if I go back to the nose now, I'm starting to pick up some dark fruit.

I don't know about dark fruit, but I get baked apple with some cinnamon on it. Not an apple pie, but I'm not positive on that.

Yeah, caramel apple for me. Caramel apple with not with the nuts on it, but with the caramel corn on it. I could get that. That sounds perfect to me. That's a pretty good whiskey. Yeah, I'm really impressed with this. Now, this has got a little bit of a peppery back end on it. and just a tinge of bitterness. But you know what? I've tasted that little late bitterness on some other Texas whiskies as well, that little bit on the back. It's not too drying. It's nice and sweet on the front though. It presents itself well. I think that this is a pretty darn good whiskey. The finish is medium on it, but it does hang around a bit.

For me, it dries out a little bit at the end. I still get that sweetness out, that coating of that sweetness on the tongue leftover. I still get that caramel. I was trying to think of a candy that, that I get with that, but I'm getting more of that, maybe cereal out of this. Corn nuts. Corn nuts. Yeah. I don't know if I'm getting corn nuts, some kind of sweet corn nut, baby. There's no doubt there's corn in that Nashville. Well, it's definitely a bourbon. I tell you, Jim, this would be a buy for me. Yeah. It's got more spice than I would regularly like, but I like the sweetness plus that spice. There's a little bit of spice, a little bit of pepper on that back end. Kind of reminds me of like a General Cho's chicken.

You know, I'm going to add a little bit of water to mine just to see what happens.

Chattanooga's really got it going on with other distilleries there. Beautiful city to visit right on the Tennessee River. Beautiful downtown waterfront. It's a beautiful place you can go boating there. But I could see people in the mountains areas. That's kind of the start of the Appalachian Mountains. It's just a beautiful area. Great place to have a distillery. Some good bourbon.

Yeah. I would say that they did a good job selecting barrels here. It's a well-aged bourbon. I don't know that I would have been able to say, hey, this is Texas juice if I hadn't known before the fact. But now that I do know, I can taste a little bit of that Texas profile in it. What do you think?

Well, I see a future episode and I think we're going to have to do another blind challenge on you and I'm going to mix up some Kentucky bourbons with some Texas bourbons and I want to see if you know the difference or not.

Well, I don't think I'll have trouble picking a Texas whiskey against a Kentucky bourbon, but I might have a trouble picking a Texas whiskey against another whiskey, maybe from Missouri or Arkansas or something like that.

I think you're going to have a really hard time. Your mission is to trip me up, right? I'm going to tell you, because I tried it, even though I knew it was in the glass and I sipped a little bit of both. I have a whole bunch of Kentucky bourbons that are 12 and 15 years old, so I wanted to see how they stood up against some Texas bourbons. This is actually a little younger, but for a Texas whiskey, it would be older.

Yeah, but see that corn flavor in it that we both talked about? That will typically disappear. That'll kind of go away a little bit as a Kentucky bourbon hits that six to eight year mark. You don't get too much of that, right?

I don't think so.

I think there's some sweet bourbons. Let's face it. The blind is a great equalizer. And I have been shamed by it many times because you think you know And then you get to a blind and you really don't.

I'm wondering, you know, the world whiskey awards had come out in April and I'm wondering how those judges, do they see what's in front of them? No, everything's blind on that. Everything's blind. Yeah. So how do they know? Do they know it's a non Kentucky bourbon whenever they're judging it?

Well, I guess unless the category happens to be like a Kentucky category, although I don't know anything about the whole judging thing, but I would imagine they don't know a lot about it except the classification. It's just a glass of bourbon in front of them. It's a glass of some spirit of a certain class, I would think. You know, whether it's a bourbon or I guess they taste all kinds of stuff, tequilas and gins and other things like that too. Spirits.

Well, that's a whiskey award, so the world whiskey awards would be just whiskeys, but I don't think they're doing any gin or rum or anything like that.

Yeah, the nose didn't really develop much after adding a little bit of water. I'm going to try the palate here. Sweeter on the back end now. A little more honey. A little more baking spice. Yeah, water does affect it.

I would be interested in seeing what JW Kelly has in the future and revisit them in a couple years when they're producing their own juice there in that Chattanooga heat. I wouldn't say Chattanooga is that same climate as Texas, but it's definitely hot there. That's right on the southeastern corner of Tennessee, right there near Alabama.

Yeah, it gets hot down there, but they don't have the cold nights, hot days, which is the big thing in Texas, right?

A little bit with Texas. Texas just, there's different climates there. When I visited, talking to different distillers, you go all the way from North Texas up near Iron, where Iron Road is in Denison, all the way down to Garrison Brothers, which is south of Austin, and the heat there could be up to 50 degrees. Texas is a humongous state, so you have so many different climates there, but most of the bourbons you write has that Texas profile. I still think to this day that maybe Texas should be its own category of whiskey. I'm not 100% positive. It's kind of like Tennessee whiskey.

I think the Bourbon Road needs to find its way to Chattanooga at some point because there's more than just J.W. Kelly down there. Oh, most definitely.

I think it's a great region to visit. I think if people are out there and they're in Chattanooga area, you're over even Knoxville area.

I've got friends in Chattanooga, don't we? Definitely do. We've got Adam there.

Adam's building his family and stuff, so we can't go stay with him. We can have him out to drink a little bourbon one night. Most definitely. I mean, Adam had talked about this and he was still unsure of them. Like I said, I would be curious what they are in a couple of years. I'd still buy this on the shelf.

Yeah. So what's the price of this bottle? Do you know? I do not know. Okay. Well, we'll make sure that we put that out in the Instagram post. I would not be ashamed at all to share this bottle with my very best friend. I think it's good. I think it's different. I think it has a flavor that brings something to the table that's a little bit unique. I think that second barreling puts that nice sweet front end up on it, even though it's a well-aged Texas whiskey. I think that was a good choice because it's a bold whiskey.

It tastes good. I think Tennesseans, if they're going to look at this and they hear it's a Texas whiskey, don't be ashamed. Texas wouldn't be Texas without some Tennessee volunteers. That's right.

It's all about what's in the bottle, right? Most definitely. This is a very respectable liquid in here and I think it stands for itself.

Hey, they were very upfront and honest about what's in their bottle. And I know I appreciate it. I know you appreciate it when people will tell you, hey, this is a source. This is kind of where we sourced it from. So I'm super happy with it. I think it's a buy. I think it's definitely a sipper. I'm kind of be interested. We might enter that into our what makes Coke taste better challenge.

Well, we definitely like to thank JW Kelly for providing whiskey for us. They gave us some rye too, so we're going to try that one as well. We definitely enjoyed tasting it. We always appreciate when a distillery steps up and offers their expressions for us to try. Because you're taking a chance when you do that, right? Anytime you sit your bottles out, you're taking a chance.

Well, I think you are taking a chance. They took a chance on us. I guess, luckily, we both liked it. I think the last week's review, you liked it. I said I would wait a couple of years. This one, if I saw it on the shelf, I would buy it. I think they're in a couple of different states around Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, I think South Carolina, North Carolina. And they're obviously going to try to spread their territory also.

And I think it's jwkelly.com. Yep. All right, Mike, well, that does it for another review.

Why don't you tell everybody where they can find us? So you can find us on social media, on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, at The Bourbon Road. You can go to our website, thebourbonroad.com. You can order our Glen Caron's on there right now. Hopefully soon we'll have some other swag on there for you to order. And our Facebook though, we have a special thing, our group.

called the bourbon roadies. Now it's a private group, but we accept all applicants. So the only thing we want to make sure is that you're old enough to drink and you understand you're getting yourself into a bourbon group. So yeah, it's like-minded people chit chatting about bourbon. We talk about the shows. We talk about recent bourbon acquisitions. We share whiskey with each other. We talk about different bottles we've tried. Just good people having a good time. Celebrate life events and they share their whiskey with each other. I love that. That's right. Got some master distillers in there. A lot of industry people are in there as well. So if you have a question about a particular brand, there's a good possibility they'll pipe right up in the roadies and give you an answer.

Even if you don't, it's not about a brand, but if you have a question about bourbon or about whiskey or about spirits or about yeast, there's somebody in that group that can answer almost any question about the spirits world.

And on Instagram, you can find me at jshannon63. And you find me at onebigchief. And we'll see y'all down the bourbon road. We do appreciate all of our listeners and we'd like to thank you for taking time out of your day to hang out with us here on the Bourbon Road. We hope you enjoyed today's show and if so, we would appreciate if you'd subscribe and rate us a five star with a review on iTunes. Make sure you follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at The Bourbon Road. That way you'll be kept in the loop on all the Bourbon Road happenings. You can also visit our website at thebourbonroad.com to read our blog, listen to the show, or reach out to us directly. We always welcome comments or suggestions. And if you have an idea for a particular guest or topic, be sure to let us know. And again, thanks for hanging out with us.