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ChiTuckyBourbonBrothers
The “Chitucky Bourbon Brothers” podcast, hosted by Mike Nielsen and Tony Meyers, serves as a delightful exploration of bourbon and whiskey culture, offering insightful reviews and discussions about various bourbons and whiskeys. The hosts share their passion for sipping “brown water,” a colloquial term for bourbon and whiskey, and aim to blend music with their love for these beverages, creating an engaging auditory experience for listeners. The podcast not only provides detailed reviews of different bourbons and whiskeys but also promotes a relaxed atmosphere where enthusiasts can enjoy the nuances of their favorite drinks alongside music that complements the experience.
ChiTuckyBourbonBrothers
Episode 112 - 2024 Sazerac 18
ChiTucky Bourbon Brothers take a deep dive into the newest release of Buffalo Trace's legendary Sazerac 18 Rye Whiskey, a cornerstone of their coveted Antique Collection. After years of mixed reviews, this 2024 expression marks a triumphant return to form that has whiskey enthusiasts buzzing with excitement.
We explore the fascinating history behind this elusive spirit, from competing origin stories to the transition from steel tank aging to traditional barrel maturation. Despite its modest 90 proof bottling strength, Sazerac 18 delivers remarkable complexity without overwhelming the palate. The nose offers inviting aromas of cherry lozenges, leather, and oak without any harsh alcohol burn, while the taste reveals a perfectly balanced symphony of subtle rye spice, cinnamon, and vanilla that drinks more like a high-quality bourbon than a typical spicy rye.
Whether you're a dedicated whiskey collector or simply appreciate the artistry behind America's finest spirits, this Sazerac 18 deserves a place in your tasting journey. Subscribe to our podcast for more deep dives into exceptional whiskeys and join our community of passionate bourbon enthusiasts.
these are the days winding down the lakeside, holding on a weight line, making these waves. These are the days living for a slow ride, drifting like a bait line out in this lake.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these are the days really surprising me with some new music I know I like this guy.
Speaker 3:I heard this one on the radio and I took a picture of my radio so I wouldn't forget it.
Speaker 2:That came through my headset so clear. It's still coming through. It just sounds real good. I like this guy.
Speaker 3:Who is it? This guy's name is Nico Moon Nico.
Speaker 2:Moon.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I had to do some Wikipedia on him. Young guy American. He calls himself an American country pop singer and songwriter.
Speaker 2:See, you know, that just falls right into my wheelhouse and yours too. Yes, I like some rock, I like some pop, but I also like country. I like when it's a little mix.
Speaker 3:He's written songs for, like Dirk Bentley, zac Brown bands, rascal Flats, morgan Wallen.
Speaker 1:He's a writer.
Speaker 2:He's a writer All right, he's a riser Writer and a riser Shy Tucky. Bourbon Brothers, Mike and Tony we were just sitting here talking and I said you know what, On this podcast, I feel like going forward, we should only drink the good stuff.
Speaker 3:I like it. Tony kind of looked at me twice and was thinking Well, but then, after you explained your position, it makes a lot more sense. Like we have a lot of good bourbon and sometimes we just drink whatever we see because we have plenty of it surrounding us.
Speaker 2:But doesn't that just weigh into? Is the good stuff really good and what is good Is good? $150 bottle Is good, the cheap bottle that no one knows is good. So I I'm not really saying a lot, but we know a lot of what is good and that's what I mean. We're gonna drink what we know is good I think it's better than trying to like.
Speaker 3:yeah, I think that that well, regardless of price, is always a that's always a difficult spot to be for some of these bottles, but I would say that we definitely should focus on things that are not just that we can go get, but stuff that we know is supposed to be good, or stuff that we want to try.
Speaker 2:And I totally agree that we want to try and I totally agree and I think I think listeners are out there to hear about good whiskey and what we like, not what we don't like. If I listen to a podcast and at the end they're like, yeah, or throughout, it was kind of like that sucked, I don't want it. I'm like I would think that I'm kind of kind of wasting my time. Okay, you just told me what you didn't like and now I don't have anything to go out and buy because I want to drink some whiskey tonight.
Speaker 2:So you guys have heard of buffalo trace, you've heard of buffalo the buffalo trace, what's called the antique collection, which is, uh, five different, uh styles of whiskey. Uh, two of them arise. Three of them are bourbons and one of them we are and talk about sought after and typically very good whiskey. Uh, today we are drinking one of the rise and it is the sazerac. This is not your find it on the shelf anywhere. Sazerac, they have a very simplified rye brand, um, I think it's about like 25 bucks. Um, this is their 18 year version of it, um, and therefore making it their sazarac supposedly it's the same collection.
Speaker 3:Supposedly it's the same mash bill.
Speaker 2:The one that you see on the shelf is a five to six year expression and this is an 18 year expression probably say mash bill, but how they store it completely, um, where they store it, how they store it and the fact that it's 18 years and then kind of probably hand selecting uh I think they're both the same ones. This is a 90 proof. This is a 90 proof which, if you guys know anything about tony and I, we're usually well into the hundreds.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've, probably we're not usually probably right together, and we're usually tony is a super ride drinker. But what do you think we've maxed out on? On on 142?
Speaker 3:I think the highest one I've ever had is that they just call it Stag. Now the little squatty bottle, the Stag Junior, that last batch like a 24.
Speaker 2:Hazmat, they called it. Yeah, it was like 141 proof or something.
Speaker 3:I think that's the highest I've ever had.
Speaker 2:So not only is this a ride that we don't usually do all that often, it's a 90 proof that we don't do all that often. And this is the bottle, because it can be very different every year. This is the newest one that came out in the fall of 2024. And when I say they do it differently, uh, I'll let Tony get you, get you over to some stats. But, um, when they rolled this line out in 2000, people loved it for give or take the first 10 years because, follow me here, they stored it in steel tank barrels, right, tony? Yeah, so it doesn't really change. Yeah, so it doesn't change Steel tank, so it doesn't change Steel tank. And then they started new and doing it a little differently in 2016. And 16 to 23,. People didn't like it. No, so this is supposedly the first one. We'll be the judge, but this is the first one in give or take a decade of the again, buffalo Trace Antique Collection, sazerac 18. There's a lot there.
Speaker 3:It's very specific, um, it's supposed to be really good yeah, when you start talking about stuff that's 18 years old I mean 2024 minus 18 I mean this is this 2006, so this was 2006.
Speaker 2:I got a little sweat on the brow. I was like is he gonna get it all right?
Speaker 3:so what's cool about this particular bottle, or sazerac in general? So Sazerac was one of the three original members of the Buffalo Trace antique collection. It was Sazerac, william, larue, weller and Eagle Rare 17.
Speaker 2:So, guys, I said that there were five of them. We just and Eagle Rare. Yes Two more the 17th, and there's two more, and those are Handy.
Speaker 3:Thomas.
Speaker 2:H Handy yes. And that's also their other rye.
Speaker 3:And the fifth is George T. Stagg Good one, correct. So another thing that was neat about this is when these first came out, all three of them were 90 proof. So that doesn't mean a lot to people that don't drink a lot of this type of bourbon. But william larue weller is nowhere near 90 proof anymore. I mean, that stuff is 117 to 130 now, but the sazerac and the eagle rare 19. I think both have stayed at 90.
Speaker 2:Yeah and people um, people geek out about these and every year they come out all five of them and some of them go up in popularity and how much they make of it or how little they make of it, and some of them go down in popularity this year. I just wanted to touch on that. Larue Weller Usually usually that and the George T Stagg are our favorites Correct by far.
Speaker 2:We don't usually drink the Sazerac 18. I picked it up aftermarket, I paid hundreds are our favorites? Correct by far. We don't usually drink the Sazerac 18. I picked it up after market. I paid hundreds and hundreds of dollars for it. So it's, in my opinion, worth it to do that. Because I listened to another podcast. Um, it was like a they call it a whiskey quickie and it was like a few minutes and they just loved on it so much. I I was on a flight somewhere. I got off the flight and I was searching for it because they talked pretty highly of it. So those are the five antique collection. Tell us about Sazerac and all those good things.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, one of the interesting things for me is, like how did this become like with the origins, like what was the origin of Sazerac 18? Like where'd it come from, you know? So they're looking for juice back in 1982, for the first year that came out in 2000. So you're, you're looking for pretty old juice at that time. And there's two different major theories. One is the they call it the Julian Van Winkle storyline theory because Can you go back one second?
Speaker 2:Yeah, 1982. Would have been yeah, yeah, 1982.
Speaker 3:Would have been yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, wow that just all of a sudden you go when this started give or take 25 years ago and then add another 18 to that. It's like, oh, I was little.
Speaker 3:You weren't thinking about bourbon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, keep going. Sorry to go on.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So there's two theories. One's the Julian Van Winkle story and the Julian Van Winkle has his family. Obviously anybody that knows anything about bourbon is his family is bourbon, more or less. They have been around bourbon and they are bourbon.
Speaker 3:There's many books written by them. There's all kinds of things about everything you ever wanted to know. So whenever anybody wants to ask about how stuff started, it always goes back to the Van Winkles, of course, because they seem to always have a story or know something about something. Because you know 1982 was before the internet. You can't just hit a button and see what it says Before the internet. So anyway, his recollection, or slash his version, was it came from the late, that started in the late 1990s, was that he said that he was actually searching for some old rye whiskey to bottle for customers under his own label, and then he was looking for rye whiskey from Medley, the Cream of Kentucky, which is the old Bernheim original and Ancient Age, and they all had stuff that was old enough that he was looking at. Ultimately he decided on the medley rye and he rejected the ancient age for some reason or another.
Speaker 2:And, um, it's, it's just that's kind of where he says it all started from ancient age is a is a is also um and bernheim, for, for that matter, I mean long time that they were making. They were making great whiskey. Uh, way back when then, and nowadays, just like old granddad and also ancient age Now it's now, it's the cheap stuff because they switched how they did it.
Speaker 3:So back then he was, he was looking to the best, the ancient, yeah, I mean the the the, how I say this, the, the barrel, the distilled barrels of George T Stagg distillery was the ancient age distillery, but where that is now the modern day Buffalo trace distillery. So all these distilleries are always in the same places. Like Buffalo trace was on, I build new right. Well, buffalo trace was already on the Kentucky river so they could barge their ingredients up and down the river. Unfortunately, in the last few weeks we know what happens to rivers when there's a lot of rain and that is always a bit of problem down there.
Speaker 2:But like quick cutting you off one more time. All right. What Tony is touching on right there is that the Buffalo trace distillery was completely flooded very recently.
Speaker 2:And the good news is a few weeks ago. The good news is that they say that they are more than 75% cleaned, restored and more or less back in business. So that is I mean. If you look around like Google flooding Buffalo Trace, you will see literally some barrels floating and many, many feet of water, the whole place, the tasting room, the experience center, whatever they call it which Tony and I have been to completely underwater. So good to know that they are almost back to normal a few weeks later, with hundreds and hundreds of people helping them get back to normal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I heard the Blanton's bottling line, which is a ground floor line, just started up this week again, so that's good to hear. Yeah, sorry, I cut you off. Keep going.
Speaker 2:Okay, so that's good to hear. Yeah, sorry, I cut you off.
Speaker 3:Keep going. Okay, so what was the first theory? The second theory is a theory that was credited to Steve Neese only because that's where I don't know that's who said it first. I guess it's really funny how bourbon works. Bourbon is really—. He said what first? This is his theory of where Sazer originated from cesarac 18 um, and he said that the timeline falls, in fact that sheenley made a batch of rye whiskey for no real purposes and they just kind of stockpiled it, um, at the old bernheim distillery and then at some point in the 80s in the 80s, yeah, yeah, got it, yeah. So Sheen Lee was brought up by United Distillers. United Distillers became Grand Metropolitan, which then became Diageo, and that's just kind of where all these bottles? I mean this is just a crazy conglomerate of people in Kentucky and all these different distilleries. They make all this bourbon and they put all of this stuff in different barrels and they just hold it and they wait for somebody to come and try it and if they like it, they sell it to them.
Speaker 2:I mean that's kind of how this was and in the two thousands he liked it. Enough to say in Buffalo trace at that point, uh, liked it.
Speaker 3:Whoever owned it at that point said this is really great, probably in the nineties, because they bought it and then waited a little bit and then bottled it.
Speaker 2:I'm just saying it was good enough to be an 18-year-old.
Speaker 3:Honestly, everybody got crushed in the 80s because bourbon didn't sell, so you could probably steal these old bottles, these old barrels. So it's kind of cool. It's interesting where it all came from, but really what it comes down to is that this batch is supposed to be really, really good and I'm excited to get into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too. Let's give it a smell. All right, cheers. I've been sitting here smelling this for probably the last five, ten minutes. It's one of the best smelling whiskeys I've ever put my nose on. I mean it's got a lot of standards of just old. I mean it's 18 years's got a lot of standards of like just old. I mean it's 18 years old.
Speaker 3:It's so good. Oaky barrel kind of vanilla it's just it's got like a, I mean it's like a cherry lozenger.
Speaker 2:Little cherry. But then there's like a Like just a warm hug of like a leather, oh yeah. There's some leather in the new car and it's just like that's leather smell Like. Who doesn't like that smell yeah?
Speaker 3:When you think of bourbon, it's just like.
Speaker 1:It is there's kind of like fruity, that goes.
Speaker 3:leathery, it goes like. Yeah, not like.
Speaker 2:It is. It's kind of like fruity that goes leathery. It goes like yeah, but not like and maybe it's the low proof, because we're used to drinking and smelling like higher proof stuff. You get no alcohol, it's not burning your nose, you just want to like. You're just walking into a, you know, like a new house, like you just have that like mm.
Speaker 3:it just smells good in here. Yeah, it's like carpet, New carpet. No, that's what it smells like.
Speaker 2:All right cheers.
Speaker 1:Let's take a sip of this, mm.
Speaker 2:Mm. Wow, I mean how it drinks. I'm a high proof guy, but I mean it's.
Speaker 3:If you're not. I mean it's got the rye spice, it's got like a, a light. There's definitely oak and it's very well balanced.
Speaker 2:It doesn't a little little syrupy, little spicy little sticks to the top of your mouth.
Speaker 3:Um, I would say you get a little light cinnamon, you know, again there's a little bit of leather. It goes long. It's got a long mellow finish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I like that, I like the mellow, because it doesn't start out.
Speaker 2:There's no hug. This isn't going down your belly. That's the one thing about a high proof, though, is in a bad way, is it kind of takes you, I think you say like three sips, or whatever. It takes you a little while to get used to it, and sometimes and uh, I'll cover it on the shareable, but sometimes you, you want, you want like. I'm always wanting people to like what I like here. I like this, you should like it too. And they're like whoa, mike, whoa, what is what is?
Speaker 1:that I'm like oh too much.
Speaker 2:They're like, yeah, what's the proof? And I'm like, oh sorry, 124 or whatever. Um, this is not doing that. That at all like, if you want a an unbelievably shareable uh, uh, but, but offers a lot, it's not just, it's not just boring and watery. Um, on my first couple sips I'm like, oh, I want more, I want. And then, as you just continue to really get into it, there's a great spice, um, but also kind of like that, that 18 year old like syrupy spice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I, I don't, I don't know it's. It's got such a good mouth feel and maybe it's this long, mellow finish I. I just keep starting back over, I keep smelling it because it smells so good. There's almost like. You know what I'm kind of. It's almost like a little bit like a like a candy cane like this. It's like a something.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's not just cherry, I don't know, there's something like that and I'm not going to become like a low proof guy. But another negative to high proof is a couple of sips and you're kind of like, whether it's the kentucky hug or the burn, you're like kind of you're, you're, you're kind of dizzy, almost like it's when you're when you're hitting your palate and just you know body as a whole with a with that high, high proof. It's like a couple sips or even a couple ounces in, you're like I'm feeling this.
Speaker 3:Which a lot of people don't want, that You're not drinking whiskey to get fucked up necessarily.
Speaker 3:No, yeah, and this does not sip like a rye. It just doesn't to me, for somebody that doesn't drink a lot of ryes, because probably the bitterness and the spice that comes through at the end, so much this doesn't have that for something that's obviously 51 or more rye to become to be considered a rye. Yeah, um, this drinks. This drinks more like a bourbon. To me this drinks more like a regular bourbon not a weeder, but like a regular bourbon than it does a rye. You know, I did find somewhere when we were looking at this. No one will ever give any kind of um mash bill but there I did see some people that were saying 51 rye, 39 cord, 10 barley and guys get that, because that's why.
Speaker 2:Why tony likes a bourbon whiskey more than a rye whiskey they're both whiskeys um is because we a lot of times say we love a high corn. Well, there's no way. If it's rye, it has primarily rye, so there's still quite a bit of corn for a rye whiskey. It is. Sometimes they go well past 51 with their amount of rye. I did want to touch on also the finish. Earlier you called it earthy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, maybe that's the leathery too, that earthy leathery, musty, musty something.
Speaker 2:And that's really spot on yeah.
Speaker 3:That's what I get. I feel like I'm better with the finish on this than I am with the initial palette. The initial palette is. It's not overwhelming Like some of these higher proof that you were talking about the initial mouthfeel, not mouthfeel. The initial taste is just really overwhelming and there's a lot of complexity and there's a lot of different flavors hitting you at the same time. This doesn't have like a ton of different flavors.
Speaker 2:You kind of got what you got mellows out and then it just finishes A good balance and it finishes long, yeah, and there's no imperfection to like. I'm getting a little zing, or I'm getting too much cinnamon, or front of the front of the tongue. It's kind of like oh, I don't like it at first and then, but then it, then it opens up and it's a great finish. It's like start to finish, same and a plus yeah, um, are you getting any mint?
Speaker 3:I feel like rise, everybody always talks about a mint if it's, if it's very slight. Not, I'm not getting a lot of mint on this and that's something people talk about a lot with Rise Very slight at the very, very end of the finish.
Speaker 2:And why I know I'm at the very, very end of my finish is that I'm at the very, very end of my sip and I don't have any left. And why that is is because it's a 90 proven. It's pretty easy to drink.
Speaker 3:It's easy to drink. I mean you're having a second sip Maybe All right.
Speaker 2:sip method Already went through it. I'm totally sharing it. Influence it's Buffalo Trace. It's going to take a lot of things wrong or a lot of mistakes for them to screw up what they've been putting out for over two decades here. And the price this retails at MSRB about $150. Yeah, $149.99. And if you find it for that, buy a couple.
Speaker 1:Buy all of them.
Speaker 2:I mean, really, when you're getting this age of stuff, they're just, you know, the cost per barrel is so much more. I mean the cost for storage, the cost so like it's just actually dollars and cents worth it. Of course you have to like it, so maybe go to a, a bar or restaurant or whatever and try it first. If they have it, they probably won't have it. Another reason to buy it yourself um, but aftermarket on this year, because it was so good, uh, well, well, um, I'll just say north of 500 bucks. Yeah, uh, it's, it's pricey stuff. But again, facebook, instagram, search around, don't get ripped off. But if you don't mind paying up a little bit for it, because uh, don't prepay for burden.
Speaker 1:They don't, they don't make that much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, meet. Meet someone in a dark parking lot and give them some cash rather than prepaid. Never send somebody on the cash app.
Speaker 3:I can't tell you how many people get burned by that. Thank goodness I have never. But man, that's brutal, separating, shareable yes and no. I would share this with anybody that I know is really into bourbon, because I'd love to get their opinion of it. I'm not putting this out at when I'm having a party, just for whoever walked by to grab it, because they've heard of it before. And and um, buffalo trace is just Buffalo trace and I don't. You know, that's all you have to say. Price 150 bucks. Uh, all these super allocated, super hard stuff. If you can get, you buy it. So price sucks because that's just the price for these things. Now, but that's uh, that's how the world is. So it's not that it's a a knock on this bottle, it's just everything's more expensive. Now you want to give it a rating.
Speaker 2:You want me to four and a quarter, oh, that, here's my explanation I was four, I was at four, so I was gonna, I was okay, then we were to hit spot on. What I was going to say is that I've had a lot of rise, probably definitely a lot more than you. A lot of rise have, I think show their imperfections a lot more. They can be zingy. They can be minty. They can be. You can try and cover it up with proof. They didn't zingy. They can be minty. They can be.
Speaker 2:Um, you can try and cover it up with proof. Um, they didn't do that here. Um, I also don't feel like they watered that down, so I think it's a good number. I think in previous years you can, as they did, you can screw this up, but I really feel like they came out with this year as something really really fucking awesome. So why I bumped at the quarter was the 24 compared to a lot of the rise and other ones I've had of the Sazerac line in the last call it decade were not that great. So I gave it the quarter bump for the actual year that it is came out the fall of 2024.
Speaker 3:That's cool. Yeah, I gave it a four just because, to me, I would compare this with any of the really good bourbons that I like. I know it says it's a rye on there, but this does not drink like a rye Not that I would give it a knock, I just don't prefer them, so they end up getting a little lesser scores for that reason. Right, this, this, for me, is as good as any bourbon I've had this year. What are we going out on? You know, I'm staying with nico just because I like that song so much. Uh, this is one of his newer ones. Young guy, he's gotta be a young guy, yeah sounds real, uh, real polished.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's got just uh you polished. Yeah, you heard him on the radio. He's radio worthy already.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's got a couple of them that are that way. I like him. He kind of reminds me of the guy. He reminds me of somebody you should be listening to when you're on a boat. On a boat, doesn't he seem like he would be on the Kenny Chesney? I'm on a boat. He seems like he'd be on the Kenny Chesney station.
Speaker 2:All right, that's Tony's opinion. Tony must be heading out for vacation on a boat somewhere, and he's just got that on his head.
Speaker 2:I'm not really sure where he's going with that, but Chi-Tucky Burton brothers, we take care of the whiskey, so you could focus on with whom you share it. Keep in mind going forward. If you're looking for the best, best bottle or something that you might be willing to pay up for. I think we're going to switch things up a little bit and maybe see if the real, real good stuff, or the stuff that we know to be good stuff, we're going to be doing those bottles.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're going to try to focus on some stuff that's you can't just, they're not just all going to be sitting on the racks.
Speaker 2:You take a focus on some stuff that's, um, you can't just. They're not just all going to be sitting on the on the racks. Some will take a focus on that, some will. We'll take a focus on those kind of bottles shot to your broom brothers. Thanks for taking a listen. Good being with you, tony. Bye, guys.
Speaker 1:So when I think my bed is gonna break, I hold on to the hope of better days.
