Ep. 11 - The Bourbon Road's Jim and Mike

Transcript

DREW (00:00:00):
Welcome to whiskey lore, the interviews, I'm your host Drew Hannush the Amazon best-selling author of Whiskey Lore's travel guide to experience in Kentucky bourbon. And I want to welcome you to an Encore interview from back in 2020, where I decided it was time to turn the tables. And rather than me interviewing someone else, here's your chance to learn a little bit more about me and how I got started with my book, my travels and my podcast by way of my appearance on the bourbon road podcast. So basically my friends, Mike Hyatt, and Jim Shannon are going to introduce me to their podcast audience. And I'm going to introduce

Speaker 3 (00:00:56):
Their show to you

DREW (00:00:58):
And the guys normally do a tasting on their show. So we're also going to pull out two tasty bottles. One that I brought in one that Mike brought from his private stock. So sit back, relax, and let's take a trip down the bourbon road.

JIM (00:01:16):
Hello everybody. I'm Jim Shannon and I'm Mike Hyatt. And this is the bourbon road. And today Mike, we are once again, unfortunately

DREW (00:01:23):
I like your place, but

Speaker 3 (00:01:25):
You know, it's getting kind of old. And

DREW (00:01:28):
I know, I know, I know, but I got up at three 30 this morning, went to work, worked a 12 hour shift. It was just to do a recording after that. Which was a busy day. I appreciate you coming over here. I know. I know. You

Speaker 3 (00:01:42):
Know, it's not, it's not that I wanna, I want to get out there. Oh, we do need to get, I want to get out there and do what we used to do that we can't do anymore. So yeah. I mean,

DREW (00:01:52):
I'd like to record over your house because your wife cooks good. She always had cookies or brownies or something. She's like,

JIM (00:01:59):
I mean, this is a great place. It's a wonderful atmosphere. It's a, it's a great place for us to record. And actually we have a guest today who will inspire us both to get back out on the road and start seeing some people. Yeah.

DREW (00:02:12):
I mean, we haven't had a live guest in a while. Really? It's true. We did stream yard and we just haven't been on the bourbon road, but actually somebody took the bourbon road and came to us today. We have whiskey lore on with us drew Hanisch he's been here in Kentucky during the bourbon trail. Been down in Tennessee a little bit. He's doing his thing. We tried to hook up with him before he's got a podcast. He's got a blog, he's got a patriotic account. He's got it all. He's got two podcasts. So he's been rocking it out. All right. Well, and he came bearing bottles. He did something that we haven't drank on the show before. I don't think we've had any scotch. Right. That's right. I'm pretty excited about it. Drew. Welcome to the, thank you very much. It's an honor to be here. A beautiful, beautiful spot. Nice little drive up. Made me feel at home, going through the countryside to get here. You didn't hit any deer. Did you? I did not hit any deer. I saw plenty of them on the side of the road, but I didn't it. Anyone of them? Well, it's the rut in Kentucky. You know, like I said before, them deer like teenage boys, they're just going crazy.

JIM (00:03:25):
Well drew, we're going to spend a whole lot of time talking about you and what you do. And before we do as usual, we like to get straight to the whiskey. Okay. So in this first one you've brought for us. Yes. So I would like to turn it over to you and let's introduce this bottle. Okay. And we'll go through a tasting.

DREW (00:03:45):
So what's interesting about this whiskey is that I, I read the label. I don't know how many people, when they buy a whiskey, spend the time reading the marketing stuff that's written on the back of a, of a box or in scotch usually comes in a box. So you have some kind of literature to read over whether it's tasting notes or something about the whiskey. And so this scotch along with one other scotch called [inaudible] were two that inspired me to do a podcast. And the reason that I was inspired to do a podcast by these two is because both boxes had very interesting stories that I didn't know anything about. And I thought I got to know more about this story. So the coupon was about a, a ghost dog that haunted this little Scottish village. And this other bottle that we're going to be tasting today is Shackleton whiskey.

DREW (00:04:50):
And you've, if you walk into just about any liquor store in the United States, you can find it. It's a, me being from North Carolina, Carolina, blue packaging on it. It's got a nautical kind of theme on it says, Shackleton. I bought it on a whim. I picked up the box. I didn't really read it. Initially. I just saw that it was $30 a bottle and it was a blended scotch. Maybe this'll be pretty good. Let me see what it's like. And so I took the bottle home. I started reading about this character's CRNAs Shackleton. And that basically this whiskey had evolved from CERN is Shackleton, who was an Antarctic Explorer, taking his shipped down to Antarctica in 1907. And they had to leave because of conditions, changing weather conditions changing. And they left a case of whiskey behind in the ice under their camp.

DREW (00:05:59):
And one of those bottles from that, or actually three bottles were found a hundred years later by the New Zealand society that was down there doing excavating and, and seeing what else was left there around sir, Ernest Shackleton's campsite. And so they brought these three bottles back to New Zealand, contacted the distillery that made them and said, we have your whiskey. And do you want to interact with it in some way or another? And so the master distiller, whose name is Richard Patterson, he's a 50 year master distiller. He works for white MCI. Who's the company that purchased McKinley, which is the original distiller of record for this whiskey. He so he flies down to New Zealand and he says, okay, I'd like to take this whiskey back with me and do some testing on it and see if I can nose it and figure out what it's, what it is.

DREW (00:07:08):
Do a chemical analysis on it and also do a tasting and see if I can match it. They said, well, you're going to have to take it with you in handcuffs. So they handcuffed it to him. And he took a private jet back to Scotland, could not let the bottles out of his sight. They did the chemical testing. He did the nosing on this whiskey and, and recreated the whiskey. So I read this part of this story on this box and it just intrigued me. So I thought this is another story I got to go chase all, all inspired by me picking up this blue box of whiskey and saying, I wonder what this tastes like. And it's 30 bucks. I wonder if it's any good. And the surprising thing is, is that I think it's actually really good. It's a it's a malt blend. So it's not like a doers or a Johnny Walker, which have some grain neutral spirit in them. This is a blending of all single malt whiskeys into one one whiskey. So

JIM (00:08:23):
To try and create a profile that spoke his story.

DREW (00:08:28):
Yeah. So it was really interesting because one of the things that I assumed about this bottle was that this was a recreation of the whiskey that he found that was a hundred years old. He did do that and you can buy that whiskey. It's about $200 a bottle to get it. And it's a, it's a beautiful packaging where they've put the bottle in straw and just like he found it or pulled it out of the crate. And and so if you spend the money, which I haven't done yet, and I saw one actually here in Kentucky and I said, oh, I should buy it. I should buy it. I didn't I'm that way about buying whiskey, I'll see a price tag and I'll go, do I really, or I could get four bottles of that for what I'm going to spend that.

DREW (00:09:16):
Yeah. So I think we all do that. I think it's a fitting a whiskey to drink on the bourbon road. Not only cause a story's great because the endurance got crushed in the ice. And obviously that whiskey, they didn't think it was good enough to take on their hunter 720 nautical mile trip trying to get to actually civilization. I think it's south Georgia island. They tried to get to where there was a whaling station in a little bitty lifeboats is how they got there back. That's a feat by itself. Yeah. but they didn't take the whiskey with them. I probably would've took a bottle of whiskey, but me and Jim are both sailors. So a sailor's whiskey, I guess, for us. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well it's knows this thing. All right. So, so I think the first thing you're going to notice is that you're jumping straight out of the the bourbon territory into something a lot fruitier, probably lighter, kind of a, yeah, I'd say has that kind of a straw color to it.

DREW (00:10:26):
Super light. It's 80 proof, which for bourbon drinkers, we've talked about that on the show before, you know, most Americans think 90 proof is that's the low end, but if you go across the pond, people with their drink, 80 proof, you get a lot of 80 proof. What's interesting is one of my favorite whiskeys is [inaudible] and if you get it in the United States, it's 43%. It's 40% over there. So that was something I found out too, when doing the podcast episode I did about Jack Daniels and their evolution. I was talking to their chief historian, Nelson, Eddy. And he said that I questioned him because I said, you've been a historian there since around 1988 or so. And that's when I had my first Jack Daniels and Jack Daniels back then was at 90 proof. And then it went to 86 proof and then it went to 80 proof.

DREW (00:11:31):
And I said, why did they do that? Why did they drop it? And he said, because the rest of the world drinks it at 80 proof and they just wanted to be consistent across the board. And that was the reason that, that they dropped it. But what was interesting too, to that point, he said, but notice that we now have a variety of, you know, stronger proofed versions that you can get the single barrel and you can get the one I'm interested in is that they sell a bottled in bond in duty free. And every time I see that, I'm like, ah, I want to buy that. But I always pack light on my trip, so I have nowhere to put it. So what'd you get on that? No, it was

JIM (00:12:13):
Definitely a fruity nose. Mike, a lighter fruit

DREW (00:12:19):
Peach now. No, a pair. Yeah. I think a pair. Yeah. But I'm getting a little

JIM (00:12:25):
Hint of like you've got to use the wrong word here. Sort of a camp foe, a little bit of Campo, just a little bit of lightness mintiness on the nose. That's kind of a

JIM (00:12:40):
Kind of like a vapor, like a, I don't know, it's hard to say very light, very

DREW (00:12:44):
Rough, fresh. Yeah. I'm getting actually a little, I don't know why I do this, but I get a little bit of unripened banana on this. I'm always interested in your tasting and nosing notes. What I like about what Mike does is that he, he comes up with things that aren't normally the things, you know, if you were looking at a flavor wheel, it's more like, I like to try to figure things out. The first time I smelled maker's mark. I said, I smelled toothpaste. I said, I dunno why I smell toothpaste in there. There was some kind of mint I was getting out of it, which was interesting. I've never seen anybody put mint as a tasting note, but there was something about the combination of the alcohol and that mint that made me think of toothpaste, a bite, a little bit of a bite along with that mint.

DREW (00:13:37):
And so I had to get to toothpaste to be able to move into oh, okay. That's, that's a mint that I'm picking up and it's a bit of the bite of the alcohol. I think that's the way I want to taste is from my personal experience in life, you know, when you're younger and you get those tastes that come out and I have some weird taste sometimes like the first time my wife made me like a lemon merengue pie. And she was like, how does that taste? What's it tastes like, and I was like, it tastes like lemon pledge because I smell lemon pledge in it. That, that nose is what I would get off of that. And sh she was like, that is so weird. Like when I smell yogurt, I smell paint. That's just me. Yeah. You know, it was growing up in the army and paint on boats.

DREW (00:14:24):
I had that smell of paint and yogurt has that somewhat of a paint smell to it. So, yeah. But I try to bring those notes out to, especially the, the whiskey novice that con can't know stuff off of a wheel, and they're not gonna get that. A lot of people say, Hey, I don't get what you two are getting. Right. But whenever I'm saying, Hey, think back to what is a childhood? And you know, Jim, one time, he's like, I smell Cedar. I gave him a hard time and I feel bad about it. Cause it was one of the, he was like, I smell Cedar. I was like, can you telling me, you go around to, and

Speaker 3 (00:14:59):
We'll see sick. Yeah. But who chews on leather? You know? But I hear the leather notes all the time and whiskey, tobacco. Tobacco.

DREW (00:15:08):
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, to each his own, I, that my tasting notes are mine. And you know, I smell a little bit of a ripe unripe and banana in there. And when I'm talking about, as a green banana, you peel it back and you kind of smell a little bit of bitterness. Yeah. Not a whole lot. And I get that pair, you getting to Jim just a little bit that like a fresh pair, not an overripe. Right. And so I, I pick up a little citrus in it and because I picked up a little bit of like a hint of orange in there, I paired it with Lentz, intense orange chocolate, ah, man, it ma it makes that chocolate just dance in your mouth. It's, it's amazing. The combination cheers to you. Drew list, let's taste the spirit chairs. Now to me, this has a totally different taste than the nose. This actually to me like a little bit of cream Brulay or something to it, I think it's buttery. Yeah. Yeah. He's definitely a buttery

JIM (00:16:08):
You know, on the nose there, I was starting to get a little bit of like now Clover's different than grass and that smell like if you crush Clover in your hand, you got that different kind of aroma to it. I didn't want to say this had a grassy nose to it because it really didn't. But I thought, I thought, man, it's got that just light hint of Clover, which I think is a good thing. Yeah. I think it's a good thing. And as I taste it I get that buttery wash across my tongue. It nice sort of warming finish on the end there. And and that little bit of Oak that buttery intenseness kind of comes back on the back of the tongue. And then I start to pick up that Clover again. I'm like, well, that's on the exhale. I'm getting that on the exhale. Yeah. Yeah.

DREW (00:16:55):
It's, it's fun to really kind of dig into it. And sometimes you can be in a particular mood and they flavor jumps out and then you're in another mood and another flavor pops out of it. It's like your mind is open to certain memories at, at certain times and other times it's, it kind of blocks them off. So I mean, I, I struggle at times to pull out flavors when I'm say, if I'm under pressure, if somebody, you know, I, I did not want to do live tastings on the podcast or on YouTube or anything for a while. It used to bother me going into distilleries and having the distillery manager, doing the tasting and then looking at me saying, what do you think? What do you think? Cause I would go, I can't taste under pressure. I just, I, I can't do it because I don't know if it's my add or what, but for some reason I can't get my full focus there. What's interesting is that when I started doing tasting videos, I realized that when I did the video, I would come up with certain tasting notes. And then after I turned the video off and sat back and just took a drink with no pressure on suddenly all these flavors started jumping at me. It's like, whoa, you know, where did that come from? Where did that come from? So it takes a little relaxing, I think, to sometimes be able to, to pull things out, waiting for Jim to tell me some kind of

Speaker 5 (00:18:30):
Candy that he no, not candy. I know

JIM (00:18:32):
I mentioned early on, on the nose that I was getting a camp foe kind of aroma to it. And it's, it's so distant. It's so distant that it's not fair for me to say that because I'm getting it it's there. But it's almost as if somebody walked across the room the far end of the room in a big hall

DREW (00:18:53):
After a little bit of Vic's

Speaker 3 (00:18:54):
Rick's rebel and I'm just carrying, catching just a hint of that. Nice. Okay.

JIM (00:18:59):
But yeah, for me, it's in a good way. Yeah. Both that Clover that just [inaudible]

DREW (00:19:07):
The pair, the

JIM (00:19:08):
Buttery warmth, the Oakland, the end.

DREW (00:19:11):
So this is where the whiskey lower part will, will come in. How many people I hear say I don't like scotch because I don't like that smoky aspect to it. He tastes any smoke in this. No. Yeah, no. I've every bourbon I've had is more smokey than this right here. Yeah. More Oak into it. You know, it's just, this has no none at all. And actually after I took a sip of water, I took another sip of this and the notes of honey you're starting to come out and the sweetness you know, almost like a bio honey, you know, those little candies on talking about that get stuck in your teeth and your mouth. Yeah. You think you're going to pull your fillings out? Yeah. So that's what I get out of this beautiful Scott. I don't get the smokiness in me and Jim are scotch drinkers or whiskey drinkers. So I think we both can appreciate that for what it is and be able to pull those notes out our notes. And that's the great thing about both of us and he's a rye guy. I'm a weak guy. This, this has neither of those. I do.

JIM (00:20:25):
I do have a bottle of Glen droning that I, that I like to go to every now.

DREW (00:20:28):
So, so what's interesting about Glen droning is that now Brown-Forman owns them. When I went there for my tour, it was the first place I went to where they had an American flag flying over the distillery. I'm in Scotland and there, why am I seeing this flag? I didn't know that they had been purchased by brown foreman at the time. So they related that to me, but it was it's interesting because Glen drone is probably the most Sherri influenced whiskey. And while I was here in Kentucky, one of the bottles that I bought, which I can't find at home is Glen draconics cask strength. So I'm expecting a Sherry bomb out of that, that it will definitely be full of the plum notes and you know, kind of dark fruits that you get out of that. And but on a much more intense level than I've tasted before.

DREW (00:21:28):
So Glen drunks, my favorite it's not Speyside, it's a Highland, but it's like right on the edge of, of spaces. Yeah. So drew let's get up, let's get to, how did you get into podcasting and then into whiskey podcasting? Okay. So what's interesting is I've been a web designer for the last 18 years and I have a company that, you know, basically I got everybody doing everything that I need to have done. I don't program anymore. I'm more customer service than anything, you know, I'm the CEO that they come to to be the personality of the company. Other than that, I've got my guys working on doing the development of the sites. So I found myself sitting in the back room trying to find work to do. And I said, what am I not doing in my life that I really wish I would, it was.

DREW (00:22:29):
And I thought traveling, I absolutely love traveling. So I mean, I could get a laptop and hit the road and do work from anywhere because all I need is a go to meeting or something like that, to be able to have communications anywhere in the world with my clients. So I started taking little trips just to see, and then I decided to go to Europe and see if I could pull off doing a trip to Europe. I did a James Bond trip. I basically looked up all the different places that James Bond movies had been filmed. And I plotted a trip across Europe to go to as many of those as I possibly could.

JIM (00:23:13):
So did you go to peas of Gloria? I did not. That is one

DREW (00:23:17):
Of the few places I did and I love that movie. Yeah, no, that was one of the few places I couldn't go. I went to a solid in, which is where they filmed Spectre up on the mountain top, which is not far from there. But because of the weather, I wasn't able to get to Piz Gloria. So that is on my list. Yes. But I have not gotten there yet. So I do this whole planning out of this trip and I thought I need to do a blog about this. And so I started a blog called travel fuels life. The idea behind that name was that that was kind of an expression of who I was, that to me travel fuels my life. And so I'm going to start traveling and writing about all the different places that I go well, that soon evolved into a friend kept nudging me saying, you should do a podcast.

DREW (00:24:08):
You should do a podcast. You just being radio. And I was petrified of doing a podcast. I thought I'm going to get in front of a microphone. I'm just going to stumble all over myself. Why would I do that? I just don't feel confident with that and doing interviews. I've never done interviews before. So I don't really know how I'm going to pull that off. And so just finally, one day I said, just do it. You know, if you fail at it, you fail at it. Just see what you can can do. I have a radio background, so I should know how to be able to buy equipment and do that, that sort of stuff. And I know how to present. So I mean, I at least got that out of the way. It's the perfectionist in me. There's a part of me that wants to get it right the first time I do it.

DREW (00:24:59):
And so that was a struggle for me, but I ended up getting in contact with a couple of people doing interviews through, go to meeting was basically how I was doing it, did a couple of in-person interviews, basically talking to people about how they live a travel lifestyle and trying to get tips and ideas on how to do it. And so I did that for a full year. And then at the same time, I had gotten together with a group of friends who were really into well, one friend was really into drinking scotch and another friend who was into bourbon. And I said, well, buy a couple of bottles of whiskey, come on up, we'll all bring three bottles, bring a low price, a mid price and a high price whiskey. And we'll sit here and we'll taste among us. And so I said, I don't know, because I had a bad experience with a whiskey when I was younger.

DREW (00:26:05):
I'm a beer drinker. I just don't know about this. Whether I should try this or not. And then that first day walking into a liquor store, looking for whiskey, I was at the mercy of the marketing departments. You know, which bottle looked the best, which name did I recognize? There was really no knowledge in my head between scotch or or bourbon, what I should buy. So my first purchase was for that event was Glenfiddich 12. Cause I love the bottle. It's a triangle shaped bottle. So that was my whole reason for buying that one was because of the marketing department's packaging. I brought a Canadian whiskey. I got caribou crossing, which looks has it's. Oh, you got it. Okay. Yeah, because having been born in Michigan, I have this thing about, I always hear people talking down Canadian whiskey. So I said, you know what, I'm going to challenge people.

DREW (00:27:08):
I'm going to bring a Canadian whiskey and see if I can, I can pull this. I remember what the third bottle was. The third bottle was Johnny Walker black because my friend said, who is a scotch drinker said, I only drink single malt whiskey, you know, nose up in the air kind of thing. And I said, okay, I'm going to find a blend and see if I can fool them into liking a blend. So that was my first experience actually picked some pretty decent whiskeys to get started with on that tasting. Theirs was interesting, but I walked out of there going, oh, they all tasted like whiskey. I can't really tell one from the other. So we did another tasting a few weeks later and I felt like I was getting a little more out of it, but we were all sitting here talking about whiskey.

DREW (00:27:59):
Like we knew what we were talking about, but none of us really did. And so I remember saying bourbon, I think it's limestone water from Kentucky. And it's you know, it, it can only be made in Kentucky. And so I said, no, I need to know more about this. So I thought, well, I'm doing this travel podcast. Why don't I just travel to Kentucky? I can write blog posts about it. And I will immerse myself in bourbon for a week. So for eight days I planned out 19 different distilleries to go to 17 in Kentucky, two in Tennessee and just immersed myself in it. And it was so interesting. I video recorded myself at each place. I went to, what am I learning here? You know, what was this experience like? I started with maker's mark, which was a great first distillery to go to.

DREW (00:28:58):
Cause I felt like I got a good amount of exposure to finishing because you get to see the 46 barrel with the slats in it and you get to see pretty much the whole process taste the sour mash do all of that. So but then I went to wilderness trail was my second one. So talk about a complete shift. Now, all of a sudden I'm into the science of whiskey. And then my third one on that same day was town branch, which was doing potstill, you know, Scottish style whiskey. And after that first day, I remember going, this is amazing. You know, my friends were like, you got to go to 19 distilleries. You're going to be bored to death, hearing the same thing over and over and over. And I got to tell you, after 19 distilleries, I was ready to play on my next trip because every distillery was different.

DREW (00:29:55):
And it was finding those little unique things about that distillery that made those bottles so much more interesting. When you walked into the liquor store and said, what do I want to buy today? Now I've been to maker's mark. I know about that bottle. Why it's shaped the way it is, you know, why there's wax on the top of the, of the bottle, how they make it. And then, you know, wilderness trail, we didn't have any around us, but then you think, you know, if somebody is posting that on online, I can tell him, you know, Hey, here's what I thought was really cool about that particular distillery or for my scotch friends. I go, if you go to Kentucky, you driving through Lexington, you should go to town branch because that's the closest you're going to see to what a scotch distillery looks like because they do the exact same process that they do over in Scotland.

DREW (00:30:51):
And so so it's just, it was just a real eye opener. So I wrote all a blog post for every distillery that I went to. And and after doing that, I said, I gotta, I gotta do this in Scotland. So I planned a trip to Scotland and I did the same thing. I learned how to drive on the left-hand side of the road. Took my life into my own hands, planned out all these little distilleries to go to. And I just fell in love with touring distilleries and hearing stories. Every distillery had stories, they were interesting. Sometimes they would contradict each other. You know, one of the things when I go through the distilleries in Scotland is they talk about the Cooper's union. There was a Cooper's union in the United States that forced single use barrels. They basically lobby Congress to get single use barrels for American bourbon when they wrote the law.

DREW (00:31:53):
But you don't hear that anywhere. I've never heard that in any us distillery, but every distillery you go to in Scotland, they have that story and it made me go, is it, is that true? So I started, started researching it. And that's when I got the idea that, you know, all of these little mysteries that we have, it would be fun to tell the stories of them, like how did bottled in bond come about? And so I would start researching and I'm like, oh, this is really an interesting story. I got to tell this story. I got to get this out so that I help people who are like me, who started out spouting off a bunch of stuff that we heard second hand that may or may not be true. We find out whether that actually is true or not. Or maybe we find out like with Elijah Craig that we'll probably never know whether, you know, he had a mysterious fire in his building that only burned the inside of his barrel for some reason.

DREW (00:32:54):
So, yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll tell him, go ahead, Jim, go ahead. I tell our listeners if you were taking a long trip and me and Jim have both been on those cross country trips driving before whiskey lowers, that kind of podcast. It's almost to me like listening to a Louis Livermore book on tape. Nice relaxing trip. You almost don't want to get out of your vehicles to stop gas or go to the bathroom or anything. Hey, we can drive 30 more miles down the road so we could get the next episode finished. At that's what I like about your podcast is that you are digging into those bourbon truths. I would call them that backstory that me and Jim always crave those inside little mysteries of was well, really the first weeded bourbon. Did maker's mark come from? Wellers you know, those kinds of stories to me are fascinating. You know, you said you went to the Samuel's old distillery, which is the TW Samuel's distillery, right. Which is really the family that started makers, mark people. Some people don't know that kind of stuff. And that's the stuff that I think me and Jim find so fascinating.

JIM (00:34:12):
Yeah. And I think, you know, I'm sitting here thinking, you know, all of our listeners out there listening to you talk about your travels and you're just, you're living there. Green.

Speaker 3 (00:34:22):
Yeah. So how many, how many of our listeners

JIM (00:34:24):
Would love to be just traveling the globe and visiting distilleries and tasting whiskey?

Speaker 3 (00:34:31):
Well, anyway,

JIM (00:34:33):
I'm really enjoying this. Thank you so much for bringing this. I think we'll continue sipping on what we have. We're going to take a short break. Okay. Can we come back? We have a bottle for you.

DREW (00:34:44):
Now, if you're interested in taking your own journey across Kentucky in the bourbon trail, then check out my book. Whiskey Laura's travel guide to experience in Kentucky bourbon. You're not only going to find the information that you need to logistically plan out your trip, but also teach you how to handle the tastings. I'll tell you the history of bourbon, and I'll give you a primer on the process so that you can easily spot the uniqueness of each distillery and also provide you 32 distillery profiles, all for my own personal experience and let you know what I tasted what to look for and the tour experience overall, it's all in an effort to help you plan out the perfect personalized bourbon journey for yourself. And you can find the book on paperback or on Kindle or audio book@amazondotcomoryoucanusetheshortcutwhiskey-laura.com slash Kentucky book C on the trail.

DREW (00:35:43):
Hey listeners, we're back with whiskey lower drew here and drew. So what we get for you, it's a bottle off hat on the shelf. I don't pull it out for everybody. It's in a nice wooden carved box over there. It's from angels envy. They released at once a year. It's their cast strength from 2019. You see, I haven't drank a whole lot out of the bottle and I seen Jim's eyes light up when I pulled it out because Jim could truth be told, Jim could come over here anytime he wants and pull out at anything. It maybe a couple on open bottles, I have closed up, but I

JIM (00:36:23):
Got here for you today and Viv invited me in the house. And, and and she said, just make yourself at home. You know? And I went straight over and got a pour your iron rude harbinger.

DREW (00:36:35):
That's a good one to get, right. Is that the one 15? I think that is the one 15 up there. I have, I have a couple bottles of that. If I see a bottle, I, I don't know. I got a bad habit about trying to buy more of it because I'm afraid it's going to run out or they're going to create something different when something's good. Like Henry McKenna, 10 years, you want to get it and you got to have a couple extra bottles, right? You, yeah, this is a bottle that I it's. I keep in the wooden box over there and some other wood carve stuff like a rum case over there, I guess, bottle case from Haiti and some other woodcarvings over there, some wood ducks and I set it over there and I kind of forget about it, cause it just kind of sits back in that shelf. But this is 122.4 proof. It run about $199. I think they only had about 1400 bottles of this. Wow. So I would call this, this was probably my first big boy whiskey bottle right here I'd ever bought. I felt super sick about buying it.

Speaker 3 (00:37:42):
I get that,

DREW (00:37:43):
But I bought it and it's, it's comes out for special occasions or for good friends. And I appreciate you coming out here to adapt to Ben farm with us and sat down with some fellow podcasters and just talking about whiskey. Oh, it's great. I appreciate you inviting me out. And and actually I've only tried one angel envy, which is the regular version of this versus the cast string version. So this will be interesting. And this is the port wine finished. It's just a cast strength, you know,

JIM (00:38:15):
And they kind of pioneered that, that whole port wine finished bourbon deal. In fact, you know, that was their, that was their flagship brand was the finished bourbon with. Sure. And you know, there's been a lot of a lot of people who, you know, will say that's not really bourbon. Well, you know, according to the law, it's not, but it is bourbon finished and port wine barrels.

DREW (00:38:41):
Yeah. Well that's and I think that's the trick is that you it's how you state it. So if you say it is a bourbon finished in, then you are being truthful about it. Or we were talking about earlier before we started recording about Tennessee whiskey and Jack Daniels. Now people will say, oh, overseas, they'll call it bourbon. And I remember being a James Bond fan the first time M pores and says well, I, I like bourbon and she starts pouring a Jack Daniels. I'm like, come on. But, but it's funny that I've mellowed on that over, over time now. And it's, I now say, you know what? It is bourbon, but it goes through another step. There's one extra step that they throw into it. And we were talking about Evan Williams, bottled in bond that it goes through that extra step to, it just goes through it at a different point in the process. Right. Exactly what we can all say agree on this. Right. It's whiskey, it's whiskey. It's definitely whiskey.

JIM (00:39:48):
It is whiskey. And you know, it's released under a different category. So they do have control of that, but you just have to be a wise consumer. You need to, like you said earlier in the first half, you gotta read that. Yeah.

DREW (00:40:01):
Well, and then my other question that I I've run into, the more that I've started experiencing some of this more creativity in, in making bourbons or whiskeys is should a distiller always keep themselves to the rule or should they go outside and not be afraid to release something that they just call whiskey and not have to put bourbon on it because they really want to try something and see if it works and yet breaks a little rule here. Let's just put whiskey on it and see if we can you know, see, do something different to challenge people's idea of what whiskey from Kentucky could be or, you know, that, that sort of thing. I think the only reason why that doesn't happen is because you have the stigma. I think that comes with stuff like early times, if you go buy a bottle of early times, it is called Kentucky whiskey.

DREW (00:41:03):
Because it's been put in a used barrel instead of being put into a fresh, charred Oak barrel. So, you know, maybe that's what they're worried about is that you don't want to just put whiskey on it because people will think it's not good enough to be bourbon, but could you not make something with whiskey on it that could out do a bourbon just by doing something a little extra. And I'm not talking about doing the route where they're putting artificial flavors in and doing that sort of thing, but the natural process that just kind of enhances that whiskey. And

JIM (00:41:43):
Now there are some American whiskeys that hold just quite honestly, I think blow you away. You know old Carter has a great American whiskey. It's, it's, it's hot. I mean,

Speaker 3 (00:41:55):
It's hot, but it's really good.

JIM (00:41:58):
Makers has a great American whiskey. So there are some people putting some American whiskeys out that are that get your attention.

DREW (00:42:05):
Yeah. And, and let's be honest, Lincoln Henderson and Wes, they went outside the box here and not that they were the first to do it, but I think they were the first successful at it. And they've introduced a lot of people into bourbon because of this bottle right here, not the cast drink, but the regular bottle. It's a beautiful sleek bottle. It in a side port finished. So it might be more appeasing to a wine drinker to taste some of this before I dip my toes all the way into a bourbon bottle. Well, I I'll tell you who else that could probably help cross over is the scotch drinker because scotch really started experimenting around the latter end of the 20th century into the 21st century with doing finishing on different whiskeys and click. We talk about Glen droning. Glen droning was one of those distilleries that was early on Glenmore, Angie. They did the same thing of, of introducing these different barrels to finish a whiskey. And if you're used to those notes that you get from that in a scotch, and then you move over and you try to experiment with bourbon, the best place to start would be with something like an Angel's envy that has that same character that you have been pulling out of your scotch. That's now starting to show up in bourbon. Sure, absolutely. I agree. Also he left side knows this thing. Let's get to the whiskey. All right. Sounds good.

DREW (00:43:41):
Now I'd like to say that this right here is a dark almost Ruby, Amber. Not a scotch color. No,

Speaker 3 (00:43:51):
Definitely not. Although when you, when you start getting the cast

DREW (00:43:54):
Rank, the ones that are finished in like Oloroso Sherry barrels, you'll start you'll start seeing those darker colors. But yeah, if you see a dark scotch, it's usually got colorant

JIM (00:44:04):
To be fair. This is 40 proof points. Heider. Yeah, that's true. That is very true.

DREW (00:44:12):
It's got that floral nose on it. Super floral,

JIM (00:44:15):
Very very sweet very rich. It's got, it's got that that, that dark plum. Yeah. yeah, I don't know. Plum Razan

DREW (00:44:34):
And see after nosing a scotch. I get, I get the vanilla and the caramel notes, right. Braid off of it almost instantly because it's it's light. It's not as straight. It's not a strong in, in either of those two, but it's there and kind of pick it up. Jim, you're gonna laugh at me a little bit here. Well, I'm actually getting a little bit of prune juice off this. Oh,

Speaker 3 (00:44:59):
Okay. That's good. Yeah. You know,

DREW (00:45:01):
When I was a little kid and you know, my grandmother might have a little bit of a stomach issues. Yeah. You know, people, her age, they would drink prune juice back then. I almost said stewed plums, but I didn't say it because I never had

Speaker 3 (00:45:16):
Clumps. I visualize them

JIM (00:45:18):
In my mind, you know what? They might be like. That doesn't sound too well. Let's taste this thing. All right. How a little bit of pal.

DREW (00:45:32):
Yeah. That hits right home, right? Yeah, it does. It's rich. It, it feels a little thin towards the finish, but what's interesting is there's almost like a Berry kind of thing coming on the finish, just lingers on, on the tongue, like a maybe a raspberry kind of

JIM (00:45:57):
Yeah. So it's really kind of it's concentrated, very concentrated flavor. Yeah. not, not just a hint of it, but very concentrated.

DREW (00:46:09):
This is a note I always pull out of that. I seem to be the only one that pulls out of whiskey, but I get a Swiss cheese note on the very finish. And I don't know what it is. I think it's from the oils or something that maybe reminds me of Swiss cheese. But there's just like a little Swiss cheese note in there. Berries on this. There's a Berry cereal, like a fruity pebbles. Maybe. I don't know. It just, that there's a B there is a Berry Ciroc.

Speaker 3 (00:46:43):
Well, there's like raspberries, blackberries.

DREW (00:46:45):
I seem to be getting a little bit of, it's just a,

JIM (00:46:49):
Yeah. I don't remember my well we'll, we'll edit it. Mm. Count blueberry or something. It's count. Chocula

DREW (00:47:03):
Sorry, chocolate. Yeah, that that's got some punch to it. It does,

JIM (00:47:10):
But it's, it's some older whiskey in there. Cause I'm getting that, that leathery, no Oak that, that older Oak flavor on the back. I don't think this is just their normal.

DREW (00:47:24):
You think that, is it a single barrel? I don't think so. Okay. I get like a, I get a baking spice of some form on the nose too. I like to say I'm still learning. I get, I conquer a flavor every once in a while. And then I'm like, yes.

JIM (00:47:47):
Yeah. It's like three by five cards. Every time we drink a whiskey, every time we eat a meal, every time we have a snack or visit a new kind of food, we fall away one more, three by five cards with a little bit of knowledge on it. And we're going to pull that out one day

Speaker 3 (00:48:00):
When we taste. Well. I think that

DREW (00:48:03):
The way that I do it, that really helps me out is I do comparisons. I never just tasted one in isolation. I tried to put two that are, if I'm doing an Irish whiskey, I'll put another Irish whiskey with it. Or you know, if I'm doing a rye, I'll try to fit another rye. And in fact, I've struggled with rye in trying to figure out what the differences are in the different types of rye. Rittenhouse is the one that I usually have in my cabinet and I've been happy enough with that, but I've brought some Sazeracs home and I tasted it and I went, oh, this is very different. I had knob Creek ride. Didn't like it. I actually made it into an infinity bottle because it just didn't, it was too sweet for me. I've had Canadian rise. So it wasn't until I put three rise next to each other one was a Pendleton 1910, which is a 12 year Canadian versus was it Rittenhouse?

DREW (00:49:03):
Yeah. Rittenhouse and Sazeracs. And they were all so different from each other. Yeah, they are. I mean, but still to try to pick out, you know, in label one, I could say one's maybe a little more verbally. But I'm trying to find what those adjectives are that I'm looking for to describe one rye flavor from the next. Now, when I did the 2 91, that rye was like, I could taste caraway seeds. I felt like I was eating rye bread. I mean, it was so heavy with rye and the bourbon tasted like rye to me, whatever they're using for their rye is really dominant because it just seems to take over whatever it's in and say that still got

JIM (00:49:52):
Some early bottles from them that we haven't opened up yet. I think

DREW (00:49:57):
You're talking about the berries and I was thinking about what that type of Berry tastes was. Yeah. And captain crunch actually has a crunch Berry. Okay. And just that little bit of cereal note, plus that Berry sweetness and stuff. Yeah. This cast strength has to it. I know people get weird that when I bring out some cereal,

Speaker 3 (00:50:18):
Hey, I love your cereal notes. Because if that, if that's what it takes to

DREW (00:50:22):
Get you to what ultimately it is, I think that's I, I, that's how I try to help people when I'm going through a tasting is I say, it's your experience, whatever you, I had one that tasted like another butter to me and I love another butter's favorite cookie in the world. And if it tastes like Nutter butters, it's sold me. Mr. B Noah's mill, no smell.

Speaker 3 (00:50:53):
I don't know what it was, but it was, so you get that on a

DREW (00:50:58):
Nutter butter. It will be something from heaven hill. Right. Cause it's that nutty taste. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

JIM (00:51:05):
In addition to traveling the world and visiting distilleries you've also taken time to, to write a little bit of that down and to put out a book. Yes. Tell us a little bit about that.

DREW (00:51:17):
So I was writing all of these different blog posts about different distilleries that I was visiting, but they were basically me just kind of running off at the mouth and saying, here's what I experienced here. Bullet points on different things. And it really wasn't organized in any specific way. And I looked out there to see if there were bourbon travel books and I found some, but they weren't, again, they weren't really organized to help you figure out which distilleries should I put on my list if I am coming from California. And this is my only trip I'm ever going to be able to take to bourbon country, how do I pick out which distilleries that I'm going to go to? So what I wanted to do was I wanted to give my own experience in this and say, here are 32 different distilleries that I went to.

DREW (00:52:20):
I'll take all this blog post information I have, I will condense it down and I will put it into a format where you can compare every distillery side by side, the experience that I had, my top three reasons to go to this particular distillery, my top three reasons to go to this particular distillery how to get there, what you're going to taste, or at least what I tasted when I went there. What kind of freebies you might get? Are you going to get a Glen Karan tasting glass? When you get there? Are you going to get you know, maybe some extra sample of this or that? And I thought that'd be really good information for people to just be able to flip through and find that, and then be able to easily get to the website to the page they need to go to.

DREW (00:53:07):
Because the struggle I had in planning out my first trip is that I don't know how many times I entered my birth date into a website, just to be able to find out what their hours are. And then I clicked that little box that says, remember me? And then the next time I come back, that box would pop up again. They don't remember you. Nobody remembers me. I have that kind of face. I think, I don't know. But for some reason it just, it annoyed me and it made the job so much harder. Plus when you look at that website for any distillery, there's beautiful pictures. There's what they want to tell you they're about, but you really have no way to compare apples to apples. What's this distillery experience going to be like versus what this distilleries is. So like, if somebody wants to learn about the process, when they read my page about wilderness trail, they're going to go, oh, they're about the science of whiskey.

DREW (00:54:08):
They're going to take me through the process. I'm going to see that there, let me check that off and say, maybe that's one of the distilleries I want to go to. If you're interested in you know, the marketing side of things or you're just really into like maker's mark and you want to read, what am I going to experience when I'm on that tour? What are the sorts of things I'm going to see? Then I wanted to give enough detail on that, that somebody could say, wow, okay. I am going to give you, I could dip my own bottle. Here's how much it's going to cost for me to dip my own bottle when I get to the end. And here are some of the things that I'm going to see along the way so that you can really craft the perfect trip for yourself when you go.

DREW (00:54:54):
And that's the last half of the book. The first half of the book is first teaching you a little bit about the history of whiskey. So you have a baseline knowledge about the history of whiskey, the baseline process of whiskey. And my goal with the book is not to give the tours away. You can jump on YouTube and you can watch all the videos you want to have people who have videotaped when they've walked through or recorded on their phones of their journey through a distillery. But to me, the joy of going to the distillery is discovering it for yourself. So I want to give just enough information for you to make an informed decision about what the Stillery you're going to go to, but I don't want to give away all the secrets. In fact, one of the things I do in there is I say what to look for, and I give a tip on something to keep your eye out for or to listen for on the tour.

DREW (00:55:52):
That's unique to that distillery as just kind of like an Easter egg to go hunt for. When you go to Angel's envy, we're tasting Angel's envy. It was an old warehouse that was a tool warehouse. And there's some elements of that tool warehouse getting that into somebody's head. When they're looking around that distillery. Now they're not only just listening to the guide, taking them through and telling them the specifics about the distillery. They want to tell them, but they're getting to see some extra things or lookout for extra things that they wouldn't really have noticed probably right off the bat. So it kind of what's the title of the book. So it's called whiskey lores travel guide to experiencing Kentucky bourbon, but it says experiencing Kentucky bourbon, pretty, pretty large on there. It's on Amazon. And so if you do a search for Kentucky travel guides, it comes up in there or just type in whiskey lore and it comes up that way as well.

DREW (00:56:55):
So why don't you go ahead and take the next one. My question for you is you have a podcast, a whiskey podcast, you re written a book. So what would you say the top three distillers if somebody had a pick, cause people are always asking us, Hey Mike, what distillers would you go see? And I'm, I am a different cat than most. I'm going to want to look for different stuff than most people would go to. So if you had to tell people, they only could pick three distilleries to go to. They're limited on that. Where would you go? I actually did a blog post called the top 10, my top 10 favorite whiskey distilleries. That's on my whiskey dash.com page. But I will say that if there is one distillery, if you had only one distillery to be able to see the whole time you're in Kentucky and you wanted to get a whole view of what Kentucky bourbon is from the beginning of the process to the end of the process, I would say go to old Forester because the old Forester distillery has the history and it has the process.

DREW (00:58:09):
It's very visual. I was very impressed with the way that you, you really could go in and just read the boards while you're walking through. And it's very clear and concise. They have gone into a distillery location that they were in when they started, they went off a whiskey row for a long time and they rebuilt in the same spot they used to be in. We're talking about a building that is not that large in, in terms of footprint yet it has more things in it than any other distillery that you can see as a visitor. And, and it's mainly because you can see bottling there and a lot of distilleries, you don't get to see bottling and you can see a barrel being fired there. And that's not something you can see at any distillery in Kentucky. Kentucky Cooper Ridge is probably your best bet as a tourist to go see, and they're shut down right now. Actually I, oh, Forrester may be shut down at this point too, cause they're in downtown Louisville. But but you see everything in that one little compact building it's in Louisville. So it's an easy place to get to two blocks from your

Speaker 3 (00:59:26):
Hotel. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

DREW (00:59:28):
So to me, if somebody said, give me one to go to which one do I go to? I think old Forester's probably the one that I, I would put up at the top, my, my second favorite and it's a specific tour to go on. It's not on the bourbon trail. But it is a large distillery and that is the Barton 1792 tour and you have to sign up for it online, but it, and it only runs once a day. It's the estate tour. It runs at 11 o'clock and the tour guide, Rick, the day I was there, he said, I remember him saying how much time he got and I thought, well, this is cool. I mean, he's, he's basically saying this is going to go on as long as you really want it to go on and we'll go see every bit of this distillery.

DREW (01:00:27):
Now, funny story to go along with that is that the day that I went to Barton 1792 we saw the fire Marshall driving around and we were standing in the warehouse. And I, I said, is it normal to have the fire marshal driving around at whiskey distillery? He said, no, not really. And somebody came over to him about halfway through the tour and whispered something to him. And he said, after they left, he said, well, unfortunately we can't take you everywhere in the distillery. I can't tell you why, but we just, right now we just can't take you everywhere in the distillery where we're going to go to you still get to see the world's largest bourbon barrel and have your picture taken with it. We'll still go in the bottling hall and all that. But, but we just can't do the whole thing. It wasn't until my next tour, when I went to Willett and I was there and somebody said, did you hear what it happened over at Barton's? I said, no. They said, oh, warehouse collapsed. I was there the day that I was on the tour.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
Well, when that came down. But

DREW (01:01:41):
But that was a great tour. I felt so bad too, when I heard that. Cause I thought that was such a great tour and and, and such nice people. And you don't want to see that happen to to, to somebody like that. But that was a you, you leave with a little stopper and they stamp it with a date. So that's how I can prove I was there the day that the warehouse collapsed because the they gave me the stopper when I went in there. But so before you get onto your, your last one some of our listeners might be wondering, and they might have up on this, but that's not part of the Kentucky bourbon trail and neither is Buffalo trace. And I just wanted to kind of point that out, right? That Sazerac doesn't belong to the Kentucky distillers association because they wanted money from him.

DREW (01:02:35):
Right. And they do free tours and they do so this great tour that I went on didn't cost me a penny and the same with Buffalo trace. I've done that to her, you know, two, three times. And you get to do a tasting at the end. It's a nice tasting. They don't take any shortcuts and just really good tour. So you know, like I say, if you're looking through your Kentucky bourbon trail through the website, you're not going to find these two particular distillery and there's other distilleries that are going to be the same that are I've listed a couple in the books that aren't on the trail and are worth checking out. A lot of people don't go to Western Kentucky, but there's some really interesting stories that are going on in some of these Western Kentucky distilleries.

DREW (01:03:26):
And there's actually a mini trail out there where you can conquer the entire trail in one day, it's called the state line tour. And if you go to MB Roland, and you go to Casey Jones and you go to in Tennessee, just across the border in Clarksville to old glory, that's the state line tour. And each one will give you a little shot glass with their logo on it. And when you get to the last one, they'll give you a, a stave to put your whiskey glasses on. So it's a nice little quick way to do, to conquer a tour. Instead of taking the whole Mike, we need

JIM (01:04:06):
To get to the Western Kentucky and check that out. Yeah. It's

DREW (01:04:11):
Just right down the bluegrass Parkway in Western Kentucky. So drew what's that last what's that last distiller. So the last one is find the one that fits your personality. Find one, there are again between history. If you love history, there are ones that are great for history. If you love the process and you want to learn more about the process, there are ones that are great for that, or maybe there's a brand you just love, and you've wanted to learn about it and learn more about it. That the great thing about going to the distillery is you will be closer to that whiskey that you love more, more intimate with it than you ever could be just by pouring a glass of it, because when you can actually pour that glass and it starts reminding you of the smell of the warehouse that you walked into, you know, and, and got that experience of it, or you know, seeing the, the, still that it came out of those things, I think add to the richness of the experience of, of drinking a whiskey and hearing those stories and hearing where they came from and why they made the whiskey because every distiller started their distillery for some, as some kind of passion project.

DREW (01:05:36):
There's very few of them that I've heard said, oh, we just got it for the money. Most of them have a real desire to try to do something unique with whiskey. Absolutely. It's

JIM (01:05:48):
Been amazing to have you here on the show. We really enjoyed our time with you. We've had a couple of great whiskeys tonight. Absolutely. I certainly hope we get the opportunity to do this again in the near future. Same here. So next time you're coming through the area, or maybe we're through your area. We'll hook up, we'll have a drink and talk about good times. Perfect.

DREW (01:06:09):
I love it. Well, you can find us at the bourbon road on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. We also have a website, the bourbon road.com. I write a blog on there. We're going to have some reviews on there pretty soon they keeps asking we've got some swag on there. Our whiskey glasses were up. Jim is actually wearing a bourbon road hat tonight. Hopefully we'll have some bourbon road hats on there. Yeah. Check out our website. We also have a private Facebook group called the bourbon roadies, which drew is a member of absolutely. Jen.

JIM (01:06:46):
I'm sure. After the show, if you guys pop in that pop in there and send drew a message, he'll probably we'll see it. Yes. He'll answer any questions you might have about the show today. The bourbon roadies is a private Facebook group. If you go to our Facebook page and you look on our page, you'll see a place for groups and on there will be the bourbon roadies. We, we just ask you a couple of questions. We want you to, we want you to know you're getting yourself into a bourbon group. We don't want any entries by mistake. And then we want to make sure you're 21 and that you agreed to play nice once you're in the group, because we want all of our members to play nice and lift each other up

DREW (01:07:24):
Drew, man, it's been great having you on I think gotta say thank you for the book. Thank you for sharing your whiskey with us. Like I said before, if you're a listener and you look at for another podcast out there that gets you on down the road, get you on down that bourbon road. You know, maybe you're traveling between distilleries or you're making a cross country trip put on whiskey lore. I promise he won't put you to sleep. He'll keep you interested. The history, the backstory of distilleries in America, in Scotland and Ireland, and hopefully his trip to Japan. I guarantee you'll like it, if not come knock on my door and we, we can talk about it

JIM (01:08:07):
In the meantime, if you need to reach out to me or Mike I'm Jay Shannon, 63 on Instagram, I'm one big chief and we will see you down the bourbon route. And

DREW (01:08:16):
Thanks to Mike and Jim for having me on their show. And you can find the bourbon road on your favorite podcast app. If you haven't subscribed to the interviews podcast or whiskey Laura's main podcast and make sure you do so. So you don't miss any of the stories and interviews that I'll be posting in the near future and follow my journeys on YouTube, Facebook or instagram.com/whiskey lore. I'm your host, drew Hannah. And until next time, cheers. And [inaudible] whiskey. Laura is a production of travel fuels life, LLC.