73. Boone County Bourbon - Made By Ghosts

You didn't see this, but you know, we're walking through your Rick houses out there. I saw something dripping and you know, I waited till you and Jim walked away and I went over there and stuck my tongue on it. Tastes pretty good.

It's okay. I've drilled a barrel once or twice when no one's looking to.

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

We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Log Heads Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Find out more about their fine rustic furniture at logheadshomecenter.com. Hello, and I'm Jim Shannon. I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is the Bourbon Road in Mike. I'm excited.

Where are we today? We drove about 90 miles from home up to Florence, y'all. We're at Boone County Distillery.

And I've been here a few times, but it's always good to come back. Absolutely.

Yeah. Beautiful country up here, Northern Kentucky, kind of a part of Cincinnati. You know, you get that Cincinnati feel up here. They kind of eat their chili funny up here on spaghetti noodles. It's a little weird for me. And I eat this stuff called Ghetto. I don't, I don't get it. It's poor man's sausage. Why I have the fake sausage if you can get the real sausage, right? Yeah. Mike, I grew up in Cincinnati, so be careful. So who do we have with us today? So we got Josh Quinn with us, one of the owners, founders, co-founders. Hey Josh, thanks for being with us today. And also thanks for being a law enforcement officer. We, uh, we know that's, that's a tough job to do.

Yeah. Thanks for having me on the show. It's great. Great for you guys to come on up and visit us.

Well, we're going to get into all details Boone County, but before we do that, we like to get straight to the whiskey. It's a whiskey show. Let's do it. So what do you have for us in our first glass today?

First glass today, we have our flagship bourbon. This is what has come after the 1833 product that we apparently became somewhat famous for, from what I'm told. We did a label change about a year ago as we ran out of the 1833, the 12 year old product, and we have a new small batch bourbon. It's really a blend of mostly five year old bourbon with some of the 12 to 14 year old that's in it also to bump up the flavor profile. So that's what we're going to be having today is the Boone County small batch bourbon. And the proof is? The proof on this one is 90.8. 90.8.

All right, let's check it out guys.

You know, I'm getting that apricot in the side there, right? Yeah. Some, some lighter fruit in there.

It's sweet with a little bit of spice on it on the nose. I definitely pick up a, this is what's the right content on this? 21%. 21%. Okay.

So what we have also to come back to that, it is a 21% rye whiskey and it is a Lawrenceburg, Indiana MGP product. We're always transparent about that.

Now you guys been celebrated about that, about being transparent and putting where you're getting your juice. You're a young distillery started in 2015, but you put that on your. bottle. And that's something to be proud of, right? That you're honest, honest, good folk up here.

A hundred percent. Well, Lawrenceburg, Indiana is the crow flies is only about eight miles away from here. So I would say that we're probably their closest customer.

Yeah.

And we can drive over and we can taste every single, not every single barrel, but every single batch that we purchase from them. And we do do that. So there's not one batch of whiskey or one lot of whiskey that goes in here that my business partner and I have not personally sampled.

You take the ferry over? Is that how you get there? You take the old Anderson ferry right there?

We could take the Anderson ferry over there, but we don't, we just drive.

Mike, it's got a nice oak caramel palette to it. It's a little dry.

I'm actually getting, um, you ever drink a Dr. Pepper and poured peanuts inside of it? Never did that. Never did. It might be a Southern thing or I know it's not an age thing because you know, you're older than me, but that's what I used to do as a kid is, and I get that peanut taste with the sweetness of the Dr. Pepper on it. Um, just that, that roasted peanuts in there.

That's a good Eastern Kentucky thing. I've got a buddy who's, who's, uh, he's a law enforcement officer, but his dad's a preacher and that's how he drinks his Dr. Pepper was with peanuts in it.

Yeah, a lot of people don't hear that anymore. I said something some guys I work with really young guys about that and they were like you're crazy And I get a little bit of saltiness. Maybe that's salted caramel You're getting that's coming through.

But that's what I'm getting out of this I mean it does have a nutty nutty flavor to it and It's got a little bit of raisin in there, too So that must be coming in from the older from the older Stuff you have in there. So you said that there's some 12 year old

12 to 14 year old. So the tank that we have that we blend this with, it does have remnants of 12, 13 and 14.

Okay. So the history of Boone County started in 1833? Yeah, that's correct. Now, was that a family recipe that you guys found or was there actual distillery here? What was the deal with that?

Yeah, sure. So 1833, you know, Boone County, Kentucky is, of course, so your listeners know the geographic location in Kentucky. We're the northern tip of Kentucky. We are right across from Cincinnati, Ohio and Lawrenceburg, Indiana. So where Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky meet, that's Boone County. The old distillery is on the banks of the Ohio River and directly across from Lawrenceburg, Indiana. So that Lawrenceburg, Indiana area, Boone County is a rich, rich whiskey history. Of course, we had the old Seagram's distillery, which I think was dated 1857, if I'm not mistaken. So the Boone County distillery started in 1833 in what's called Petersburg, Kentucky. Now, there's a prehistory that goes with all of that. And we can talk about the prehistory at some other stage, but there's a wonderful history that I would encourage our readers to take a look at. Lots of great things. It was the wilderness. It was the American frontier. But in 1833, you had a man by the name of William Snyder and his family moved to Boone County. Now they came from Virginia. Now, Kentucky, we know what year it was formed.

Uh, would it been 1785? No, no. Come on, Jim. 1792. 1792. Oh, 1792.

Famous bourbon, right? 1792.

But it was Virginia until that time. They broke off. Yeah. And, and actually bourbon County was a pretty much size of a almost state at the time. That's correct.

So the folks come out here and they're from Virginia. And this is basically the American, it's the Western frontier. It's Western Virginia to them, right? That's still their generation. So they move out here and they buy a flour and a grist mill in 1833. Well, after about three years, they decide that sell on ground up corn flour, they're making flour out of it. They're making 25 cents a bushel. It's not too much. They figure three years later, maybe we can distill that grain and we can turn in the whiskey. Now, a mule could carry 400 pounds of whatever commodity that it was. So, if you've got, I don't know, let's just call 25 cents a pound. I don't know. Let's say 25 cents times 400. I don't know. I'm not a mathematician. $100. $100, right? Easy math. Let's say that these guys made a gallon of whiskey, weighs about seven pounds, and they got 250 a gallon out of it. They're making a lot more money, and they figured out that's just what they could do. It was all about how they could turn their crops into some kind of a cash commodity, and that's how the distillery started. Now, the distillery, you know, like any good story, any good movie, any good book, it has a cast of characters, it has a plot, it has a narrator, all these great things. So in Boone County, Kentucky, we had a guy by the name of Louis Loader who kept the diary from eight. I might fumble my dates here for a moment, but 1857 to 1904, if I'm not mistaken. And his diaries are kept in seven leather-bound volumes in the Petersburg Library that are available for viewing today. And they are available on the internet for free. The Boone County Public Library, the Lewis Loader Diaries, you can go peruse those. And he was like the Twitter of his time. So he didn't write a whole bunch. He had little diary entries, and he would memorialize things such as the American Civil War, the death of Abraham Lincoln, things happening in the community in Petersburg, Kentucky, things happening at the distillery, and things like that. So Louis Loader is our narrator of the entire story. We also have, over this period of time, from 1836 to about 1899-ish, we have four separate owners of the distillery. We have Mr. Snyder that owns the distillery from 1833 until approximately 1862-ish, right? What happened that year? We remember what happened.

It was the start of the Civil War, right?

Yeah, the start of the Civil War.

Got that one right, Mike.

Yeah. So when the civil war started, you know, I mean, you got to remember Kentucky, Kentucky, uh, has a confusing identity with the civil war, right? Kind of a love hate relationship and debate among historians. You know, I think it was maybe a part of the Confederacy for three months, but just maybe depending on what part of the state you went to, but the Northern part, you know, right up here against the union country and, um, You know, and I don't know with Mr. Snyder, he left town. He sold the distillery. He had everything that he owned was sold on the courthouse steps. He went bankrupt. The distillery was wrestled away from him as the history says by his son-in-law, Colonel William Appleton. And he moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Now the question is, is why did he move to Chattanooga, Tennessee? And also when he passed away, he's the only person that owned the distillery who's not buried in this area. He's buried in Chattanooga. So why didn't he ever come back? Those are great questions. So we had a lady that contacted us many, many years ago and it's, uh, her name escapes me at the moment, but 80 year old woman who is a local woman and her great, great, great, great grandfathers. That's four, four great grandfathers, right? It's William Snyder. And she saw that we had opened the distillery and she said, I want to make sure you get the story right. And so we talked for a little bit, and the question came up, why did your grandfather move south to Chattanooga, Tennessee? Did he lose everything? Well, she sent us a picture of his house in Chattanooga, and he lived in a beautiful Italian-style villa with the marble, the columns, the beautiful landscaping, the whole thing. We saw a picture of it. He was not living a life of shame. However, Mr. Snyder moved to Chattanooga with his fourth wife. And Mr. Snyder is an unfortunate part of our history, especially today with the social dialogue that's happening. Mr. Snyder owned slaves. It was said that his slaves would run away from him. And that's not a good thing, right? So Mr. Snyder moves and he doesn't come back. And I think at the end of the day, I think he just found himself on the wrong side of the war and he found himself in a place where he maybe wasn't agreeing with what was happening. So his son-in-law Colonel William Appleton owned the distillery for about three years. And he didn't, you know, he had the distillery, he did what he did with it, and then he sold it. Now, he sold it to a few guys by the name of Gaff and Jenkins, J.C. Jenkins and John Gaff, if I'm not mistaken. Gaff was from Aurora, Indiana, and Jenkins was a local guy.

And Aurora is not that far from here.

Aurora is right next to Lawrenceburg, basically.

Right down the street from Lawrenceburg there.

Yeah, right across from the old distillery, basically. Now, here's the good news. They were abolitionists. So when the Union forces were up and down the Ohio River, they never touched the Boone Canyon distillery. And that should tell you everything you need to know about what side they ended up on. Now they owned the distillery up until 1874, perhaps. So you had two Jewish family members that bought it. They owned a distillery from 1874 to 1899. That distillery grows to be one of the largest in Kentucky until it was sold off to one of the conglomerates. Peoria, Illinois. I had to get that right. Peoria, Illinois. They sold it off. So that's kind of the history of the distillery. But we found that old history. You know, when you're when you're when you're two people that don't come from this industry and you you know you want to build a distillery, The first thing that you have, we're all here because we love bourbon. We're doing this. You travel up here 90 miles for the show because you love bourbon. You love distilleries. Your listeners love this. I love it because we do this and we make it for our consumers to enjoy. It's just it's been a fascinating journey for all of us to get here. But the love of bourbon is what brings us. So how do we get here? My business, my business partner's basement one day. He's an entrepreneur. And as you said, I'm a law enforcement guy and entrepreneurs, they they just kind of roll with things. And he says, let's build a distillery. How hard can it be? And we resurrected the old history of the distillery because you have you really have an identity crisis. You know, you want to build a distillery, right? You know, you want to do that. You want to make whiskey. What are you going to call yourselves? What's your name going to be? What's your story going to be? Are you going to make up a story? Is it going to be some marketing magic that can't be fact-checked or backstopped? We found a real history in Boone County and instant identity crisis was solved. It was solved instantly once we found the story.

So you didn't have to be Joe's Brown Water. You got to be Boone County Distilling. Boone County Distilling, absolutely.

I gotta say, man, I'm digging this expression right here. The more I drink it, the more that nutty flavor comes through. I'm still getting that roasted peanuts. Kind of goes with the label on there. He's got a ride across the river from Cincinnati, which is the Cincinnati Reds. And it's got a little Cincinnati Red sticker on there. So peanuts in a ballpark kind of go together, right?

So it's interesting that you bring up the side sticker. So the side sticker we had just put on the side of our bottles just a few months ago. And it says that we are a proud partner with the Cincinnati Reds and the new Boone County Press Club. So what is the Press Club and how are we partners with them? So the Boone Canada Steeling Company and the Cincinnati Reds developed a partnership this year, right around the wintertime in January. And if you've ever been to a Cincinnati Reds game, they have a wonderful experience behind home plate called the Diamond Club.

Heck yeah, that's the best place. It's probably the most awesome place to watch a ball game at. And they can go down there and get all the kinds of food you want. And it'll cost you a little bit, though.

It's about $250 a ticket. However, most of it's corporate sponsored, which is a good news. So find yourself a corporate friend and then get you some tickets. But the Boone County Press Club is the exact same Diamond Club level experience, except it's up higher. It's in the Press Club area, you know, where the announcers and the radio announcers are doing their thing behind the glass. It's one of those experiences, but it's right behind home plate, just a couple levels up.

And what are they drinking up there?

They're drinking Boone County Small Batch Bourbon.

There's a lot of bourbon gets drank up there, I can guarantee you that.

So your bourbon here that we're drinking now, your small batch, this is a non-chill filtered bourbon, right? Correct. Okay. So you guys don't filter any of your bourbons other than get the chunks out. Right.

And it's an old school sour mash. You're not doing a sweet mash, you're doing a sour mash. So kind of conserve some energy there. Correct. And water, we talked about water. There's no secrets behind your water. You don't, you don't have a limestone rock stuck in your filtration system or anything like that. You're not pulling well water out of the ground here.

It's dry all the way to the center of the earth below this facility.

We're drinking right now bourbon that you strategically sourced so that you could fill bottles for your customers with something that you were proud of that met your profile. Something that you immediately started making yourself at the same time. You started with a 500 gallon pot still and a mentor.

Absolutely. So whenever you build a distillery or you want to get into this business, you know, you find barrels of whiskey and look, if you have enough money, really anybody can find barrels of whiskey and you can find someone to bottle it and sell it. If you want to make whiskey, that's something completely different. And I'm sure that your listeners over time have probably heard a lot of these stories that maybe where they started by themselves. And we didn't find an old recipe to answer that question previously. We don't have an old recipe. This is a new recipe with us that comes from someone with years and years of experience. So we found somebody early on. And as you're trying to find these consultants and these people to help you out, we had a list of them. Maybe eight of them. And I happen to call the person that had a 513 area code because it's local. And his name is Larry Ebersold. And Larry Ebersold, if your listeners are familiar, because I know you are, Larry Ebersold has worked for Seagrams for the better part of 40 years, 38 years before he retired. He was the plant manager of the Lawrenceburg facility for 20 years. And he happens to live in Hebron, Kentucky, which is a crow flies as seven or eight miles from here. It's pretty close to the plant where he worked at. And Larry helped us develop our first. In fact, if your customers ever come take a tour here or the facility that you have seen, this exact layout was scratched out on graph paper with a pencil by Larry Ebersold. It never changed. Nothing changed. So we have followed Larry's advice from day one. And sometimes we get the question, how do you know you're going to make good whiskey? How do you know it's going to be good in four or five, six years, whenever it's ready? You know, the answer is, is I don't. But as I said earlier, you know, if you're cooking, I'm sure that your listeners are familiar with Emeril Lagasse, the famous cook. And if Emeril Lagasse teaches you how to cook. He's bona fide. You know, it's going to be good food. Right. Larry Ebersole came in and he taught us how to make whiskey and he's taught all of our distillers who have had no experience from day one because Larry said, you don't want, you don't want to have to untrained bad habits or these training scars as they call them. You don't want to have to get rid of them. Larry's taught each and every one of them.

Now, Larry's a giant in the industry. I would say a large number of our listeners probably do know who he is. But Larry had actually made the bourbon that you first released as your 1833 many years ago. And then he came here to teach you how to recreate that recipe.

Yes, so that bourbon was made in 2005 and 2006 at the old Seagrams facility. It wasn't MGP at that stage. It was Seagrams. When Larry came, he asked us, he said, guys, you've got the equipment. It's kind of like having a kitchen with all the right pots and pans and ingredients. He said, you've got all the right equipment. What do you want to make? What's your recipe going to be? Well, we already were selling a 21% rye bourbon. And we said, let's start with that. So that's what we did, a 21% rye bourbon. Now, when you get into this business, you don't want a lot of flavor drift down the road with your own product. The last thing I want is for our customers to get confused or lose any sort of confidence in what Boone County has done. We've done everything very slowly and methodically, and there's going to be flavor drift of some sort because we're using a pot still, they were using a column still, we're a smaller operation, they're much larger, a couple of factors. However, at the end of the day, the recipe is the exact same.

Right. And the geographical location is very similar.

Yeah. Great point.

Yeah. So the terroir, as they say, is spot on.

So I'd say, Jim, we're right up against our break. This expression right here, it's probably right up your alley. It's got that spice on the back end. Spice, actually, when it hits your mouth, it's like a burst of flavors and stuff. What's your thoughts on it?

Yeah, absolutely. So this is a solid bourbon. It definitely has some notes of some older stock in it. There's no use to it. Very little. You get a little bit of a hay note in there, but I think that nuttiness is attributed to that a little bit. I think it's got that nice caramel sweetness. It's got that rice spice. It's a solid sipper.

It's like one of those peanuts you find in the bottom of the Cracker Jack. You know, it falls off and it's down there in the bottom of the bag and you're so excited to find it and you taste that thing. It tastes so good.

Well, you've got a way of saying things. Well, let's take, let's take our break here. And when we come back, you've got something else for us to try. Absolutely. We would like to thank Tommy and Gwen Mitchell from Loghead's Home Center for supporting this episode of the Bourbon Road. Loghead's Home Center, nestled in the hills of Kentucky, is an industry leader in building handcrafted rustic furniture. Family-owned and operated, they take pride in offering only the very best for their customers. The Logheads, and that's what they like to call themselves, are skilled woodcrafters who are passionate about creating rustic furniture for people who appreciate the beauty of natural wood. Owners Tommy and Gwen don't just sell the rustic lifestyle, they live it. And you can be sure that Loghead's furniture will always be handcrafted in Kentucky by artisans who embrace the simple way of life. Loghead's rustic furniture is made from northern white cedar, a sustainable wood that's naturally rot and termite resistant. Its beauty and quality will add warmth to your earthy lifestyle for generations to come. Be sure to check out everything they have to offer at LogHeadsHomeCenter.com. And while you're at it, give Tommy and Gwen a shout on Facebook or Instagram at LogHeadsHomeCenter.

Hey, so it's Big Chief here with Jim and Josh. We're still up here at Boone County. And Josh, you got a second expression for us. What do you got?

I have something very special for you guys. And I'm so glad that you made the drive all the way up here that we pulled out the weeded single barrel bourbon. So what this is, it is a 45% weeded bourbon, the highest wheat content in a bourbon on the market. Can't get any higher than 45%.

And Mike, what's Big Chief got to say about that? Man, you don't know that I'm the self-proclaimed weedy king of Kentucky. So I guess, but it's really from Indiana. That's true. But my goal is to drink every bit of weeded whiskey, weeded bourbon that I can get my hands on. And I love weeded whiskey. It's just, it was right up my alley. I'm excited. I actually have a bottle of this at my house.

This expression is a rough, it says six years on the bottle, but it's really six and a half years. And some of the barrels that we're dumping now are a little closer to six years and nine months and such. So six years can mean anything from six years in a day to six years in 11 months. All right. And the proof on this bottle? This one you're going to need to put your pajamas on for this is a core single barrel selection in his barrel strength at 120.7. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a cowboy bourbon distilled in the spring of 2013. All right.

Well let's check it out, Mike. I've already, I'm already sipping on it. You know, all our listeners out there, they don't lay that. No big chiefs over here just sucking it down.

Hmm. Oh yeah.

That's candy in the glass right there. Super sweet. The caramels coming through like a light caramel though, you know? Yeah. Yeah. But you know what?

I'm really amazed with, with no rye in it. It's got a nice bite to it. It does, doesn't it? And that's not just an alcohol bite.

That's some barrel bite. That's good stuff. You know, there's this Dallas Cowboys player now he plays for the Buffalo Bill, Cole Beasley. And there was a commercial of those guys all eating cereal and they call him hot sauce and he poured hot sauce all over his sugar smackums and was eating it. So that would be that to me, that's that sweet spice, almost like a pepper jelly, like a jalapeno pepper jelly. Got that spice to it. It's still great and tasty, but that spice that you crave sometimes.

Wow. That's really well balanced. It, it, it presents itself over the entire palette at once. So it's not like, uh, it's not like traveling back your tongue. It's like all there, all at once. And Mike, I'm getting a little bit of a bit of mint to it. Kind of a, um, you always get that. I do. I do. I wonder what that is. I got that on, uh, we had a week, we had a high strength, we do whiskey a couple of shows back. Bubble gum in your life.

I didn't brush my teeth right before we got here. Did you eat? Did you swallow bubble gum? Is that what, is that what it is? I have done that before. Isn't bubble gum stay with that? That's a myth though. It stays with you the rest of your life. Like you carry it to your grave. You just full of bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble gum.

If I could add something for your listeners, there are only 68 barrels of this available. So on the back of the bottle, I'm reading it. 68 barrels is what it says. I'm gonna tell you a little secret.

Okay.

Really only 66. Yeah. Because when we ordered these, we bought these several years ago, two of the barrels were completely empty.

Yeah.

Completely empty. So 66, it says 68, that is what we bought, but two of them are empty. So there's not a lot of this juice to go around and it is super rare, super delicious. I think it's, as we've said here, I think it meets or hopefully surpasses all of your expectations.

So you're talking about, you only have 66 barrels of that. So we toured your facility. We, we went out to your, you only got one Rick house here. Um, but you are aging bourbon out there yourselves. Yes. You got plenty of it ready, ready to roll in about a year. You've waited like a kid in a candy store, just, just jumping around, right? Absolutely. So is that gonna, when are we going to see something out of here?

That's the million dollar question. We get asked that an awful lot. And the answer to that is, is when it's ready. Sure. You know, I can't tell you how many years it's going to set. I can tell you when we started this business that, you know, just as similar as you and your listeners, my business partner, myself, we have a love of whiskey and good whiskey. You know, good whiskey is good whiskey, regardless of where it comes from. The whiskey that we're making, I will tell you that after aging four years, it's tasty. It's on the right path. We're excited about it. But I think we're going to wait a little while longer because the problem is if you release your whiskey at four years old and people love it, you're never going to have anything other than four-year-old whiskey to sell them. So you really want to try to shoot for maybe five and a half or six years old. And also it lets you in on another little secret. So Larry Ebersold said that at Seagrams, they always, always, always aimed for five and a half years. That was the magic number around here.

Same recipe, same types of barrels, same environment.

You didn't see this, but you know, we're walking through your Rick houses out there. I saw something dripping and you know, I waited till you and Jim walked away and I went over there and stuck my tongue on it. Tastes pretty good.

It's okay. I've drilled a barrel once or twice when no one's looking to.

Well, this is really good. So I tell you, if you, if you go out there and you taste one of those barrels and it tastes anything like what we've got in our glass right now, it's time to release it. Cause this is some good stuff.

Thank you.

Most definitely.

What's the story on the eight on there?

The eight. So the eight, if you're looking at our label on any bottle, you'll see Boone County spelled out the first O in Boone and the first O in County. They're connected on the label and it forms an eight. That eight represents a great history with the Boone Canada distillery. So one of the first pictures we ever discovered of the old distillery up above the warehouse, there was a bunch of workers. They must've been distillers or barrelers or whatever they were. And it said registered distillery number eight. So that's the first picture we ever saw. That's where number eight pops up. So we investigate further and we find some old maps of the old distillery because we want to see what the footprint was in the old town. We want to visit it and look at it for ourselves and see what's still there. taxing district number eight in Kentucky. So there were a variety of taxing districts. Now, I'm probably not as brushed up on my history as I need to be with that. However, taxing district number eight, there's also a Kentucky route eight, Northern Kentucky. So great history with number eight. We decided to stick with it. It's a lucky number two.

I think that's great, great label, great marketing. It's beautiful. The bottle is Jim is it's one of a kind. It kind of sticks out of the stuff. You guys got that raised lettering on there. It says BC for Boone County, beautiful bottle, easy to handle. Probably fits in a whiskey well real easy.

Absolutely.

So how many states are you in now?

Roughly about 10. Can you rattle off a few for our listeners? I can try Florida, Texas, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, New York. I'm going to lose them out. I'm going to lose on them here. I'm going to start doubling up on them again. I'm going to stop pressing my luck there.

Did you say Kentucky? He didn't say Kentucky. It's definitely in Kentucky.

Kentucky, that's a cheater there then. I'm at seven or eight then.

Yeah. Well, that's pretty good. So you guys are on the craft of stiller. Me and Jim are driving up I-75, I-71. It kind of joins together here right near Cincinnati and gigantic brown sign out there says, Boone County Distillery Craft Tours. Yes. So you guys are on a special, different craft distillery up here in the Cincinnati area. That's called the Bee Line.

Absolutely. That's, that's, I'm glad you bring up the Bee Line. The Bee Line is a very special experience to Northern Kentucky that's sponsored by the Convention Center Visitors Bureau to bring folks to the area. You're looking for a day trip, especially today when people are trying to save money. They're trying to stay local. We've got a great experience for you. We have a series of bars, restaurants and distilleries that are on it. The distilleries, because we love all of our partner distilleries on the beeline, you will find. Pogue, Old Pogue in Maysville, great people down there. You'll find New Riff with Jay Eirsman and Ken Lewis up in Newport, great people. You will find Second Sight Spirits in Ludlow, great folks there. The Neely Family Distillery, which you would have passed on way up here near the Kentucky Speedway, they're on it also. Lots of great things on the B-Line, a little similar to the Kentucky Craft Bourbon Trail. If you visit all these partner sites, they'll stamp your passport, Once you get everything stamped, you visited all the places and then you'll send that in and get some swag, whatever that it may be.

Yeah. So you guys on your tour, what's your tour consist of? Is there a, is there a discount for military or for police officers or firefighters?

Now, at this time, we run discounts every now and again. We don't have any particular discounts. Unfortunately, I would love to see the law enforcement discount, but we just haven't done that yet. The tours are relatively inexpensive. We run those about $8 a piece. We've tried to keep that pretty cost effective for folks. You do have to book it online. That was a software that came through the Kentucky Distillers Association. We use that mechanism. We're open for tours Tuesday through Sunday. We run about three tours a day and we limit it. So for folks that are concerned about social distancing and things like that, we've historically only run about 12 people on a tour. It's a smaller facility. We want you to feel like family. We want you to come and listen to everything that we say and we want to hear your questions. We don't want you to get buried in the white noise on large tour groups.

I think that's awesome. You could come to Cincinnati, watch a ball game at the Great American Ballpark, one of the most beautiful ballparks in America, I think. Got giant paddle wheel smokestacks out there when somebody hits a home run, fireworks shoot out of there. You got the beautiful Roebling Suspension Bridge here. You can walk across that bridge over into Covington, get over to Newport on the levee there. Just a beautiful area, and then you can come down here and go to the distillery too.

So if you are in Cincinnati, if you're in Louisville, Cincinnati, Lexington, wherever you're at. Exit 178 off of Interstate I-75. That's where we're at. It's the Mount Zion Road exit, exit number 178. It's about 15 miles south of Cincinnati, about 60 miles north of Lexington, about 88 miles. What would that be? Northeast of Louisville, up the river. And you'll find this. It's a wonderful place. It's a great place. It's the edge of urban country.

So you've got one more thing for the wife or even for the husband that doesn't drink bourbon, you know, you got some stuff for us here. What do you got?

We've got. what's called Whitehall Tavern bourbon cream. And it is straight bourbon whiskey and liqueur. So basically bourbon and cream. And one great thing about this product, it's a delightful product. You've got some rich alabaster cream that we sourced from upstate New York and a little tidbit, the way that they engineer the cream, it does not have to be refrigerated. for a period of one year from the time that you open the bottle does not have to be refrigerated.

So a lot of people are, you know, they're buying their bourbon creams and are cracking them open, pouring a few, and then they're sticking them straight in the fridge, right?

Absolutely. This one, you don't have to. A lot of people do that just because they're used to putting cream in the refrigerator, but you don't have to on this.

Let's try that thing real fast.

So this is the bourbon cream, and I remember coming here on a tour, it's been a year or two ago, and so this has been a product you've had for a while.

Almost since day one we've had this product.

Yeah, my wife loves this. This is on the shelf at our local liquor store.

Almost definitely. So what we're trying to ask, what do you guys got coming up in the future as far as the releases?

Yeah, so releases, you know, in the craft whiskey business, you're always trying to do something special, but you're trying to stay true to yourself and stay in your lane about what you got into this business for. So a couple of things we're doing. And I just submitted the TTB labels last week. So we have a small batch rye whiskey that's on its way. in a single barrel rye whiskey, and that's a 95% rye, 5% malted rye whiskey. That's what we have coming down the pike. We also have some other special things that we're working on now. It's a secret project, if I will. I think it could be top secret, but I'll tell you. There's a portrait series that's coming. Well, let's back up. When you were in the warehouse, you saw five special barrels.

We saw five barrels that looked like they had a little age to them.

Yeah, they were 15 year old barrels. So there still is, there still are five barrels of the 1833 product that we all know and love is 1833. There are still five barrels that are 15 years old. Each barrel, We're sort of toying with this. It'll be a portrait series of some sort and some very nice packaging, but 15-year-old barrel strength whiskey that will come out of that and will be available for our customers at some future date. I don't know when that's going to be. Heck, I mean, it could be 16-year-old whiskey by the time we get that out.

Yeah, so I guarantee you we've got some listeners who just their ears just perked right up like a horse coming to attention.

It'll be like, I got to have a bottle of that. So you're going to this is me, especially if you're going to put these in nice boxes, it's going to be kind of a very.

That's the intent.

That's what we're looking at.

Well, I can tell you this much. I've still got just a little bit of my single barrel 1833 left about about three inches in the bottle, Mike, and I just savor that every now and then. That is some delicious stuff. It really is good. Yes. Sad to hear, you know, you guys weren't shipping it anymore, but it's nice to hear that you've got five more barrels sitting back there that you're going to release.

Yes, absolutely.

So back to your rye. You're getting ready to release this rye, single barrel, small batch. What's the age on the rye?

About five and a half years. OK.

Well-aged rye. Looking forward to that too. Cause I'm the rye guy. Yeah, me too. I love rye.

You dirty guys.

So Josh, where can we, where can our listeners find you on social media out there in social media land?

Yeah. Usual places, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. You can find us at madebyghost or boondistilling.com. One of the two made by ghosts or boondistilling.

All right. All right. Well, everybody, I'm Jim Shannon. This is Mike Hyatt. We are The Bourbon Road. And Mike, where can they find us?

So they can find us at The Bourbon Road on Instagram, on Facebook. You can go to our website, thebourbonroad.com. You can read our blogs on there. You can find us on almost any place you can download a podcast, Spotify, Apple podcast. Go on there. If you like our stuff, you're listening to us, please leave us a review. Those help us get into places like this. It helps these small craft distilleries out.

We're doing two episodes a week now. On Mondays, we're focusing on a new craft distillery every Monday. On Wednesdays, we're doing in-person interviews, hopefully in person, when we can anyway.

We're doing more of a review on Mondays of whiskeys, and we're going to throw in some Big Boy whiskeys in there too, besides craft distilleries, but mainly craft distilleries. You can find me at one big chief on Instagram.

I'm jshannon63. And when you find yourself on Facebook browsing the internet, make sure you stop into our Facebook group, the bourbon roadies. We've got a large membership there of guys and girls who are like-minded. I'd like to chat about whiskey, share whiskey, talk about whiskey. It's a good time.

We're actually working on our first pick and the only way you can get that pick is be a part of the roadies, right? That's right.

Cause that's where the announcement's going to come out. That's right. All right. Well, we will see you 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.