EPISODE 9 - Bardstown Origin, Buzzards Roost BiB, J. Henry and sons La Flamme Reserve

In this episode we dive into a bit of controversial topic here in Canada... Bourbon. We talk with our friend Ray Daniel, a multi-award winning whiskey ambassador that represented Beam's bourbon lineup. 

So buckle up as we try three 'boutique' bourbons, talk about that industry, and have some fun along the way. 

Curious to hear your thoughts on this topic as the episode launches!

Cheers,
Trav, Sean, and Jeremy

Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:00

Hey everybody, welcome to the Last Call Whiskey Podcast. I'm Jeremy. I'm Travis. Hey, it's John. We are three friends from Western Canada. We love all things whiskey. And tonight we're doing a bourbon episode. So we are drinking the Bardstown Origin series, Buzzard's Roost Bottled and Bond, and Jay Henry and Son's La Flamme Reserve Armagnac finish. So boys, let's get into it.

SPEAKER_05 0:35

There's no Buffalo trace here. There's no I like that though. These are these are boutique, boutique bourbons almost.

SPEAKER_06 0:45

Boutiquey bourbons. And I would say Barstown's not boutique, but you we'll get it. Well, yeah. Um with uh the lack, I have not had bourbon prior to this in a hot minute. Like I'm trying to remember. The last bourbon I had probably was a boulder.

SPEAKER_05 1:07

Yeah, you get I think you and Sean are on the same page there.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

I have not bought a bourbon in what's February was a year, so a year almost a year and a half. Um, I have not drank bourbon in almost as long. So so it's a fresh, it was it was kind of yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:27

It's well, it made it made me actually like it when I tried them through. I was like, I was like, hey, this is kind of fun and exciting. But Trav, you and Lisa like to drink bourbon together, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:37

Well, so here's yeah, I I have anytime I have bourbon on my shelf, it it disappears. So like I was looking, I always like to try and pour a dram to go with the whiskeys we're reviewing. I have no bourbon in the house because my wife, my wife loves bourbon, and God bless her soul, she drinks all my bourbon. So uh I don't have a bourbon available to drink. We put the kids to bed and like to enjoy a glass of bourbon, is like we're celebrating the day. And like it's we just it's like one pour, but if you do that seven days a week, you can go through bourbon pretty pretty fast, 100%. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

You know, you know what I uh warmed up the for this episode with? I was like, what's a nice what's a nice, easy drinking bourbon? So I poured my blantons, and like, nope, this isn't gonna do it. Put that way. Wild turkey rare breed.

SPEAKER_06 2:32

Yeah, I love that one. Yeah, that's yeah. I like wild turkey, dude. I just do it. It's I'm a wild turkey guy. I had wild turkey rare breed in my house last week, it's gone.

SPEAKER_05 2:43

Lisa drink it all.

SPEAKER_06 2:44

There she was. Looking at you, Lisa. It's yeah, it's uh I poured uh Weller uh antique for my warm-up dress, and it that's it's my favorite Weller. I like it, and it was also the closest in ABV to the ones we're drinking tonight. Everything else is like like it's like Boulder Cast Strength, it's Boulder Ryan Engen that I have on my shelf. And I was like, I'm not blowing my palate out on a 68% bourbon before we get going.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Yeah, I probably should have the Blatten's was too low. I probably should have gone with like I don't know, what's Woodford Reserve double oaked? Is that still pretty low? Oh really?

SPEAKER_06 3:29

It's 45? 40. I I think it's like 45 or 46. Yeah, I think you're right.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

But I'm the I'm the same way. I have like bad cast strength, or I have like the low ABB. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:43

So we we should preface all this. This inner this episode was kind of a little bit wasn't gonna happen, was gonna happen. There's a whole bunch of stuff around bourbon in Canada right now. Uh, and so we decided to do it because we thought it'd be an interesting topic to talk about, and and we are gonna get into it with the guest, um, Mr. Ray Daniel, who'll be coming on with us right away here. But maybe we should just get right into that. We we just recorded what a week ago? Week and a half 11 days ago. It was 11 days ago. I know. So, like we're we were good to just move on to to that. So the way we're gonna do things today is is because Ray's not in the UK, he's on the East Coast, so we're actually gonna bring him in right off the bat. Yeah, then we're gonna pull a bung, review some whiskeys, and uh and buy or not buy and all that. So it's a little bit like like we always do, we just kind of adapt to whoever we're interviewing and make it work.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

So uh I think I think doing like a full discussion on the topic of bourbon after we review these whiskeys and kind of use that as like the end cap of the uh of the show is a pretty cool way to do it. We don't usually get that opportunity when we're waking people up at five o'clock in the morning.

SPEAKER_05 5:00

And and there's there might be some people who are gonna listen to this and say, why are you even reviewing bourbon? And they'll say, like, we shouldn't be giving bourbon any attention right now. It's right, there's two provinces in the country selling it and we're giving it extra attention. Um, but we can talk about that and we can talk about maybe why maybe it's okay to like if you're looking at a small business trying to make bourbon and make a living, why do they have to suffer for the heirs of someone far, far, far above them, as uh Rob Carpenter on the last episode? Certain dictators in the world doing certain dictatory things. Yeah. Um, but you know, so we can talk about all that and it'll be a fun conversation. But I but and I think we'll have more to talk about after talks in a ray as well. So totally, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 5:50

I agree. Um all right, should we just bring him in? Let's just bring Ray in. Let's bring Ray in. All right, let's do it. What's going on, Darren Boyce? Oh, what's going on, Ray? Thanks for joining us tonight, man.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, we figured uh doing a bourbon episode in Canada uh bringing you on, seeing as you're an Irishman that was that was was selling bourbon in Canada. Um we'll go over all that, but uh yeah, thanks for coming on.

SPEAKER_06 6:30

It's hey, thanks for having me. What we got three Canadians talking to an Irishman about bourbon. There's a joke here.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

Yeah, there is multiculturalism at its finest police.

SPEAKER_05 6:46

Three Canadians and an Irishman start a bourbon podcast and go.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Well, at least we're drinking Guinness, though. Yeah, that's true. There you go. Look at that exactly. I got the extra stout tonight.

SPEAKER_05 7:01

They're all good. The punchy one. If I'm being completely honest here, and maybe we could talk about Guinness for a bit in a bit here after we introduce if we're being completely honest, Sean. You told me about the extra stout, it's not for me. I'd like the the old-fashioned, just the standard Guinness. I don't need anything different. That's just my take.

SPEAKER_01 7:23

See, for me, if I'm gonna grab an Irish stout, I'm grabbing Murphy's, but it's so hard to find here. Yeah, Murphy's Murphy's is better.

SPEAKER_06 7:34

It's Trav, you got to uh if you ever get over to Dublin to the Guinness storehouse, they have like this VIP tasting there, and you taste through like five different Guinness recipes, they take you through like oh, it's it's awesome, man. You would love it.

SPEAKER_05 7:52

My wife and I are saving up travel points right now for for a trip to Ireland, and so if we go, there's two things. I'm doing that, and Ray Daniel's gonna be our tour guide. That's two things that are gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Don, first of all, uh secondly, if you go to the Guinness Brewery, um you know you've got the storehouse, and that's kind of all the the real interactive stuff, and it's pretty cool. Um, but they also have an outlet, if you want to call it that, called the Open Gate Brewery. Oh, yeah. Um, which opens you know a couple hours every day, but it's basically the playground for the master brewers. So it's all stuff that you're just working on and figuring stuff out. Hop house 13, I think, was the the biggest thing that's come out of there. Uh, but it's really, really cool to just try like something that a brewer went, hey, I wonder what would happen if we did this. So awesome.

SPEAKER_05 8:46

That sounds like the like the Hollywood distillery of Guinness brewing. Yeah, pretty much. Just like we'll just make something different every day and see what happens.

SPEAKER_06 8:56

See what happens. That's awesome. Okay, uh, let's let's talk about bourbon. That's that's what we're here for tonight. Uh so Ray, can I just want you to take us back a little bit because you uh you worked with Beam Sun Tory, is that correct? Uh how many years were you with Beam? Actually, today would have been eight. So just shy of eight years. Just shy of eight years. Um, but you're originally from Ireland. Yeah, correct. So, so when did you come over to Canada and like give us a little bit of the background as to like, okay, so Irishman moves to Canada. Uh, like lead us up to how you got into doing this.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

So I uh I moved here in 06, uh the end of 06, and um got a a job with some. I only actually came for a year, that was the the plan. Um I got a job working for a hospitality company downtown Toronto, um, which is unfortunately longer no longer around. Um, but they uh they gave me the option at the time it was really, really hard to find uh chefs and hospitality management. Um there was wasn't a whole lot of money in it either, so it was kind of hard to to find local. Um so they had the opportunity of keeping me, asked if I was interested in doing that. So we kind of went through the process of of that, which took years. Um and then yeah, after I think I was there for about the same about seven years or so. Um I went to work for Delta Hotels originally, who were then bought very, very shortly after by Mario Hotels. Um and went to open up a new hotel for them. It was their flagship hotel in in downtown Toronto. Um, but they were opening a whiskey bar and they had an amazing team and that they had brought in as far as F and B management to kind of get the whole thing up and running, but nobody really the whiskey bar was an idea that was thrown out one day, and everyone went, Yeah, cool, let's do that, but nobody had a clue of how to actually go about that. Okay. Um, so I've been curating the the whiskey program at the embassy for probably my last six years there. Um so I ended up coming in, um, taking over that spot, was there for just over four years. Um, and you know, we did really, really well there. Like we were uh a busy little outlet, you know. We were a very small team. There was only about four of us, uh 76 seats, you know. Um but yeah, we won uh Marriott Canada Bar of the Year, I think in our second year, Marriott North America Bar of the Year in our third year. Um we kind of evolved ourselves pretty quickly. Originally we were just gonna sell Canadian-made whiskey, and that was it. No vodka, gin, beer, wine, just Canadian-made whiskey, yeah. Um, which was an incredibly novel idea. But as far as actually running an outlet that wants to make money and keep people employed, it was not.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Right.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

Um, so once we kind of opened ourselves up a little bit more to some uh some more global offerings, we kind of jumped pretty much from 80 some odd whiskeys on our back bar to just shy of 600 over the course of you know, probably about four months. Um and yeah, it really, really became a uh a very, very good great outlet. But during that time, I was dealing with all of the suppliers and started developing relationships. Um, one in particular very, very tight relationship was with uh Beam Sentauri, as they were recalled at the time. Yeah, so yeah, my predecessor went to to move on. He was moving into the um the Scotch portfolio end of the business with within Sentauri. So the American whiskey job was kind of up for grabs. Uh so yeah, I applied for that and 2018 started. And then here we are.

SPEAKER_06 12:50

And here you are, because uh so that that's all so cool. But now here we are because you're not with Beam anymore. Yep. So what like what's happening now with you? Uh just just just hanging, just hanging.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Love it. Yeah, I remember I remember the first time I I reached out is to see if you wanted to come on. You were like in California or something, just like on the beach, and then you're like, listen, I'm too drunk to talk about this. I was like, yeah, hey man, go do your thing, do your thing.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

I was like, you know what? This sounds like an amazing idea. Way too drunk to commit to anything. So uh can we talk tomorrow? Is that cool?

SPEAKER_01 13:30

And a couple a couple months later, we came back to it.

SPEAKER_02 13:33

Yeah, yeah. Um, I mean, we we got an opportunity to um kind of take some time. You know, I haven't really taken I haven't had time off, like an extended extended period of time off, pretty much since I was like 14. Right. Um, so we kind of decided to take to make the most of it. Um, my wife's uh father lives down in California, so we went down there for a few weeks just to kind of visit down something we hadn't done in many years. Um, and then I came home for like a day and flew back to Ireland and spent some time with my parents. Um my wife joined about a week later, so we had a good bit of time over there. Just you know, avoiding reality, really. Yeah, yeah. Um, and yeah, we kind of well once we got back to Toronto, I was like, okay, let's kind of figure out what's what's up now. So yeah, you know, I'm still still trying to keep uh pretty tight in with the industry and you know, kind of tracking how the industry is doing. Um doing a couple little bits here and there, but um as far as representing a brand, um you know, doing a job like that is it's it's a much bigger commitment, I think, than a lot of people imagine. Yeah, and you really got to have to find a brand and pick a brand that you're gonna be happy saying the exact same sentences over and over again every single day of your life, right? Um and for it to still mean something to you six or seven or eight years later, right? So um yeah, it's still in kind of the the fielding calls section of the the career advancement, if that makes any sense.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

It's funny because we failed to mention that you are back-to-back Canadian brandmaster of the year, according to the um whiskey explorer awards, and that's that's a proud that's an industry people public voted on awards. So, and it's funny because the write-up for this year at the very end, it says you're no longer with your company, and you're the most sought-after free agent in the Canadian brand bastard world. And I laugh because we're obviously hockey fans and you know, free agency, and it's just it it made me laugh when that sentence was on there.

SPEAKER_02 15:45

First time I read it, I texted Mike Breespois, um, who operates the the awards in the magazine, and was like, you know, this is I'm using just using this in my resume now. Like, I'm I'm not gonna bother writing anything else. I'm just gonna send people the link to this article because it reads like I paid someone to write it like that. But uh yeah, no, it was uh listen, you know, I in time you get to be acknowledged for your contributions is amazing. Um, it's something I've never really tried to do. I've never kind of entered my day-to-day work going, okay, I need to win this or win this or win this. Uh, I think that's actually how you become a really bad brand of actor, um, when you're putting kind of yourself and your own personal success ahead of that of the brand. Um, but I mean to be acknowledged once is truly incredible twice, uh, is mind-blowing. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

We have two back-to-back winners on this podcast right now. That is right, and only one one-time winner.

SPEAKER_05 16:45

I I don't like to, I don't want to say I'm gonna be less humble than Renee. I I'm trying to win all these awards. Um I'm I'm doing whatever it takes to win these awards, but we were back to back. We were two out of three years, so I'm not quite back-to-back status. Yeah, I'm two out of three. Not not everybody can be, you know. We can't. That's that's why I wanted to point it out. We're not equal. We are not, I am not worthy. Oh no, no, I wouldn't go that far. Ray, you had um, so you went obviously from running the bar and doing some of that stuff. I just I want you to go back kind of like to the early beam days, yeah, because I've always only worked in this industry for like real small companies, and I have this kind of line like everyone in this industry starts as a bartender or working in a liquor store. And I worked at a liquor store, you worked as a bartender, but I've always worked more for smaller companies in this in this industry. You went and worked for one of the big, big players, yeah. And I just wanted to kind of get a little insight from you, just like what that's like. And I know you talked about a little bit about saying the same lines over and over and over again, and I'm pretty sure that's more the case with the bigger agents, the bigger companies, because they have like almost rules, like, no, this is our this is our messaging, um, per se. Or to me, that's how it feels, right? So I just maybe give us a little behind the scenes on how that all you don't have to slam them.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Um it's more of like oh no, I look, I'll be completely honest with you. You know, I I would find it hard to find things too slam um about like the Sentauri. Um it really was great. Um I I do find that in the way a lot of the the bigger companies, especially when you're looking at the massive global um players, you know, like the Agile's Brennan Ricardo, Sentauri, Global Space, stuff like that, um they are incredibly organized and uh have kind of a very, very definite vision um for how things work globally and how they want the next five, 10, 15, 20 years to roll out, right? Um but as far as the the day-to-day in the field, what your consumer is actually hearing and feeling and seeing on a day-to-day basis, there's very, very little emphasis put on that unless somebody actually takes the reins and does it themselves, right? Um so we had talking points, um, which are essentially, I mean, I'm sure you know, working in a liquor store, you've seen a million sales sheets over the course of time, you know, when brands come in and say, Hey, here's something that we're releasing, right? That's every talking point that you're ever going to be given in a BA role, right? So really kind of how how I approached the role was um I wanted to make sure that I was representing first of all Fred and Freddie and the generations of their family that came before them um correctly. So a lot of it was spending time reading their book, spending time talking to them. How do they feel about things? It's hearing their story. Um luckily, you know, the Bean family being around for so long, there's a lot of literature that has been written about it over the years, so you you can really kind of um deep dive into the brands and into the family. Um but then also you know, I really like to spend a lot of time at the distillery because I feel as well as being the voice of you know Fred and Freddie and their family, you're also the voice of the guys in the warehouse and uh guys in the bottling line, folks in the gift shop, you know, everybody down there, you're kind of the the local audience's gateway to that kind of experience. Um, so a lot of it was really just you know how you as an individual, and and it's weird. I mean, if if you were to take, you know, myself and say uh maybe Adam, who who is the the senior guy down in the US and Tim, who's the global guy uh based out of New York, and had the three of us present the same three whiskeys, you're gonna have three completely different uh presentations, right? Because we were always allowed kind of to to be ourselves and bring what we thought was important to the role. Um so you know, as far as being super, super strict on what you had to say, what you didn't have to say, um is that it wasn't so much like that. I was being maybe a little bit hyperbolic about saying the same thing every single day, but you know, the reality of it is we had you know I mean countless skews that we could talk about from our distillery, but you we have priority skews in the market, right? So even though I could spend all day talking about Claremont Steep if that wasn't what we were pushing at the time, you're talking about Basil Hayden or Jim Beanie Black or whatever. So it's really narrowing down what you can really convey to people. Um but yeah, so that's kind of why it it it tends to be a little um you have to be really, really intimate. And I think the yeah, it's kind of as I said earlier, the the big biggest thing and the easiest way to be a good brand ambassador is to make sure that your job is to be there for the brand first and then the categories. Second, and if you get anything from it, that has to be so far down the line.

SPEAKER_05 22:04

Right. I went I went to your um to your master class, not it was two years ago at uh when we were at the church. Oh, in Ottawa, I guess. Yeah, in Ottawa for Mike Breeze for the uh Whiskey Wonderland. And I specifically, because you had just won the award for it, I was like, I gotta go see this Ray Daniel guy and see what he's all about. And once you get past the Irish accent talking about bourbon part, which was a little bit odd for me. Um once you got over that, I found kind of what you just said, like how you like to go visit the distillery, and it really felt like you were just a part of that company and you weren't working for Beam. You weren't, it just kind of felt like you were a part of the company. And I always say the best ambassadors tell stories, and and you would you were telling stories that made us feel like we were something that you can go to a masterclass, a hundred masterclasses, and if they're just gonna tell you about the whiskeys in the distillery and that you're you're never really feeling like you're a part of something special. Um, but you do you really did seem to capture like that essence of the distillery and what made it unique and and the history and all that. So, yeah, I would say you you nailed it is what I'm saying. Yeah, thanks, man.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

Yeah, I like personally, I I hate like sales pitches. I can't stand being pitched to. Um, so kind of that was my big thing when I started the role was I never wanted to have a presentation in any way, shape, or form, even if it was a sales pitch, uh, that felt like a sales pitch, you know, because that's not that's not why I took the job. I took the job to bring people into that world to make them hopefully make them uh feel a part of it, right? And not just feel like somebody was there talking at them, it was somebody who was there to to really just give them an experience of what is a day like at the JZB Basilian Company, right? Makersmark or Yamazaki or wherever. So cool.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

Yeah, definitely. Um like obviously you were a guest on our my former podcast that we were all involved with, um, and we hit it off because I may be corrected, but you're from the town of Kilbagan.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Just outside of it, yeah. So uh town of Kilbagan is small. Um, but have you had an opportunity to get over there yet?

SPEAKER_01 24:21

Not to Kilbagan. I've I have an open invite to go sleep on the grounds in a tent, and they will let me come and see the water wheel and all that, but yes.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

Yeah, it's so it's it's small. Um every town in that area of Ireland is pretty small. Um, but there's essentially a uh highway, a motorway that runs along the side of Kilbegan, and that's kind of where three counties meet. So you have County Westmead, County Offaly, and Kenny Kildare. Um, so just across the highway will be Kenty Kildare, that's where I'm from. Okay. Uh you're talking, you're talking miles.

SPEAKER_06 24:54

It's you're like you're like dead smack in the middle of the island.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you're you know, driving, you're what uh you're about an hour from Dublin and about an hour and 20 from Galway.

SPEAKER_06 25:07

So that's amazing.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

You're almost right in the middle of the country, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

It's almost like the perfect place to be after I've toured the island, and now it's like that would be perfect to go wherever you want to go.

SPEAKER_02 25:20

It it is, you know. I mean, it's there's not many options of place to stay. I will give you that heads up.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Um maybe that's why they offered me a tent on the ground.

SPEAKER_02 25:30

Yeah, yeah. It might have sounded like a little bit of a charming joke, but it was probably deadly seriously. Um but you know, I I think Ireland is it's really such a a wonderful country, and it's cool that so many people come to visit and they spend time in Dublin and usually Galway and Killarney or Cork or you know, kind of one of the the big uh cities, the kind of cities that are maybe a bit more manicured for um for people coming over to visit and give us all that money. Um, but when you get down to somewhere like you know, kind of Kilbeg and kind of that sort of area of Kildare and Offaly and the Midlands, I mean you're seeing like to me what Ireland is, you know, kind of the island I kind of grew up in, right? Where you know everybody walking out the street, you know, there's you know the smell in the air of just peat, peat smoke, right? And because you're literally on a bog, right? Like, you know, the the smoke is there because the buddy went down last week and cut a bunch of turf out of his his uh his plot, and that's what that's how they're heating their house. That's it, you know. Um, so I I think you get like a lot of the things that people view as being the other romantic side of Ireland. I think that's kind of more what it is, certainly what it is for me. Uh, but it is boring as all hell.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

It's funny because when when we were there, we spent 10 days and we kind of did the full circle, except when we hit uh Sleago, we went inland to Athlone to go to Sean's bar, and then we went right back out to Galway. Um but I remember distinctly being 28 degrees Celsius and still going through these small towns, and all you can smell is peat in the air. You're like, how but it's because that's what they use to cook and everything. And it oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:16

I mean, when I was growing up, we had a peat range, you know. So that like that not only heated your house, but that was what you put your pods on top to boil the water to make tea or stew or whatever was to being made, right? Like that was my grandparents had one until I mean relatively recently. I didn't mean they've been dead for quite a while, but like that house until relatively recently still had, you know, so it's uh it's still uh definitely not as common as it used to be. Like we have like electricity and stuff now, but um I was about to ask, actually, which is like a really cool thing. Um but yeah, it's it's still and it's you know something that I I really hope we never lose because it's it's such a to me, it's such a massive part of the culture that a lot of us, even as Irish people, don't really think about it until until these things are taken away from us, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Well, it's funny because like Scottish whiskey is synonymous with peat smoke, and I remember driving, we were in Donegal, and we were driving south, like around our dairy, somewhere around there. And we came across, and literally there was people out in a field cutting peat and stacking it. And it was like my first kind of visual of that. And then I remember being in Galway in the hotel we stayed at. There was uh like a gas station, a fuel station, and they were selling briquettes, and I was like, this is so cool. So, of course, what do I do? I come home and on Amazon I ordered a case of 32 briquettes. And of course, when it arrived, I was at work and my wife went to pick it up from the post office, and there was about a four foot eleven woman working at the post office, and my wife's five foot four, and the two of them, I guess, struggling to get it into the back of our truck because it weighed a ton, and it was so funny. But yeah, I still have two bricks left of that because I've given them out and it's a present.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

I I'd buy these little, they're like very, very, very mini pieces of of Irish peat, and I'll just burn them in the house every now and again just to kind of remember that smell, you know. Um, especially in the fall. I mean, open the door on the balcony, burn some peat. Oh fuck yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

That's yeah, I have I have uh Heberdian Candle Company, and they have peat smoke scented candles. Yeah, same thing. And I have one of those, like every gift shop has the little cottage with the little like Yeah, you put the thing in the Of course I have that, but yeah, no, it's the that smell is awesome. Like we used to have fires in our backyard, and I would throw a full B and M brick that was like a brick size onto the fire when it was down smouldering, and people in the neighborhood would be like, What the hell are they burning in their fire?

SPEAKER_05 30:05

But it's so it's sweet, and it's oh yeah, I was in your backyard for a COVID fire one year, Sean, and you threw one of those in, and we just sat around just drinking whiskey all night. That was great. Isn't it wonderful? Yeah, that's really nice.

SPEAKER_06 30:19

Okay, I I got a question here. So we are uh like four guys that love like you know, like I I love Scotch, I love Irish whiskey, um, I drink bourbon. Uh so my question for you, Ray, is as like an Irishman that was you know representing bourbon brands in Canada, um, like I want you to give us a pitch. What would you say to like a Scotch or Irish whiskey lover to persuade them to drink bourbon?

SPEAKER_02 30:57

Um I think the honestly, the biggest one, um, and it it goes for Canadian whiskey as well, a lot of the time. Forget about that night when you were 16 or 17 and you drank too much. Right? Because that's 99% of the time why a lot of people kind of you know in their 30s, 40s don't drink because I had that one night and I don't, right? Um and it's it's also to to remember that you know what you have been given over the years might not have necessarily been the great representation of what bourbon is. So go into it with uh you know with kind of open eyes. I always like to at least get some information from people so that you could stare them the right way, right? Um, you know, if someone says I I just I really don't like spicy, right? Well then you know, giving them a bottle of a very high rye bourbon is probably going to be a bad idea, right? I kind of leaning them more towards something that was weeded, maybe or something like that, right? Um and that's again, you know, one of the really, really great parts of of kind of a job like your brand ambassador is that you get to be able to have those conversations with people. Um, a lot of the time if you ask the right questions, people will kind of tell you what they want to drink.

SPEAKER_04 32:10

Right.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

They just don't know it, right? But you know what it is. And again, it's I always thought it was a really good mark of a great bartender. Is if somebody come in and say, you know, I'm gonna move for something sweet but not super sugary, but a little sour. But I also don't want it to be like a whiskey sour. I want something that says a bit more kind of depth to it. Cool. Uh, what do you like? Do you like whiskey? Do you like focus? Do you like gin? And being able to just pull that stuff out of your head and boom, here you go. Yeah, the right quest will do it. As far as just kind of like, you know, elevator pitching with people, uh what I always try to do is just best explain to them what bourbon is, right? You know, what you're most likely going to find from it. Um, give those kind of cold notes of it and say which of these sends the best tea, and you can kind of lean from there again into which way it works.

SPEAKER_06 32:59

Love it. It's uh do you have a a bourbon that you think is uh too overhyped? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:10

Um yes. Um now that you're not with any agency, you can say whatever you want.

SPEAKER_06 33:18

You're a free agent. You can say whatever you want. This is a safe place, right? Also think about where I might want to end up in the next couple.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Don't worry, don't worry. We're only up to 17 listeners monthly, you know.

SPEAKER_05 33:30

So it's probably not gonna influence the CEO for Buffalo Trace is not one of the four people. My mom stopped listening, we're down to 13.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

Well, but you know what, though my my wife might actually follow, so that's we got that's one, okay. Oh, all right, oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Um overhyped, sure, absolutely. I mean, I I would say 99% of it is overhyped, right? 99% of of whiskey out there is overhyped, I personally think. Um you know, it's it's a luxury, it's it's a luxury, it's a luxury good. Um, but I think what we all need to remember is that it's it's a drink, it's something that you're meant to enjoy. Um, this is not something that's going to you know put another man on the moon or or you know, we're all gonna be able to cure cancer with it. If we could, it would be fucking amazing. Um but like some people take things just way, way, way, way, way too seriously. Um, I think that drives into the old you know things being overhyped. Um yeah, it's Pappy, uh it's it's kind of unfortunate for Pappy, I think, in a lot of ways, because gen genuine isn't a it's not a bad whiskey by any stretch of the imagination. But when you're seeing it become anything that becomes a status symbol, and you're looking at, you know, there's no whiskey, nothing ever made that's worth four thousand, five thousand dollars a bottle, right? It's just that's my personal opinion. None of them are um there are ones that I could I brands I really really really respect, um, but just for some reason have never done it for me personally. Wild Turkey is a really good example, you know. What the the Russell family have done for the for the industry is it's immeasurable um and truly incredible people. And the people that work out are the Sillery Awesome. Something about the taste of a lot of the whiskeys they make that just doesn't sit with me, um which is which is fine, right? Um but I yeah, I think there's probably a lot that are overhyped. Um you know, you can't really do anything but but blame you know also a lot of the companies because yeah, you know, overhyped is is good in a lot of uh a lot of circles within the certainly larger producers. Um and then you know, when you look at I mean Scotch whiskey, I think is a is a great example. I was just going through some numbers earlier on today, and you know, seeing the softness in the Scotch whiskey market right now, um and going through kind of all the distribution numbers pretty much for like the top four or five markets globally, 90% of that softness can be attributed to price. And um price production sure has increased, um, but not to the level where we need to see $30, $40, $50 jumps in a 12-year-old uh age to aid in whiskey, right? Yeah, um so you know, I think I think you know one of one of the biggest uh threats that the whiskey industry is facing right now is just greed. Right? Right. Um and I think you know that does lead into a lot of the kind of brands becoming overhyped, you know, oh my god, you know, for 12 years old to be 200 bucks a bottle, it must be amazing. It's like, well, no, but the CEO's bowlers was, right?

SPEAKER_05 36:48

Yeah, yeah. There's there's a there's something what you just talked about there, Ray. And I think this is this to me is where bourbon kind of finds a little bit of a pocket in the market that Scotch can't hit. And it is you can get a good ball of bourbon in Canada for a lower price than you can get a good ball of scotch. I I truly believe that you can go to the market and get a or uh your local whiskey shop and get a good ball of bourbon in that $60, $50, $60 range. There's not a lot of scotch that I would call good or really good in that range. I would say next to none. And and I think that's a pocket that of the market that it kind of just owns.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

Absolutely. I mean, you know, one one of the things that I wouldn't say initially it could have attracted me to the bourbon industry because it was something I didn't really fully grasp until I was already in it. Um, but there's a much different mindset around pricing when it comes to uh bourbon than say Scotch. I will just use Scotch because it's they're the easiest target for this. Um bourbon, I think has much, it's much more deeply rooted in community. Um you've got distilleries in remote, pretty much for the most part, fully remote areas, right? Where you're employing most of the town um for for generations upon generations upon generations. Not only are they generations of employees, but they're also generations of your customers as well. Um you know, it's I think it was Fred, I think it was Fred one day that uh said, you know, well, we're not making this for it to sit on someone's shelf. You know, that's not why we're doing this, it's not why we go to work every day, right? We're doing this people can drink it. So what's the point in going through all that effort, all that RD for a new product, and then have it hit it hit the price or hit the shelf at a price where no one can afford it, right? It doesn't make any sense. Um, you know, I have had to have a lot of kind of heated conversations over the years where you know we'd be bringing new products in and I'd see the price that they were aiming for. And I'd be like, no, like please, please just do a straight conversion with the US. Right? Like we we want people to drink this and they're just not going to open the bottle at a hundred bucks a bottle. You know, if if we can sell it for 75, well, let's bring it in at 75 and see what happens with it. Um, and I mean we I remember we we saw it, like, you know, the just bookers alone, the price of bookers jumped in the eight years that I was there, right? I mean, there was a point where here in Toronto, you know, as a bar operator, if you wanted bookers, you had to know the day it was coming out so that you could go to the store and pick it up because it was gone in a couple hours. And you know, now you can go for six months after it gets released to buy it, right? Because there is a threshold that people are that the general drinker are willing to pay, and it is around about that 100 bucks, right?

SPEAKER_05 39:52

Once it goes above that, why is that why is that number higher? And it because it's kind of a weird because I think that number is higher for Scotch drinkers than it is for bourbon. So, why is that? Because I've always wondered that because it's kind of the same for me. I'm kind of like after about a hundred bucks for bourbon, it needs to be like a pretty special bourbon, whereas for Scotch, it's like a different. So, what what makes that happen?

SPEAKER_02 40:18

Like expectation, probably, you know. Um when we kind of started seeing that that first big massive jump in um to towards like high age statement or towards just everyone released an age statement within the scotch industry. So going back, say, from starting off say the 60s, but really kind of coming up towards the the mid-80s, where whiskey was on the decline anyway. Um it was it was expensive comparatively, right, compared to to vodka, compared to g and or whatever, right? So there was always really that expectation that you were going to spend a lot of money on it, right? Whereas when we're looking at spirits that were made in North America, we were paying cheaper price because we didn't have international freighting, we didn't have all this sort of stuff, right? So one started high and one started low, and you can you know you you can only increase at a certain increment before people start to go, nah no, we're not doing it, right? Um so I would say there is an expectation that you're just going to pay more for Scotch. I mean, it is, you know, I know bourbon is an important product here, but it's something that we can ship up on trucks, right? Right. You know, it's so that the cost is is not as high as getting stuff from Japan or from Ireland or Scotland or whatever. Um and I think you know, marketing as well. The it's bourbon industry has done an awful job of marketing when it comes to outside of the US, right? The Scotch whiskey industry did an amazing job of you know, so they had they've already kind of placed themselves in a luxury high-end position, whereas bourbon was the cowboy drink in the saloon and the western movies, right? And that's something that you're gonna get expectation, that's something you're gonna expect to have to go and spend. Plus, also, I mean, dude, you can go to the store and buy a bottle of Jim Bean back for $35, $40. And I mean, that's gonna, in my personal opinion, gonna wipe 99% of the bourbons out there, right? Like, you know, the quality can be found at a low cost.

SPEAKER_05 42:23

Yeah, well, Scot Scotland's stealing all the American actors for for their commercials, too.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

So yeah, you know, nothing's ever gonna be. I don't know if you remember this or not, but uh do you remember Johnny Walker did an advertisement with Robert Carlisle? Scottish actor. I don't remember that. He's uh he was in train spotting with the other six Scottish actors. Um but he's been in, he's been in like a bunch of stuff over the years, 28 days later. I think he was in. Um, but it's one shot five minutes, five and a half minutes long of just him walking down this random Highland Road in Scotland, um, telling the story of Johnny Walker. But it's all taken, it's all one take the entire way down. Um personally, I think it's the best whiskey ad of all time. Seriously, check it out because it is. I'm gonna look that up.

SPEAKER_01 43:17

Yeah, you know what? I have so my work computer, actually, my YouTube account, because I mostly watch it at work when I'm getting paid. Um I have the first like 13 videos that are saved on my YouTube account are all whiskey ads. And like there's some very, very cool ones. And that one I think is one that I have saved there.

SPEAKER_02 43:41

Yeah, it's it's uh it's it's remarkable. I mean, I think in in every way. Um but you know, that's actually a great example, you know. Like you'd have a company like Johnny Walker who will they're so big, I mean they don't they don't need to go to that effort to do something like that, but they will, right? Because it's a great way to showcase. Is what your rat is about. We don't really get that in the American whiskey industry. Right.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

I mean you get Matthew McConaughey. Nathan. Well, Nathan Ratliff. You get the celebrity, the celebrity whiskeys.

SPEAKER_02 44:15

You get the celebrity endorsements, but yeah, I think that's the ad. The ad is, oh look, it's that guy.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:21

And that's there's nothing else, right? No substance to it.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

Yeah, very true, very true. Okay, so there's obviously an elephant in the room when it comes to bourbon, um, with our neighbors to the south. Let's just get into it. Um so the tariffs and everything that happened along that, including the pro most provinces stopping bringing it in. Um what's your as you now no longer have an umbrella over you, what's your take on all of it as somebody who did bring in and sell bourbon to now kind of being on the outside looking in?

SPEAKER_02 45:03

Uh honestly, my my take or my opinion on it um has never really changed, you know. Um it's something that I can kind of see, it's almost like there's two different ways of seeing it, right? Um as far as for as a retaliatory action to another country imposing tariffs, um I I get it being you know a great shot across the bow, and I think it was a necessary one. Um but the reality of it is that you know a lot of that stuff never really came to fruition, right? Um I think when it comes to any one country threatening the sovereignty of another country, um, maybe I'm a little bit more sensitive to that considering where I'm from, but I 100% think that it does warrant um a higher action. Um so something like this is massively warranted. Um on the other side of it, there's the fact that you know, one, two, three months let them know you you mean business. Sure, absolutely. When you start to get into um you know the one year plus of it, and companies start to see huge declines, you know. I mean, I was pulling some numbers to say this how look, so I wanted to have a cheat sheet here because I kind of figured this would come up. But I mean you could you take the LCBO loan, right? Um, which would be Canada's biggest you know sell. Um pre-ban were looking at roughly 956 million US dollars a year, right? That dropped to zero. But a lot of the social programs in place in the province of Ontario are in place and funded by taxes that are brought in from the LCBO. Um, you also have a lot of people, uh, myself included, but not just limited to myself, whose livelihood relied on. You know? So now not only do we not have those people contributing positively to society, but we are also now in a position where you have to draw from social services in order to get close to staying uh with your head above water. So, you know, for the first few months, yeah, cool. But then after that, you're kind of feels almost like you're gambling with with your population just to make a point. Um, and you know, I I do know that a lot of provinces have come back and said, you know, you know what, we think it's time, let's let's start reintroducing this stuff to ourselves. We don't want it sitting in our warehousing anymore. It's costing us an absolute us an absolute fortune, which means us, you know, because we are those government uh that they get their money to operate from us. Um the LCBO alone, you know, it it uh it rolled off, it destroyed two million dollars US worth of product. Right? Uh now that's that's not product that the that this government had paid for because of the consignment rules within the LCBO. That's two million dollars of product that was sitting being paid to warehouse until it's spoiled, paid to be um destroyed just for the sake of throwing a finger up at someone who just for being realistic isn't watching, right? Um, I think there's there there are better ways to do this. Um, you know, I I my concern from day one was gonna be the impact it would have on Canadians, um outside of just what our options are for purchasing stuff on the show fire. There are real life um yeah consequences to a lot of this stuff. Um but as I said, I get it to a to a degree, right? Like yeah, so it's it's it's it's hard. It's a very, very difficult, uh nuanced, I guess you'd say, um, situation. And I think something that being realistic we don't need to be in, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:11

Um I think I think you summed it up perfectly. It's kind of how I've felt all along. Now, I will admittedly say I haven't purchased a bourbon since February of 2025. Um just kind of on principles, but I get that me doing that now, me alone, I'm not gonna have any effect, but people in general. Um you're not hurting the people that made these policies, you're hurting the people that are producing it and selling it and um importing it, importing it, yeah, exactly. So, you know, there's you know, PWS, they were they were they got their first check and then now they have nothing because they had to lose their American brands. Like, get it.

SPEAKER_02 50:02

I was just sitting there going, yeah, man.

SPEAKER_01 50:05

But but like like my my dad, uh I've said it before, he manages a BC liquor store. He's a he's a government employee, he manages a BC liquor store, and not the biggest one in the city that he's in, but we've when I've been there, we went and looked at the the big signature store, and he's like, Yeah, these four shelves was where all the American stuff is, and now it's sitting there with you know Nanaimo Bar, Liqueir, and and you're just like, Oh, okay. And it's just it's weird, but in a sense, I get it. But like you said, in a sense, it it's it's a back ass word way of trying to go about everything.

SPEAKER_02 50:45

Yeah, it's it's it's a really it's it's odd, right? And I mean, I think for an industry as well, right? You know, this is this is a it's essentially a an era of prohibition that we're in, right? You know, the government have struck structurally put in place rules to stop us from being able to purchase a certain alcoholic product, right? So they're they're put they've put that prohibitive stance in place. Um, so for an industry to be able to navigate that, right? I mean, industries can navigate cyclical uh declines because they're all used to them, they know it's gonna happen, they know what you know eventually that bubble will burst, and they kind of have an idea of how to get out of it. But it's gonna be really interesting to watch how the US industry tries to go out with this one because we've never really had a structural decline in place where you know it's it's it's not so much about oh well, so not the hot thing right now, but it eventually will be. There's gonna be another you know, a madman esque TV show, and all of a sudden people are gonna want to purchase you know whiskey again. It's it's gonna be, I think, a much bigger deal. And you know, we're talking American whiskey, but but US alcohol in general, you know, I mean US wine is what's a 78% decline? That's $357 million U uh Canadian business. It's US dollars, yeah. That's that was their their their fall. Um you know uh US spirits dropped 143 million um beer brands because a lot of them were being able to are able to to move their production to places in Canada if they weren't already producing in Canada, uh, didn't see as big a drop in it, uh, or the RTD market. But you know, you're looking at wine, like that one year being down 357 million dollars, that's a that's hard to recover from.

SPEAKER_06 52:36

That's insane.

SPEAKER_05 52:38

Yeah. The thing with wine, the thing with wine is people can buy well-made wines from any other country, lots of other countries. That's that's that's kind of the weird one. Bourbon is like that's an American product. Wine is wine, and that's why I feel like the wine one probably drops so much because people have a real easy time finding other wines. Yeah, that's true. You know, from California or wherever, Oregon. Bourbon is bourbon, and that's I think why it's such an interesting conversation to have.

SPEAKER_02 53:17

So you actually brought up a good one there because wine had this really weird creep, price creep, right? Where you have people who are buying, let's just use a uh that California Chardonnay is a great example, right? I'm gonna buy that California Chardonnay because it's pretty good quality, it tastes good, and it's it's like 11 bucks a bottle, right? I'm buying it also because I do want to have that bottle of Chevlis, but that bottle's 16 bucks, and I don't want to spend 16 bucks. Yeah, that Chablis has maybe increased by a dollar eighty over the course of four or five years. That $12 bottle of California Chardonnay is now 20 bucks.

unknown 53:54

Right.

SPEAKER_02 53:55

So when you pull that off the shelf and people start looking at other countries and go, shit, I could have been drinking really good stuff from France or Italy or you know, uh Spain, Portugal for cheaper. Yeah. And straight away it's it's much it's it's an easy jump for them into a different category. Bourbon, on the other hand, I mean, look, yes, bourbon is in a name, right? So theoretically, yes, you can produce a bourbon-esque product anywhere in the world, right? Not not no bourbon, but we'll get to that later. It's fine. You you can, but what you can't do is you can't replicate 220, 230 years of RD that has been done to find those perfect ways of producing it. Um and then you also can't do it for 25 or 30 bucks a bottle. Yeah, you're doing it for 75 bucks a bottle, right? Which is again is kind of it's a little bit of a of a jump for people who are going, well, fuck, I mean, is it not just cheaper for me to get my stuff in or shipped out from Alberta now? Right? Like, you know, go on BSW and get myself sent to me, right? Rather than going and spend $75 for a bottle of Canadian-made product that is calling itself a bourbon, which is made the same way, but you know, it's so I think there's a again, it's a lot to it. It's been cool that people have had an opportunity to try uh more Canadian products, more American or more uh Scotch and Japanese and Irish and Indian all over the world. It's been great. Um, but it's probably one of the hardest ones to replicate, right? Right. Is to scratch that itch.

SPEAKER_01 55:36

Yeah, I was gonna say, like, I don't know if it was a couple months ago, three months ago now, and all of the BC and Ontario allocation for Blantons just appeared in Alberta. So you had every store with cases and cases of it, until we see today in our group chat, somebody went to Costco, and there is flats of it, like a whole palette of Blantons sitting there. And the joke is hey, if you need some letters, just go to Costco and look for the ones that you need because they're and they're selling it for like 71 bucks. Now, the price, whether that matches the quality, anybody can discuss that, but like you've never seen it at 70 bucks a bottle for the blantons, and you know, the grenade-style bottle with the horse on top is very recognizable. It's just crazy that all of Canada's shipment basically came to Alberta, and every store was like, oh, sweet, I'll bring a pallet of it, and then they're stuck with it, and now we're just seeing these price decreases. But like you said, it's the stores that ship from Alberta got a it was almost a blessing for them because they they still brought in the bourbon and they were still getting more and more people shipping it across Canada.

SPEAKER_02 56:56

Yeah like I I think Bourbon's recovery, um, and this look, this might be you know mostly pushed by by hopefulness, but you know, looking from a logical standpoint as well, I think bourbon's um reintroduction to market would probably be a lot easier um than the rest of the American-made spirits, uh, American wine, and stuff like that. Um, one because it's really, really hard to replicate. Um but you know, I did an audit of the the Albertan market um back very, very start of December. Um, so it was basically going around a bunch of different um retailers and just kind of going over numbers with them. What have you seen since you started putting stuff back on your shelves? It was coming around a time that a lot of them were just starting to um reintroduce American spirit of whiskey to flyers as well. Um something that they kind of held off quite a bit on just because they were being careful of of what the uh kind of consumer feedback might be on that. Um, but they were they were showing you know 60, 70, 75 percent um uh return custom on it. So basically they were back to about 60, 75 percent of what their sales would have been beforehand, which was strong and very um, you know, a good sign. Um but I also look at where where does bourbon's um where do the sales really come from? Right? The sales really aren't coming from us, you know. We're buying the the the high-ticket items, we're buying the rarer products, we're buying some of that. But the country is run and the industry is run on Jack Daniels, on Jim Beam White, right? On Bullet Bourbon, uh, on you know, BT to uh to a lower degree, and they're high volume plays, their concerts, their games, they're so like that. And once they're reintroduced back, 99% of people who are drinking in situations like that don't care. Right? What what am I able to get to drink? Cool, I'll have that. What's on special? What's oh, what's that cocktail? It's in a glass that lights up for the bottle. We'll have four of those, right? Um it's it's true. I mean, these are these are things that we did over the years, right? Just to drive uh sales in some of our kind of larger uh areas. So I think you know that business might come back. The barrier would be whether or not those um venues will be willing to allow the American spirit spirits back in to get a chance to recover like that. But you know, money does talk, and if if there's any sort of proof there or any sort of kind of metrics that will show that it will sell, then you know they'll they'll go to a mighty dollar. Um, but yeah, it's it's it's such a weird position for the industry to be in. Totally.

SPEAKER_06 59:50

It totally is. Okay, uh here. I'm gonna I want a three quick shot answer from you on something here. So um, in your experience, I want uh your favorite like $40 bourbon, $60 to $80 bourbon, and $100 bourbon.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:07

Okay, yeah, I think that'd be pretty easy. Uh $40 bourbon, should be black, man. Yeah. It's perfect. It really is. Yeah. Um $80. $80 is a tough one because $60 to $80.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:26

60 to 80. So that one's like uh a little bit of spread on that one.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:34

He's looking at his shelf.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:35

I can tell he's looking at I'm probably gonna I'm gonna probably go outside the beam portfolio on this one. Um Heaven Hill. What one was it? Lou Label. I can't remember what it was called. That was in around that $50, I think.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:03

It's I find that 60 to 80 is a weird category. It's a weird price point for bourbon in Canada. There's like there's like that 40 to 60, and then it and then it's like 100. And there's not a lot in the middle ground there.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:16

Yeah, yeah. Totally. That that 50 to 80 kind of category is a lot of the time, or it's the 60 to 80 is a lot of the time the products that really should be closer to 50. Uh bottom and bottom. Yeah, yeah. That's probably around about that price, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:32

Yeah. Uh checking local prices right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:37

Um, and then for the 80, I mean bakers. Oh, for the hundred? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:42

Yeah, bakers. Yeah. Baker's birthday. And you get the nice box too. The boxes. The box is nice.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:49

Sorry, Bakers does have a pretty nice bottle on it. Yeah. Um, yeah, bakers would be, yeah, definitely. Those are good. I mean, that's not being a company guy by any means, right? That's that's I think great, great product.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:03

We have another, I have another quick, quick. Oh, sorry, Sean, did you find a price?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:07

Yeah, Heaven Hill bottled and bonds, seven-year-old, sixty-eight dollars. So it's right, right smack down in the middle.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:15

Now I'm gonna look for that one, actually. Yeah, so my Ray, I give this is this is uh another quick hitter, but my wife drinks all my bourbon. Like all of it. Like, I couldn't even find a splash. You gotta find more bourbon. And I'm trying to like, what how do I how do I get her to stop? What's what's the answer? Um, you're you you want her drinking more, so I gotta find more. That's the answer.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:43

Yeah, every bit of corporate in me is going, you don't get it to stop.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:47

It's not I thought you'd have an answer like just pour her this bourbon, she'll never want bourbon again.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:53

Buy it by the case.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:54

Yeah, just buy both and get a discount.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:57

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:58

Okay, I'll let her know.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:59

Lisa okay, we'll do another quick hitter for you. What is your ultimate dream job, whiskey or otherwise?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:12

Oh man, that's that's a that's a hard one. Um I think I don't know if I actually if there is like one. Um I'm a I did my degree in music. So I think you know, if if I could do that just professionally and not have to worry about anything else in the world, then yeah, that would yeah, of course, be number one. Uh the second thing about music is that you just you can't, right? Um if you know you want to play Bon Jovi's at wedding, Bon Jovi at weddings every Friday, Saturday, Sunday go, you know, you're probably able to make some decent money out of it. But uh as far as like composing and stuff, ah you're fucked. Um I think within within the uh the whiskey industry, you know, not not every company has them, but sometimes you'll see have um uh heads of advocacy. So basically where you you build out, you know, what is the story? How could this should the story be told? Um so it's basically just kind of the brand ambassador, but you're kind of like the head of the brand ambassadors, so to speak.

unknown 1:04:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:22

Um you know, so really, really kind of delving more into the story telling end of it, and then you know, how should we be coming across? That to me has always been kind of like the the realistic dream, uh, or semi-realistic, I guess. Um, but yeah, that that to me is because I really do believe that this the strength of whiskey, of all categories of whiskey, the strength is in the story, right? Even if you just opened your distillery yesterday, right? That category, wherever you are, that industry has been around for centuries. And there's so much inbuilt into that, right? And you know, whether it's you know, here in Canada and how important the industry was, you know, for for actually building the country after confederation, you know, to Ireland, of how it was such an important part culturally, you know, as far as like actually being part of the fabric of being an Irish person. Um, and the same can be said for for Scotland, you know, for the US and how much of an impact, both negatively and positively, it has had in the realistically the short 250 years of that country has been uh you know the United States. I mean, whiskey has been ingrained in every single big moment that country has had, right? Um, and continues to be so, I guess. Um there's so many stories there, and you know, I I I I was always big on storytelling. I I believe that uh a story is important. Um, there's an old uh Irish kind of position within the community um that used to be called the Shannon. And the Shanaki was basically the storyteller, right? Because for a fairly big part of our history, we were an oral history. Right? So that's how the you know, the people who came before you, how their stories were passed down and how they were remembered was through storytelling. So the Shanachy would be the person who would relay the story of the town to the other townspeople over the course of their life. Um, and you know, everybody wants to leave an impact. Everybody wants to to leave a legacy and leave something behind after they're gone, right? And I think one of the the most magical things about being a storyteller is that you get to have that honor of of being someone's of carrying on someone's legacy and carrying on someone someone's story. Um, so yeah, being able to work around with the stories of a brand is to me, it's it's a hell of a lot more than marketing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:50

There, I gotta jump on this quick. What what is your favorite, what was your favorite Jim Beam story to tell at events? Just to just to carry on that question. Because you're a storyteller, like uh one that you were like almost every tasting, you're like, I gotta bring this art because I'm sure there's plenty of them, but oh yeah, it's it's it's been a minute.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:14

Hang on, I have to remember what we were having.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:17

Um you don't have if you uh if it's on the spot, you don't have to do it. But it's I remember one from from your uh master class. I just can't I just remember you telling a specific story and maybe like, man, that's really cool. I see Jim Beam in a different light after that. So you mean Jim Beam to person or to Brad? No, just the just the the distillery, the story, and all of it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:40

Just uh come back to me on that one. I gotta I gotta go in my head because I mean there there are there are so many of them a lot of the time. So I worked it out at one point, and if I started talking, I could go 24 hours on the distillery and the brands within it, right? Yeah, yeah. So what you would what I would do a lot of the time is during presentations, I would kind of just feel what way the crowd were leaning. You know, are they enjoying the funny approach? If not, let's go for the nerdy approach. Are they enjoying the nerdy approach? No, drop in a really bad joke, you know, kind of figure it that way. Am I being too simple? Am I being too uh technical? So a lot of the time, depending on which way you went, the different stories will pop into your head, right? Um, so a lot of the time it was like it was never ever script, ever. Which I know that some people at my company did not love. Um but yeah, I mean I've I've I've had some good stories with Beam, but I don't know how many of them I can I can tell on broadcasts, uh broadcasting. Yeah, no, I don't think I'll tell those ones. Actually, I do, I've got a couple good ones because now I can tell them. Um I went one time to uh Montreal. It was my first trip to Montreal after starting with the company. So I don't know, I was maybe with the company for two months-ish, three months. I got in and I had I'm not a great flyer anyway, uh, but when I started a job, I was a particularly bad flyer, and we had an awful flight from Toronto into Montreal. So when I got off the flight, I was like shaking. All I just wanted to do was get to my hotel and have a drink and just kind of try to calm down a little. So as I'm going in, a buddy of mine um who was with the company, kind of a branch of the company at the time, texted and said, Hey, I'm in town. Um, there's a bar closing up tonight or this week and you're having a week-long um kind of celebration. Tonight is their flare competition. Do you want to come and check it out? It's like, sure. Yeah, cool, I'll go. So we rock up, and it turns out that in Montreal, when you close your bar, even if you have another location, you can't just bring the product with you. The product is stamped and licensed to that one specific location. Oh, interesting. So, what they were doing was they were just selling it all off. So everything was at least half price, if not more, right? So we started drinking um Booker's Whiskey Sours, and it's shocking how fast and easy they go down, right? So after about maybe hour four, I was still smoking cigarettes at a time. I went outside for a smoke, and it was like a truck hit me. You know, once the air kind of caught me, I was like, oh, this is bad. You know, this is bad. Because not only do I not know if I'll make it back to my hotel, but I've no idea where the hotel is. So I was kind of standing inside, I went back into my buddy. I was like, I I I'm tapping it, I gotta go. Like, I'm I'm reading it, I'm too good. And this is a much more legible or much more kind of coherent way I'm saying it now, right? Yeah, it's a lot more Irish and a lot more uh fluid. So I kind of walk down the street a little bit, and there's this like takeaway spot. I got I don't know, a poutine, a poutine would be the perfect thing. So I grab one and there's this little parquet, and I go and I sit on the bench at the parquet, and everything goes black. And I woke up in the morning and I was still sitting on the bench, and I still had the poutine. I didn't take it bite from it. And I had to go to work like straight. So I find my hotel, get back, shower, put on a suit, go in to these people who I mean didn't want to speak to me anyway because you know I have zero French. Um and yeah, that was, I mean, now it's a great story, but I wanted to die. Like, I wanted to be that um that's a great story, and that was like my first, like, oh, so this is what the job can be. I gotta I gotta keep an eye, I gotta keep an eye on this part of the job, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:11:56

Yeah, I was in uh pharmaceutical sales for six years, and we had head offices in Montreal, and I had several mornings with the suit and tie on in rooms with people that uh I did not want to be around.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:10

Man, the wheels can fall off real quick out there.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's a fun town, and uh it can and I'm sure I had some poutine in my hand as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:20

I mean, it's yeah, it's like it's how stereotypical can you be, right? And I probably would have found it funny if I didn't want to throw up everywhere. But so that's the the lesson of the story, kids, is to not drink Booker's uh whiskey source.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:37

That is awesome. Oh my god. That is great. Okay, so uh Ray, like based on everything we've talked about today, what where do you see bourbon going the next like five, 10, 20 years? Like you, you know, you were working alongside brands. What's your take on it? What what do you kind of predict?

SPEAKER_02 1:13:04

Um I mean, I think right now it's it's it's hard to tell, right? Because not only in Canada are you seeing a massive collapse, really, of the of the industry, but globally you're seeing it, right? I mean, Australia, it's one of the biggest markets for for um American whiskeys. You know, it's down seven percent. So you call that you know a softening of the industry, but not necessarily a collapse. But but a lot of that is driven by uh consumer sentiment. So it's anti you know American products and certainly a big focus on buying Australian-made products, 35% decrease of um shipments to the EU, right? And pretty much all of that is down to consumer sentiment, um, because the tariff never really fully um took a hold there. So you know, I I think you know, all being the status quo, we've got what another three years really, two and a half years until uh people have an opportunity to maybe even think about changing their their opinion. Um, you know, even if stuff comes to market. I think once stuff starts to come to market, yeah, American whiskey will I think rebound. It might be slow. Uh it's gonna cost companies a lot of money, right? Because they're gonna have to essentially be treating it as if they're entering the market for the first time ever, um, and not just you know, picking up at halftime kind of thing. So you know, I I think it it's gonna be a long road for the industry. Um, I I hope it rebounds um because you know we we were just getting to a really good spot, right? Like we really were just getting to a good spot, and you know, seeing that just from you know, from kind of inside the industry of what companies were lining up to start sending to Canada and start you know giving Canada allocations of. You know, we were about to to really move into the the the space of being a mature market, right? Which Canada has never had the opportunity of being. Um and we don't get that from the US, we don't or from um the Ireland and from the Scotland and even from Japan, we don't get treated like a mature market, we get treated like a small market. Um so you know, we were we were at a really, really, really good spot. Um so you know it would be great to not see all that work that everybody in the industry over the years has done all be kind of for nothing. Um I know there's a lot of people who don't want to do it again and have to start at the start, but you know, it's gonna cost companies a lot of money of um even just in goodwill gestures, right? Of like, you know, hey, you want to come down to our distillery? And you know, hey, that's you know, there's gonna be a a lot of that going. Um, you know, Kentucky Kentucky's it's a it's a weird place, right? Because you know, personally, I love it down there. And I know that it is a hotbed for everything that a lot of this uh stuff is is against, right? Um but you know when you if you're able to kind of put that aside, you know, there are a lot of really, really great people. And you look at somewhere like um like Louisville, for example, which really does rely on on urban tourism, right? You know, that city is not what you would imagine Kentucky as being, right? It's uh a very inclusive, very liberal, very kind of cool, everybody be who you are and do what you want to do, place, right? Um, accepting place. Um and they're feeling the hit, you know. Canadians make up what they say between one and three percent of people who take the bourbon trail, right? Right, one and three percent, it's still what 80,000 people who are injecting money into the local economy. Um yes, the industry, there's not that many because layoffs, but not as big as you would imagine. But when you're looking at uh facillery scaling back in production, Kentucky taxes on product barrels that are aging. So when you stop filling barrels, that dries up the taxes that go into the socially funded stuff that go into even just keeping the roads going and the schools going, it's you know, so there's so many trickle-down bad things that can come from this that you know a lot of people don't kind of really think about. And I'm sure the people at the top do they're they're very, very aware of it, right? They just don't care. Um but you know, I think being a human, we kind of have to be able to care about this stuff. And you know, nobody wants other people to just be in a in a bad place just for the sake of saying we won. It's not it's not not worth it, right? So I think it it it will be a hard run back, but you know, I say you know, you could come back in five years and we'll be back to the ex you know what what was the original what let me see her overall loss for 2025, $536 million. So are we back to $536 million of of imports?

SPEAKER_05 1:18:34

Sure, probably I can say my wife and I will be my wife will be doing her part. Well, if you keep an eye on the case, yeah, hopefully. She's gonna be she's gonna be helping along uh in her own way. I hey it's it's appreciated. Yeah, she's she's she's supporting all the industry. Uh no, this I I should I should preface this. She's gonna listen to this and be like, you make it sound like a she has one glass. That's one glass a night. It's one glass an hour response. That's not gonna keep the industry going, but she's she's she's doing her part. Every little help, every little bit helps.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:11

All right, Ray. Well, thank you so much for coming on speaking with us. Um, obviously, it's personal time of transition for you, and we will gladly let everybody know. All 16 people that listen to this, uh, when you do decide on what you're gonna do, um let us know and we'll uh we'll let people know. But yeah, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:31

Thank you very much for having me on, guys. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:33

Yeah, appreciate you coming on. Thank you, Ray. Uh take care of y'all. Fantastic. Thanks, Ray. See ya.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:42

Um, it's it. I I typed into the spreadsheet. I was like, we could I could talk to him for three hours. So easy. I was like, what about this? What about this?

SPEAKER_01 1:19:52

What about craft producers? What about this? And I was like, Yeah, that's I'm pretty, I'm pretty sure the first time we had him on Lox and Jam's Lation, it was the same thing. We just like talked to him and it was like three hours of conversation. I think I remember go boy.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:06

Yeah, he was probably like, Oh, that's it, hour and a half. That's that's nothing for you guys.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:11

It's the thing is though, when he went on like when he would go off on a little rant, he talked for a while, but I was like invested in everything he was saying. Oh right, I was I'm like, this is all fascinating.

SPEAKER_05 1:20:27

Like, well, I wanted to after he started, gave his spiel on the tariffs, which I thought was a very well-reasoned, extremely well-spoken sort of answer. On the and I'm sure he's been talking about this for a long, long time already. But I kind of just wanted to take a minute and just go to each of you and then myself and just kind of follow up on it and say, like, Kid, well, what's your thought on it? Because we all have our own opinions. And and after hearing him talk about it, I really wanted to talk about like, what about all the importers that just carry American products in Ontario or in in Alberta when it was lost in other provinces? Like he was talking about each level of of uh you know of the industry that's affected. And it it's it kind of what he said where it's like, yeah, like you're sending a message, but are you really like is it changing the way that Donald Trump is approaching the tariff negotiations? I probably not. I really don't think it is, and and then how many people are getting hurt by it, and it kind of changes your view of it a little bit, totally, but at the same time, you could look at the other side and be like, no, it's definitely being felt by them. And these bourbon producers are 100% sending messages to their their uh their congressman, their their whatever, their senator, they're all of the things. I don't know all the terms down there, I don't follow it super close, but I guarantee you they're getting letters from these producers that are saying this is fucking hurting us.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:59

And oh I see I remember seeing one, and it was from like the Kentucky Bourbon Distillers Association, whatever the big group was, and it was like it was it within the first six months that was like this is having a huge negative impact to our industry.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:16

Oh, yeah, like we're we we not joked, but talked about the Doug Ford situation with the Crown Royal Plant and the 200 jobs. This is this is affecting thousands and thousands of thousands of people. And like totally so I I kind of appreciate the way how he acknowledged that it it's it was almost a necessary move, but that the effects of it is it really worth what's and and I don't I don't even know where I stand on it. It's it's a it's such a confusing, hard topic.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:49

It's and I think he even alluded to that, right? Like he he said, in some ways it's like we're holding our middle finger up to someone who's probably not even looking.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:58

That was that was the one that caught me, and I that was where I that was where I kind of was like, are are we just like getting all mad, but we're really not getting mad at anyone because they're but that's where I bring up like the Kentucky Distillers Association sending an email or a letter or an email or whatever. They tweeted the president on my face them. Yeah, they they truth social then and and but you gotta think people around him are saying, hey no, like this is but I think this is such a one-off weird once-in-a-lifetime presidency that I don't think it I don't think there's a way any of us can predict total or even comment on how it's supposed to go because I think it's so fucking weird that I don't think anyone knows and it and and it's it's it's almost fruitless talking about it. Yeah, like I I even think like his inner circle doesn't know this is this is what I'm saying, Sharp. Yeah, so so there his inner circle gets an email, uh a letter from the Kentucky Distillers Association, and they're like, uh, president, Mr. President, uh, we have this, and he's just they're just like, we can't even talk to him about this stuff. Yeah, it doesn't even matter.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:07

Same thing with the Iran war, like the highest levels of the Republican Party that are in power with him were all against it, and he just did it as a big fuck you because he wanted to. Like that's the type of person that has his literally his finger on nuclear weapons. No, I know. We don't yeah, we don't need to go down that road. Like when when Ray was when Ray was talking and I was like kind of repeating it back, I was like, Yeah, like I haven't bought a single bottle of bourbon, but it's not because I'm mad at bourbon producers, and it kind of made me think, like, is it really fruitful to do this?

SPEAKER_05 1:24:48

I've said it for a long time. You not buying bourbon is is not even affecting Jeremy and I. I don't, it's not affecting nobody in the world notices because you buy less bourbon than yeah, exactly. If Lisa stopped buying bourbon, trump Trump might have a press conference.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:06

I went from on average two or three bottles a year to zero.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:10

So yeah. It's that was super interesting though, and he he was saying he was like, Canada with bourbon was right on the verge of becoming a mature market for the product. Yeah, and and he was like, and he's like, We we are not that for like Scotch and Irish, we're a small market for them. And he's like, But with bourbon, we were right there, and then it just that that was very interesting, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:36

And actually, kind of you're like, well, yeah, totally we were like we were so close, and like, yeah. Anyways, we should go pee. Yeah, let's pee, and uh then let's drink some whiskey, and then we can we can kind of recap all the bourbon stuff after we pull the bung and and everything. Sounds good. That's okay. Let's pee.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:05

All right, we're back. Um so we got some uh Sean dug up some happy hour headlines, even though we only recorded nine days ago.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:16

Yeah, but he found some new ones. It was basically yesterday. It's May, it's May 7th. This episode airs June 1st. So much shit's gonna happen. So much is gonna happen between now and then. People are gonna be like, oh, that's that's old news. There's gonna be like the world's greatest scotch comes out, and we're it's not gonna be on this episode. It'll be July 1st by the time we talk about it. Yeah. Bourbon, the whole bourbon industry shut down. Shut down.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:48

We were our kits turn into high demand.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:53

Because they have three little outfits of burbings. Uh the last call whiskey podcast kits are now four thousand dollars.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:05

Ray Ray is just beaming. She's like, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:10

It's the best ever. I'm Ron Burgundy, and this is what's happening in your world tonight.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:17

Next, machine guns, flamethrowers, murder. There's no story here. We've just found that ratings go up when we say those words.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:25

Um, well, speaking of bourbon, the first happy hour headline is uh there's now a 30-year-old Eagle Rare that was released. A 30-year-old? I thought it was a joke when I saw it, and then I kind of looked it up more, and yeah, it seems to be legit.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:47

It's can I say something about old bourbons quickly? They taste like wood. It's you know, like okay, I I had a cool opportunity to taste through um I think it was like five papies.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:02

I think we've all I think we've all done this tasting where you do all of them in a row. I think we've all done it.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:10

Um, so I and I actually I think it was Brisbois that sent them to me. Um so I tasted through them. Honestly, the older they got, the less I liked them. 100% agree. So the 10 was my favorite of them. I was like, the 10 is like for to me, I'm like, it's by far the best.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:32

I think I picked the 12 out as my favorite. The 10 the 12's good too.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:36

Like the 10 and the the new oak just takes over, and yeah, I I I I think I think most people I talked to that were able to do that lineup agreed. So do you know, do you want to guess how much the Eagle Rare 30 is gonna cost?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:51

Okay, Eagle Rare regular 10-year is about $80 in Canada, in Alberta. The 17-year, the double rare, is I wanna say 1200-ish, if you can even find it. Okay, so I'm gonna go 12,000.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:09

Okay, Jair. 12,000? No, I'm gonna say uh I'm gonna take the under on the 12,000. Okay. I'm I'm gonna say uh let's go 8.9,000. 12,500. Shut the fuck up.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:30

Sean looked that up before. That's that's from the spirits business, though, so I think that's U.S. Oh, so it's probably more like 15, yeah. That's wild. Yeah, that's who do they think they are?

SPEAKER_06 1:29:45

Kloan it's every time. It's funny every single time.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:54

A Kalowan 30 would be worth 12.5, but I digress. There you go. Yeah, yeah. That's that's the 30 minus the zero on the age.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:06

Um what's this, Sean? I I didn't write any of these down. The Lakes Distillery in England closes, oh, they close their tour visit visitor center.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:14

Yeah, and I guess when I saw that, like I'm not eating don't know much about Lakes Distillery. I think I've tried one of their whiskeys, but it like it was like three-quarters of the staff got laid off because they work in the tours and visitor center.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:31

I I reached out to them early PWS days because I was like, this is a really cool distillery, a lot of cool stuff that they're doing. But actually, we I've thought about this after listening to our last episode. We say cool a lot. Well, we're cool, and there's lots of cool things. I just say cool three times. Um they're a cool distillery doing lots of cool things. Um but the typically these newer distilleries, visitor centers are like a big part of like we talked to yeah uh Rob there and talking about the visitor center for Hollywood and how um how it it like got shut down during COVID, and that was a big thing. So them shutting this down, I've gotta think is a pretty big deal. I I gotta interject here. Driving to my kids' hockey today, I was at a red light, so I took on my camera. There was a picture of a store, and it was Holly, but with two L's. So remember, it was a Holyrood Hollyrood conversation. Yeah, yeah. I I saw Holly burned towers, but is that but two L's? Yeah, but that's the English version. I'm just saying, if I see that, that's Holly. Yeah, if I see one, I think Holy. I took a picture to show you guys that's Holly. That's what it looks like.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:55

I believe I'm with you on that. Now I'm no entomologist or whatever the hell of the person who started playing. Entomologist. I'm not I'm not a proctologist, but um I think when H-O-L-Y is part of a word, it becomes Holly. And when it's separated, like holy wars or holy shit, like that's holy.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:19

But I think holy holy rude distillery is one word, yeah. So it becomes Holly.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:27

Interesting. No, but it's one L. That's what I mean. So oh, even so if it's Holly or Holy, doesn't matter if it's one word, it's just Holly.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:36

I believe so. In Scotland, not in England, because clearly England they add the extra L.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:42

Sean, maybe you are an entomologist.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:45

Yeah, we need to get a proctologist on to break this down for us and really explain the the verbiage. Verbi verbiage, the verbiage. It's a good thing. It's a good thing we're not all oncologists. Yeah, uh, we'd be really pumping this up.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:10

Okay, all right, going on. So, again, we did record 16 hours ago, so hard to find some new news. Um, Alan Hislop was named the new Glenaliki Distillery Manager. Uh just came across my feed one day, and I thought, hey, that's that's interesting.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:30

Um it also keeps our streak alive of pumping James Bourne's fucking brands tires every single episode. Every exactly every single one.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:40

Yeah, don't worry, the uh the new releases will get there as well. Yeah, okay. The other thing that I noticed is that uh the last kind of new headlines is King Charles just visited the states, and something happened with Trump and him, and they shook hands, and now the tariffs to the UK and to the EU are different. So, in terms of Irish whiskey, you actually have uh a single category of products that are being tariffed differently. So anything made in Northern Ireland is being tariffed less than in the in the Republic, which is wild. Yeah, it's nuts. Cool story, Hansel. Yeah, so anyways, new releases speaking of James Bourne.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:35

Can I okay? You say it first, but I have a kind of a funny story right after you talk about this one.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:41

Okay, so the Spirits of Scotland have landed, um, they are now being sold at various locations, and various there's way more SKUs than I thought when they first came out. Uh, but that includes the first sighting of the 19 the 58-year-old North British Dark Cloud. Um oh yeah, yeah. So yeah. Um, I have it on Inside Intel that anybody that pre-ordered it are tasting that they should be available within the week to pick up and well to buy. This is where I gotta interject.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:19

Okay, I get an email to pay for my bottle. Um not cheap, but worth it for what it is. Actually, very worth it. Uh, I pay for my bottle. I go to said store today. They're not a sponsor yet. They maybe should be, but they're not a sponsor yet. So um, neither is James fucking born, though. Um, so I go to the store, I'm going to this store to pick up an order for our uh hockey organization banquet. My kids, I'm in charge of buying all the booze. I'm the booze guy, obviously. But I also get an email that says your your Sean Kinke Dark Cloud 6 whatever year old grain whiskey is of is ready for pickup. And I'm like, this is awesome. We're recording the podcast tonight. I'm picking up the other stuff, I'm doing it all in one shot. I go to the store, we start loading up the flats. I got like 30 flats of beer and coolers and stuff for this party. I go back in. Um I didn't immediately take off. Keep in mind my dog is in the car, so I have that in the back of my mind. I got it's 20 degrees out, he can't be in there for very long. She. I go back inside, I go to the beer cooler. I always try and pick up my wife some hazy IPAs when I'm at Keg and Cork.

unknown 1:36:43

It was Keg and Cork.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:44

They don't sponsor the show, but it was Keg and Cork. I go in the beer cooler, I'm loading up on beers, throw those in the van. I get an hour away from the store and I get an email. I can't believe you forgot your dark cloud single. Oh, and I was fucking so mad at myself. I was sad. I could have held it. I would have had it right here. I could have, I could have cracked the thing on the podcast tonight. That's how perfect it would have been. And I apologize to you, Sean, for this.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:19

That's okay. I gotta go pick mine up tomorrow or the next day or the next day. Well, I'm in red deer all weekend, but probably Monday I'll be swimming by. I can grab yours if you want. No, I'm I'm getting my own. All right.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:31

Getting my own. Get my own. I'm gonna go back to I can cork liquor.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:35

It's the principle of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:37

Yeah. So funny enough, I if we weren't recording tonight, I would have been at SMWS monthly tasting. So as we were wrapping up with Ray, I was actually purchasing an SMWS bottle from this month's out turn. Oh, good for you. There was no, there was some killer killer ones this way. All right, do you do you want to take the next one, Trev?

SPEAKER_05 1:38:00

Yeah. Um Aber Argy has landed. We talked about lots in the last episode. We interviewed Neil Hendricks. The timing couldn't have worked out better. Literally, the week after we had Neil on, um, and obviously it went it went to air, the the bottles became available. Uh, we brought in 80 cases for Alberta. Wow. They're well, one broke, so we actually had 79. I had to go pick up the broken case and pay for it. Oh, that's where my bottles are coming from. That's right. Yeah, they're all they're right here. I'll I might just drink them all myself. Bearded Dave gets maybe one, but I'm drinking the other five. He gets one of the broken ones, he gets the broken bottle, yeah. Um, so they're gonna be they're rolling out on shelves. Well, this this air is June 1st, they're gonna be sold out across the country. That's my thought. But we got 80 cases on like Monday of this week. Today's Thursday, they're all they're all gone, they're allocated to stores. That's awesome. So um our strategy of like not going over the top worked, but 80 cases for us of one product is is crazy for PWS. I don't know if we've ever done 80 cases of a single product in the history of our company. So and like and they're all gone.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:19

Like you said, four days later, and they're all gone.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:22

I mean, when I say four days later, I've been fucking selling the shit out of this stuff for months, right? Yeah, yeah. I've been I've been grinding over here, uh telling the tales and everything. So it was all like you have a list and whatever, but they're going out to stores and you're gonna see them popping up on websites and everything. And uh now it's now it's like go buy them and go go put a ball, go buy two. You put one, you tuck it away, and you tell your friends it's a piece of Scotch whiskey history, and then you buy one and you just crush it.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:57

Yeah, and it's crush wool. Yeah, oh yeah. All right, this next one, just a quick hitter. Um yeah, this will be this is a fun one. So whoever represents Royal Brackla Distillery, um they I think they also handle Altmore and Craig Allocky, possibly. Um all of a sudden their products just showed up at a bunch of stores on like huge discounts. So you could pick up the Royal Brackla 25-year-old at under $200. Yeah. Which a 25-year-old single malt scotch for under $200 is insane. Now, I will preface this that in a in a group chat where these said bottles were being discussed and bought, I did convince somebody that Aberargi is better than Royal Brackla 25. Yeah, he ended up buying one Braccla and two Aberargi. And two Aber, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:55

Very true. I I've never had Royal Braccola 25, but I was like, Neither. I don't know if I'm gonna try and tell someone not to buy a 25-year-old single malt.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:06

Now I was very clear in this chat. I have tried the core range up to the 25. Royal Brackla does not do it for me. Indie bottle ob releases, I don't agree with their distillate for whatever reason. I've had bourbon, I've had sherry, I've had PX. It just something about it just doesn't mesh well.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:27

And it's not a super sexy, it's not a super sexy distillery, even with the royal uh preface or whatever you want to call it.

SPEAKER_01 1:41:36

No, and I remember like four or five years ago. Um, I remember stopping by a few stores and the 16-year-old, which is like their their base bottle, it was like 200 bucks. And at that time, I was like, no, that's not, but now you're getting the 25 year for under 200 bucks.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:56

I think I I I if I would have seen earlier, I think I would have bought one, and that's just a bottle. I all I'm trying to get a bottle from every distillery in Scotland. I don't have a broccola, so I probably would just tuck that away and then just pour it for someone that and just be like, Look at this, it's 25 years old. 25 years old. And I would I would not show them what I paid, I would show them what it's cost. Yeah, probably in like L CBO, I'd be like, This thing's 13 grand. Right, you could get Eva Rare 30 or a royal brackla.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:27

Or a royal broccoli.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:31

You you are getting this in my house. Hey, the royal brackla has the royal seal of the scent or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:38

That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:39

It's kind of that part's that whole part's kind of cool, but uh I I don't think you can say no to a 25-year-old single mole for under $200. No, it's just you just buy it and you just whatever. It's not gonna well trav, you're in that same group. People like constantly were like, is this real? Did you leave it to zero? Well, other stores are falling. It's sort of like when the Beaumore 22 Aston Martin went on clearance because Aston Martin went to Glenn Fitch, is they just they just clearance priced it, right? No, yeah, I try doing this all the time with our bottles, it doesn't work the same. It's not blowing up the internet when I cut the price of a two-stack seal grain.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:21

Um, but Jeremy, you want to take the next one?

SPEAKER_06 1:43:24

I do, yeah. The uh new release is we have the Glenn Morangy Harrison Ford, and it's just called that, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:43:31

Yeah, that's kind of when I added WTF after. Like, it's just the Harrison Ford, just the Harrison Ford.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:39

Yeah. And they released it on May the 4th. On May the 4th. That's pretty cool. It's amazing. Is is the Harrison Ford Glenn Morangy? Is it as cool as uh the Offerman editions?

SPEAKER_05 1:43:53

Uh there it's I mean it's Glenn Morangy versus Lag of Ulins, so no.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:58

Yeah, I just like the Offerman Laga combo, it was just it was too good.

SPEAKER_05 1:44:04

It felt it felt because Offerman's a weird, funny duck. And it felt it felt like a weird combo, and I kind of liked that Lag of Uland chose him. Like if if if a really fancy story, like if McCallan did a release from like the dude that does I the dude that does I think you should leave, yeah, like that would be fucking unbelievable. So Offerman and Lag of Ulin was kind of a fun combination because he's kind of like sarcastically that guy, but not really. Whereas Harrison Ford is kind of that guy, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:44:40

So but so yeah, but with the Offerman at the end of Parks and Wreck, the TV show, does he not like purchase shares in Lagavulin? I have no idea. Yeah, I think I feel like there's something in that storyline where he like becomes a part owner in the TV show, and then years after came to like release Offerman's series.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:11

But like I'm pretty sure he even said like that was his whiskey of choice, regardless if he had a partnership or not.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:18

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:18

Whereas I don't know if Harrison Ford's you know buying the giraffe bottles and pouring them down. Like did you see the last video with Harrison Ford that was released?

SPEAKER_06 1:45:29

That was like the behind the scenes where he's like takes a sip and he's like, Yeah, that's good. Like that was basically it. But he's wearing a kilt, it looks great, and it was May the 4th, so you know, here we go.

SPEAKER_05 1:45:43

Kind of funny how Ray Daniel mentioned like how bourbon's not really doing it the same way as Scotch, and then and I was like, I don't wasn't quite sure, but then when you think about it, like Scotch is like taking American actors to promote their brands, yeah. Whereas Bourbon could bourbon could pay those guys, bourbon's got the money, like Jim Beam could afford it, yeah. Anyways, uh I love it all. I you you know amiga, I love a good limited edition series. I I buy them and then just pour them for a group down the road. So yeah, we all get to try them, so yeah, exactly. Yeah, I get stuck with them on my shelf for eight fucking years. Well, like the Glenn Morangy tales of whatever. I'm just like, what am I doing with these things? Everyone's like, they're not that good. I'm like, well, I got eight of them now, so what do you want me to do? Yeah, you can't stop now. You're committed. Can't stop, won't stop. Uh, I'm collecting. So, Sean, what's this SMWS one? Uh, you know what? If you're gonna keep doing SMWS, we we might need them to sponsor us too.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:51

We'll reach out to the owners. Um they I just this just came out. I don't even know if it's out yet, but they're releasing a blend and it features whiskies from all the Scotch regions, and it's the first time they've ever done anything like this and like branded it that way. But yeah, I thought it was pretty cool. Hopefully, we get to see it here in Canada, and yeah, I'll grab one if if it does. Cool, and what's the last one there?

SPEAKER_06 1:47:20

There's two more, three more. There's still three more. We gotta Jesus fucking right. I haven't even heard of this series from Glenallochy.

SPEAKER_05 1:47:29

Glenn, listen, if we're gonna be pumping James Horne's tires as much as we do, we need to maybe point out something that's kind of happening with Glenaliki right now. It's getting a little bit jumpy sharky-ish. Jumpy sharky-ish. It's when this series came out, I was like, we just did the meekle toirs. We got uh maybe it's not that many. Is it meekle tour? It's the Glenaliki, and now it's the synthesis.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:59

Well, the the syntax is just like an extension of like stuff that they were already doing. Oh, okay. Sorry, James. So every year they've released like a three-part series. One was all sherry casks, one you know, right? So this one is um combining virgin oak with sherry uh casks. So uh the first one, 2014, so I'm a 12-year-old maybe. It was Chinkin Virgin Oak and Pedro Jimenez. The second one is a year younger, and it's Scottish Virgin Oak, which is very cool, and Olaroso Sherry, and then the last one is a French Virgin Oak and an Oloroso Sherry. Oh, cool, yeah. So I thought it was pretty cool. It's something new. Um yeah, uh, yeah, this one right here, Khloen. PWS brand. They released a new whiskey, it's three years old, 60.44%. Uh, first time they've ever fully matured a whiskey in Olaroso Sherry. That's cool. And they used one of uh Fionn uh the historical mash pills. So I have the card flipped over already. So four parts unmalted barley, six malted barley, two unmalted oats, and two unmalted rye. Um, half wild, half domestic fermentation, all open top and all outdoor. And yeah, maturation, warm tub condensed, and 120 liter recouped oloroso sherry cask. They don't know where it was from, but it even states it on the packaging. Cask arrived with five liters of oloroso sherry inside, was emptied, then rinsed with 40 degree water to prevent overpowering.

SPEAKER_06 1:50:00

Wow. Klowan's so fucking cool. That's so intense with the details.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:04

Like I don't know if any other sherry cast whiskies are gonna say, yeah, we rinsed these with 40 degree water. They're yeah, they're not gonna disclose, hey, we left 40 liters of sherry in this barrel and then added the whiskey to it.

SPEAKER_05 1:50:17

We actually got rid of it for a reason. Yeah. Um, and sometimes I think when they transfer those quarter cast, the bigger cast, they leave the sherry in not because they're expecting the the next user to leave the sherry in. I think it's just to keep it moist so those things. Yeah, totally. So like they're leaving it in there, not with the expectation that I think that the the next user just leaves it in with the the whiskey, right? Yeah, no, actually 120 liters, five liters of sherry would be a lot.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:46

Yeah. Oh, totally. Um well, our good friend Raprit, he just got a big shipment of sherry cast a couple weeks ago, and he said some of the sherry that came out of it is gorgeous. And he said there was a lot of it in some of the barrels, so yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:04

That's I don't know what this John Sleeman one is either, so you might as well hit us. You're the you're the one that put it in the chat.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:12

I put the John Sleeman in the chat. Um really. So our good friend Whiskey Neighbor, he did a video on this. That's what Travis posted. Uh and they released a coffee still whiskey, and then they also released a rye. So our friend John Whiskey Neighbor, if you go to his YouTube, he does a full video on the two of them.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:36

So cool and that's spelled coffee like Paul Coffee. It's not meant to taste like coffee, not yeah, no, no, dude. I it's E Y, not E.

SPEAKER_06 1:51:47

I no, we we we okay. All I'm gonna okay, we'll we'll leave it.

SPEAKER_05 1:51:54

Okay, no, what what are you gonna think?

SPEAKER_06 1:51:56

I we don't we can leave names and everything out of this, but there was a post on Instagram that had me nearly in tears talking about a coffee. It was a it was the Nika coffee malt.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:17

Coffee grain was it the grain?

SPEAKER_06 1:52:19

Yeah, oh I thought it was the malt. Um and uh coffee spelled with EY referring to the still, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:52:30

And uh so with knocking, to be fair, she was like pretty heavily knocking the whiskey. Yeah, I wouldn't say bashing, but she was like making some faces like a little bit, a little bit condescending to the whiskey, for sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:45

Yeah. Um looking for coffee notes, looking for coffee notes, coffee e-e. Finding coffee notes, finding coffee notes. I was almost in tears. I was like, I if this keeps showing up on my feed, I'll watch it every time.

SPEAKER_05 1:53:04

I feel I did I commented and I was very polite. I was like, I think the coffee is not I think, but I said the coffee is because of the stills. I mean, I said you guys, and I and she was very good about it. She's like, Oh, sometimes the power of suggestion, da da da, and I totally see it. Like, if you see coffee, you're like, Oh, I'm gonna, and and there's you know what it was uh it was a and and the rest of her video was like this whiskey doesn't really jump out to me, and and that's all fair because it doesn't that whiskey doesn't jump out to any of us, right? You know what though, as a great whiskey.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:38

I will give her the benefit of like not the benefit of the doubt for the coffee thing, but um the fact that she's going out there and stating when something isn't agreeing with her, totally like it's been a huge discussion in different forms like Substack and Instagram and stuff, where people are saying, like, are influencers worth it anymore when they're basically being paid to market something and they're not gonna talk shit about it. So it's it's almost refreshing to see somebody in the whiskey industry giving an honest review. Yeah, well, she she her it's her it's her back shelf series, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:54:19

Yeah, stuff that she digs out from hidden behind other whiskeys, from hidden behind other whiskeys, and I will say it like the power of suggestion is a real thing. Oh like like if I if I set a dram down in front of each of you guys and I go, okay, just think about nanaimo bars while you sip this. Yeah, that will change your experience. It will because you'll start looking for nanaimo bar in it.

SPEAKER_01 1:54:44

Trav Trav totally got me one of the one of the first times I ever met him. He put crushed up crunchy bar in front of a dram that tasted like crunchy bar. Yeah, and then I did the same thing. I did the same thing last year at the VIP event. I presented that whiskey and I gave every single person in the room a full-size crunchy bar and said, Yeah, try it.

SPEAKER_05 1:55:05

If if if I put a bottle of whiskey with a samurai sort on it in front of you, you just know it's gonna be delicious, it's gonna be amazing. That's that's that's the power suggestion that we're talking about, right? And we do bash, we don't we don't bash whiskeys on this podcast, but I would say we've been pretty honest. Yeah, I think so. I think we've been pretty good. Yeah, listen, like as somebody who Aberg is the best whiskey we've ever tasted on this show, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:40

Like, as somebody who does get sent whiskey, and you know, I will say straight up, if I don't like it, I either won't post it or I'll be honest. And if they still want me to review it, cool. But it's you're I'm not gonna compromise my own integrity for a free bottle of whiskey. Totally.

SPEAKER_06 1:56:00

It's I've had brands pull pull back from sending me something when I give them that spiel. Yeah, totally. And and they just kind of go, Oh, never mind.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:09

I have like fair enough. I have no problems with her knocking that whiskey at all. No, no, not at all.

SPEAKER_06 1:56:16

No, uh, should we pull the bottom? I cannot wait to drink these whiskeys with you guys. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:32

All right, let's talk about some whiskey. Okay, we're doing three bourbons. Um, I didn't know what these were. Well, I forgot. We did discuss them. Ray Ray poured them and then went away. Ray Ray went away.

SPEAKER_06 1:56:46

Yeah. And I don't know if she's ever coming back, to be honest. She may never come back. She might not come back.

SPEAKER_05 1:56:53

If she doesn't come back, uh I I don't know what we do for whiskey on this podcast, but we'll figure it out. We just review Guinness every episode. What do you got? I got Guinness. I got Guinness.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:07

And my second pint tastes the exact same as the first pint.

SPEAKER_01 1:57:12

Well, we'll do our we'll we'll do our own makeshift like VIP and we'll find each type of Guinness that's available here. We'll try them now. I got the extras out tonight. This Guinness Zero tastes just like Guinness, but I'm not getting drunk.

SPEAKER_05 1:57:27

Um, so we're gonna do uh Jared, you you introduce the whiskeys because this you kind of introduced them at the beginning too.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:34

Yeah, so we're going to start with the Bardstown Origin series, move on to Buzzard's Roost Bottled and Bond, and then we're gonna end with the Jay Henry and Sons uh La Flamme release, which is an Armagnac finish. Um, and I will say, like we typically, if we have the time to, we try to at least have a nip of these whiskies before we jump onto the podcast at some point. Blind. What's that? Blind if possible. Blind if possible. Yeah. Um just so that we know kind of what we're getting into. And uh I will say, after not having had bourbon in a hot minute, I actually had a hell of a good time doing that yesterday. I was like, not all bourbon tastes the same either.

SPEAKER_05 1:58:22

These these are very three very different bourbons, yeah. Totally, which I wanted to ask Ray Daniel at some point, why does all bourbon taste the same? But we just we couldn't get there. It was there's we could have talked for four hours to the guy, yeah. Uh, but I thought that would have been a very uh good question to ask. But after sniffing these, uh they don't all taste the same. So, Sean Bardstown, what's the deal with that distillery? Well, let me tell you. It's a cool distillery, it's actually a very cool distillery.

SPEAKER_01 1:58:54

Yes, so founded in 2014, they are a Kentucky distillery, um, owned by a private capital investment firm, Pritzker Private Capital, and they acquired the majority stake in March 2022 from the founders of the distillery. Um family-led investment firm, so still fairly small, keeping it in the family. Um, and then yeah, they also are known for founding the Hyatt Hotels Corporation. There's money here, yeah. So their capacity, little craft distillery here, 68 million liters. Yeah, they're not craft. No. Uh they have a modern 100-acre whiskey campus that quickly became a cornerstone of the bourbon trail in Kentucky uh since it was founded in 2014. I want I want to go there. Yeah, I think it'd be very cool. After researching this place, I want to go there. Yeah, totally. Um, unlike many historic distilles, the focus is on a single family legacy and it's a collaborative distilling hub. Uh, they are basically like we'll talk about MGP a little bit later, but they're basically like night, yeah. They're like a competitor to MGP where they produce and other companies source. So they've been the source for over 30 different brands while simultaneously also releasing their own whiskeys as well. Uh, it's considered the most technically technically advanced distilleries in the entire US. High tech automation to manage hundreds of different mash bills for various clients, maintaining hundreds hundreds of different mash bills. Yeah, that's nuts. Yeah, like the the running joke is that when you source from MGP, you get like one mash bill that everybody gets.

SPEAKER_05 2:00:45

Yeah. So hundreds the the part that I like, Dan there uh maintaining a level of precision that traditional manual distilleries cannot match because they're so friggin' scientific with everything they do that they can maintain these mash bills like to a T, which is crazy to me. So crazy, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:06

So this specific whiskey, if I can find it, is uh aged for six years exclusively in new charred American oak barrels. Uh char levels. So they experiment with different chars. Obviously, they experiment with everything, but the bottle and bond that we're tasting is a standard char number four, otherwise known as alligator char, so heavily charred, and that's on the staves, and then uh char number two on the barrel heads. 50 ABV, 100 proof, and the mashed pill is 68 corn, 20 wheat, and 12 malted barley.

SPEAKER_05 2:01:47

So that's that's I I actually think that it's cool that they think the char well, not that they think they know the char makes that much of a difference that a two char on the barrel heads and a four char on the rest of the barrel makes enough of a difference that it's worth going through that whole process. Totally, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02:05

Yeah, so yeah, super cool, nerdy kind of distillery sourcing for other brands and making their own stuff. I've always heard and like seen this brand, but this literally was the first time I've ever tasted it, I'm pretty sure.

SPEAKER_05 2:02:24

Kind of an inside story here, but uh I actually once reached out to Bardstown Bourbon about bringing them into Alberta, and they never got back to me. Fun fact. Fun fact. They're probably like they're probably like, I don't know if you looked us up, but we have 68 million liter capacity, and you move about eight liters a year.

SPEAKER_06 2:02:50

That's almost nine liters. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_05 2:02:52

It's not enough. That's not enough.

SPEAKER_06 2:02:55

Um, there's a note here Bardstown Origin Series is a collection of three six-year-old Kentucky straight whiskeys marking the first products fully distilled, aged, and bottled in-house by Bardstown Bourbon Company. Yeah, that's cool. Super cool. Um, Kate, have you guys all had a sip of this? Because I really want to talk about it. Because my my my quick consensus on this is I really fucking like this.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:25

Yeah. You know what's weird? My initial non-blind tasting was like within an hour of us going live. It already tastes different in the glass, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:03:37

In a good in a good way, like it's opened up and it's yeah, it it it this thing just carries uh a character that uh you know of bourbons I've tried, they don't really hit this level. Like it's I'm I get almost like an apricot kind of on it, like like baked fruits. It is dude, it's good, it's really good.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:03

Yeah, my initial my initial nose was I said apple crisp with caramel sauce and vanilla ice cream.

SPEAKER_05 2:04:10

Yeah, this is like uh so I I blind tasted these with my bourbon-loving wife uh while watching Breaking Bad last night or the night before, two nights ago, because I worked two night shifts, and both of us really enjoyed this one. She said, This to me just tastes like what bourbon, like bourbon to me. This tastes like bourbon, but like elevated. So this is like when I say bourbon, like for us, a typical go-to for she'll just buy like a ball of buffalo trace, a wild turkey one-on-one, or whatever. But this is like an elevated bourbon experience, but still has all those core bourbon flavors. There's no cask experimentation craziness, it's just bourbon.

SPEAKER_01 2:04:53

Yeah, I agree totally. It does have a little bit of creaminess in it, like oiliness, it's got a good mouthfeel. 50, I think, is perfect for it. I think so too. There's there's spice, but it doesn't hit it initially, it kind of opens with that you know, stone fruit creaminess, and then the spice just builds and builds and builds. Short finish, would you say?

SPEAKER_05 2:05:17

Fairly short, like medium short. Yeah, it says in the producer tasting notes an alluring and enduring finish. They don't use the word long, but I would agree, I would argue enduring, maybe. I don't I don't feel like it's a long finish. Alluring, maybe though. Yeah, uh baked peach with cream, meets cocoa with hints of lemon. You guys mentioned baked fruits, I think Jared did. Yeah. Um, a mouthfeel of stone fruit, you said apricot and toffee leads to that finish. I I when I did the three the other night, this to me was the most. This just is like a bourbon that I would just go to regularly. It tastes like it's just like I don't know. This I know you just want to stop saying it, but it just tastes like bourbon, but good bourbon.

SPEAKER_06 2:06:12

Yeah, yeah. It's I I think Lisa nailed it. It's bourbon, but an a bit of an elevated experience with it. Yeah, yeah. It's it's good. I like it.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:23

Yeah, it is good.

SPEAKER_05 2:06:27

There's for for 50%, like you can tell, like there's a tingle there, but it's not hot. No, not at all. Like, no water in this. I always wonder what what kind of glass to drink bourbon out of. Glencairn kind of feels weird. Um yeah, maybe I don't know. Usually I have it with a little bit of ice, to be completely honest, when I'm drinking bourbon, but not for tonight, obviously. But uh, I don't know, it just feels weird drinking bourbon out of a Glencairn to me. I agree.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:58

Yeah, I think they do use Glencairn's distilleries and stuff, I think so.

SPEAKER_05 2:07:05

It's a whiskey glass, it's not a scotch glass, yeah. Yeah, and it's meant to just it's meant to bring the flavors to aways. We're getting side chip. Um, I think that's pretty much it. Oh, there was one more um one more thing I added uh about the series. So the Bardstown's obviously um making whiskey for like 30 other companies, hundreds of mash bills, but they're their own series. They have a few different ones. So they have the origin series, that's what we're doing. 100% estate distilled whiskey, high rye bourbon, the weed of bourbon, the rye whiskey. Then they have a Discovery series, these are elite blends. Um, Bardstown's blending team sources rare aged whiskies from across the country and artfully marries them to create something greater than the sum of its parts. That sounds cool. Yeah. Fusion series, which is a blend of their own young estate distilled bourbon with older source Kentucky bourbon. That's cool. That's like Amroot Fusion in a way. And Collaborative Series, which is a playground for finishing. They partner with world-class producers from Foursquare Rum and some wine cellars, uh, to some beer brewing places to finish bourbon in unique secondary casts. So, like very particular four lines, all very cool in their own way. I kind of like that. Yeah, I think that's cool. Guys, I'm a I'm a Bartstown fan.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:36

I think I wonder how many of these we get here.

SPEAKER_05 2:08:41

That's a good question. Yeah. Ray Daniel did say we were about to be a bourbon fucking mature market. Yeah. And we lost it because of Doug Ford. Oh no, and the orange goblin. No, Doug. Just Doug Ford. And Doug Ford can come on this podcast and defend himself if he wants. But he ruined Bardstown bourbon in Canada. He's busy trying to sell his private check. Um, you can't sell a jet in this economy. Um, all right. We like that bourbon. Very much so. Let's move to number two. Buzzards Roost. Because it's it's well, yeah. Let's talk about Buzzard Zeus. We had a bit of a special connection with this brand, Sean.

SPEAKER_01 2:09:40

Yeah, uh the importer into Alberta is a buddy of ours. Um, Mr. Shalifu? Yeah, Mr. Shalifu and his wife. Um I remember what's what's their agency called again? I'm gonna forget.

SPEAKER_05 2:09:54

Oh god, don't put me in. He's gonna yell at me. Oh my god. What are you doing there? Ask ChatGPT right now. We'll chat uh we got this. He'll find it. Sean will find it. Sean, keep going. I got it. I got it. No, no, Sean, don't mute yourself. You talk about buzzers, I'll find it.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:25

AI sucks. They can't even get it right. Yeah, no, it's okay.

SPEAKER_05 2:10:31

Anyways, we have his personal connection to the people that bring him into it says that I asked uh Google Gemini. It says in Alberta, buzzards roost sipping whiskeys are imported and represented by PWS imports.

SPEAKER_06 2:10:52

Are you kidding me? Oh, that's the funniest thing I've ever seen. Screenshot that. Screenshot it.

SPEAKER_05 2:10:58

That is incredible. I never claimed that. I'm gonna send it to uh Mark Shalafu. Is it Mark or Rob? Fuck, I haven't seen him in ages. Rob Jesus. Sorry, he's not one of the listeners. I guarantee he's not listening, but I haven't seen him in such a long time. I feel bad. Used to be a he used to be a uh amateur wrestler.

SPEAKER_01 2:11:20

Yeah, amateur wrestler. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, I remember the first time he came over to Steve's basement and like he just like started stacking stuff on the table. He's like, This is a $400 tequila. You've never tried anything like this. Like, okay, let's do it. But he's also uh he's sponsored, like donated a ton of stuff to charity events that we've had over the years. So great guy. Um yeah. Oh, yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_05 2:11:49

Um, can you talk about uh drink sync? Yeah, drink sync. I just found it. Drink sync. Uh okay, Buzzards Roost started in 2019, another Kentucky brand. So we have two Kentucky brands so far. Um, independently or wait, wait.

SPEAKER_01 2:12:04

I thought you can only make bourbon if it's in Kentucky. Oh no, that's right. It can be anywhere in the US. Yeah, sorry. Are you being certainly hard?

SPEAKER_05 2:12:14

Um they're they this is a hard one. They it's this uh let's talk about capacity after. Um they're a Louisville, Kentucky-based brand that has carved out a niche in the whiskey world by focusing on the art of the finish. Finishing bourbons has not been like a super huge thing until quite recently. So some people are still like adamantly against it. You can't do it, it's just yeah, new American oak, and that's it. Um, new chart American oak. Um, unlike traditional heritage distilleries that prioritize their own mash builds, buzzer's roost is built on the philosophy that the barrel is the most important ingredient in the whiskey making process. I bet they get some pushback on that, yeah. Um, but it's if you look at the percentages, it's it is the most important part. But, anyways, um they operate as an NDP and non-distilling producer, um, but they have expanded their physical footprint recently. So they get most of their stuff from MGP um in Indiana and then a secondary maturity. But recently, Buzzards Roost has transitioned to producing their own bourbon. While they built their reputation by sourcing from MGP, they are now distilling at uh a in on Whiskey Row in Louisville, basically. Uh, and they've been making whiskey as early as 2025. So they are now like like a lot of these independent ballers in Scotland, right? Like Aber Argy with the Morrison family and uh Ardenno, they independent ballers often end up becoming distillers. So there we go. It says 50 to 70,000 liter capacity. I think that's at the new distillery. I believe I looked it up, and it's like very small, but I think that's what it was. So there the new distillery is gonna be very small. I think they're still mostly gonna be a sourcing company. Um, but I remember when this stuff came into the market, it was a lot of people were very impressed with it.

SPEAKER_01 2:14:20

One of my favorite bourbons ever is from Buzzers, and it's no longer allowed to be made. It was the cigar, or I think it's a Rice Cigar. Oh, yeah, and it's like they literally like what is it? They burned tobacco, cigar tobacco to season the barrels, I guess. And it was awesome. I still have a full bottle that I will not open for a long time because it's so good, but yeah, it's it was one of the coolest ones, and then the FDA, I think, came in and said you're not allowed to do that anymore. Brutal.

SPEAKER_06 2:14:57

Yeah, FDA is always ruining people's fun. Yeah, we want to put tobacco in our products we're drinking, like just let us.

SPEAKER_05 2:15:05

Can we can we point out uh quickly that the order of the whiskeys tonight basically we we just I just wrote them down in the order I pulled them out of the box, and then we just decided to roll with it because yeah, as as somewhat inexperienced Bourbon people, we didn't really know how to pick an order for this lineup, so we just rolled with whatever I put on the sheet. So just just it's kind of interesting. We have no idea why with this order is what it is.

SPEAKER_06 2:15:33

It's well, I mean, like the ABV is for well, the first two are the exact same. So it does go up, but the ABV is close, yeah, yeah, goes up to the last one, and then we finish with the Armagnac finish, which is kind of because the other two are just straight, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:15:52

So I I don't think there's anything wrong with the order. Well, I'm not saying right or wrong, I'm just saying there was no thought. It was just yeah, it was just whatever we were written we wrote down is the way we're drinking them. Right, there was no thought behind the the order tonight, is what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:06

All right, so buzzards are staged in char number one barrels and bonded warehouse for five years. The mash bill from NGP is 51 corn, 45 wheat, and 4% malted barley. So that is probably as high of a wheat as you're gonna see in a mash bill. Very, very wheaty, yeah. So yeah, it's it's a fun one.

SPEAKER_05 2:16:32

Um, what would you say wheat? I typically think of wheat and bourbon as like softening the bourbon, soften gives it a sweeter profile. Yeah, also like sweetness on top of the corn sweetness, like wheat wheat brings more sweet, wheat and sweet.

SPEAKER_01 2:16:50

Yeah, I find any weeder, any weeders that I've had or liked is have big it's usually because it has a bit of a sweeter profile to it. Also, I think I've heard, I don't know if I can find it, but people say weeders have like a dustier note to them.

SPEAKER_05 2:17:10

Okay. I will say um when we were drinking this one last night, oh sorry, I worked last night three nights ago, we both of us had the same sort of feeling. Um it it's a it was like we really like it, but it just felt a little bit like there was one, there's something that's not completely just a touch, just oin just disjointed, if that makes it like it just it didn't feel like completely harmonized, maybe like the Barbstown did. Is that fair?

SPEAKER_06 2:17:48

I think that's fair. I think like harmonized. I don't know if that's so this one, same ABB as the last one, drinks a little bit like hotter and spicier. It's a bottle and bond. It's this are they both are they both labeled?

SPEAKER_05 2:18:03

Yeah, they're both bottleneck. So yeah, they're both 50s. Yeah. Sorry, sorry to interrupt here.

SPEAKER_06 2:18:08

Um like to me, when I drink this, I'm like, this to me is like a bourbon bourbon. Like when I went, even when I went through them yesterday, I felt the same. To me, this is like this is a bourbon through and through. Where the Bard's town feels like a bit nuanced. Um it's it's like well, I don't know what the right word for it is. It feels more delicate than this. Yeah, delicate might be a good word, right? Um, for the same ABV, it's just like it's a very unique experience to this one. Like you, I think most people that like bourbon would sit down and love this, right? It's like I think I agree, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:18:58

It's like that was exactly my notes. I said the nose, typical bourbon nose, cinnamon, caramel, a little bit of sweetness, palate, cinnamon baked bread, touch of honey caramel. Uh it's definitely spicier. Maybe that's where Trav you find like the disjointedness is like in that extra spice level. And then I just said it's like this is what I consider a typical bourbon. If somebody asked me what bourbon tastes like, I would give them this.

SPEAKER_06 2:19:25

Even though the wheat, even though the wheat is so much higher than typical boxes, it's it's high wheat, but I mean it's I don't know, it works in this man. It's to me, it's just man, this is a bourbon through and through. That that one, if you were if somebody was like a bourbon lover and you pulled out the bardstown for them and you were like, try this, they would be like, What the like this is yeah, this is different. Like what what's going on? But I I love that one, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:19:54

And this one, like I said, we didn't even put the prices in in the black mount, we just didn't even put the prices into their to the chat. I don't know the prices. I don't know the prices of any of them.

SPEAKER_06 2:20:05

I'm excited for the not buy. I know, I know, we'll wait. But this is I I I think I like this better than last like last night. I poured them, I poured them and sipped them immediately out of the sample bottles. They've been out for a few hours today. I like it more today. I'm liking it a lot more today than I did yesterday. Um, there's something about drinking on the podcast.

SPEAKER_05 2:20:35

We just like whiskies more than drinking it by ourselves. Drinking by ourselves, drinking by yourself is not as fun. Nope. Um, it's this again, it'll be interesting to see once we start talking about price points because we talked about it with Ray Daniel, and we talked about the $40 bottle, the $80 bottle, the $100 bottle, and then he kind of talked about that $100 price point. So I'm curious to see where they all these sit, and I'm saving some bourbon to go back to once I see the prices to say, can I justify? I'm guessing these are all around $100 ish. That's my guess, but I'm I'm kind of curious to see. So yeah, I've been saving bits too. So let's do let's do number. Should we do number three then? Jay Henry and Sons. Let's do it. Let's do it. Sean, what do you know about this company? Because it's it's the most, it's the weirdest of the three, I think.

SPEAKER_01 2:21:34

Definitely. Um, so founded in 2008. They're located in the small village of Dane, Wisconsin, about 20 miles north of Madison, Wisconsin. Wait a sec. Bourbon can be made outside of Kentucky. Uh so Joe and Jack Henry, they're brothers, third generation whiskey makers. Uh, they are a uh they call themselves a seed to glass distillery. So everything they do is uh produced, grown on their farm. Um so in 2026, they actually expanded to include three rick houses with a storage capacity of 10,000 barrels. But that site, there's no distilling on it, they just expanded to get space for barrels. Um yeah, family.

SPEAKER_05 2:22:27

Can I interlude here? Yeah, I just don't get the whole seed to glass distillery if they're not distilling. I I was trying to figure that out while I was reading up on this. They are distilling.

SPEAKER_01 2:22:38

I just thought you said they weren't distilling there. No, no, no. On the site that they expanded to for the Rick Houses, yeah, they're not doing any distilling on that site. Oh, yeah, yeah. My bad, my bad. Yeah, the expansion was just for the storage. Okay, my bad. Yeah, so Seed of Glass Distillery in Wisconsin. Uh the brand is renowned for utilizing specific hairloom grains grown on 75-year-old family farm to create a distinct Wisconsin straight bourbon profile. So I've never tried Wisconsin bourbon before, but yeah, me. Hey, me either.

SPEAKER_05 2:23:15

Uh, we had um Ken Cork had a single barrel from a Wisconsin distillery years ago. Dave Woodley can reach out or something. There was a King Cork had a Wisconsin bourbon single barrel. What? Yeah, uh, I will find out what it is. You keep talking.

SPEAKER_01 2:23:37

Yeah, you can research, I'll keep talking. So they are the only producers in the world that are using a specific heirloom red corn that was developed at the University of Wisconsin in 1939. Their signature four-grain mash bill also includes heirloom winter wheat, heirloom spooner rye, and malted barley that is all grown on their farm. Their spirits are yeah, that's super cool. Their spirits are aged for a minimum of five years in a historic dairy barn that has now been converted into a rick house, and then they obviously have more rick houses that they just expanded to. The extreme temperature fluctuations in Wisconsin play a critical role in how the whisk whiskey interacts with the wood. It's the whiskey is distilled exactly on the 45th parallel. Or sorry, it's distilled at the 45th parallel distillery in Wisconsin. So yeah, that is super cool. And then this specific whiskey, so it's the Jay Henry and Sons La Flemme Reserve Armagnac finished bourbon. So they uh it's made in small batches, slow aged in large barrels in a rustic barn, uncontrolled temperature in the historic barn, allows the Wisconsin weather to interact with the wood. Um, every autumn in Gascony, France, local farmers start the Armagnac distilling season with La Femme d'Armagnac celebration. This expression honors traditional French blending techniques and marries the flavors of the Armagnac region of France with Wisconsin straight bourbon. So the mash bill for this 64% of that red heirloom corn that was developed in Wisconsin. Uh, 14% glacier winter wheat, 14% spoonerai, and 80% malted barley. They handpick five-year-old barrels, blending using the French Armagnac process, and finished for eight months in the Armagnac cast. 56.75 ABV, which is 103.5 proof.

SPEAKER_00 2:26:03

Yeah. That's a lot of info.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:08

Yeah, super cool, like super, super cool distillery.

SPEAKER_06 2:26:13

It's uh like knowing that info, even like I when I pulled this one out of the sample kit. This sounds just like the last episode. Now that I know what they're doing, it's well, it's yeah, except yeah, so like I was really rooting for this one. I think we all were when I pulled it out of the sample kit. And I tried it yesterday, and it fell a bit flat for me in the lineup. Nosing it now, like because they're doing cool things, like man, the the airloom, red heirloom corn, they grow everything on their own. All of that's awesome, but man, honestly, I'm just having a hard time with this one.

SPEAKER_01 2:27:07

So I I know exactly what you're saying. We talked about this before Trav joined, but like my notes nose this one's weird, and it doesn't nose like a bourbon at all. No, it almost reminds me of like a finished scotch grain whiskey, yeah, which totally I mean well.

SPEAKER_05 2:27:31

I mean, looking at that mask bill, I'm not surprised.

SPEAKER_06 2:27:33

Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, that's I think that's for sure part of it. Um, it actually reminds me of a single grain from the nose reminds me of a single grain from Liberty Distilling in Vancouver uh Granville Island in Vancouver.

SPEAKER_05 2:27:51

Does it smell it smells a bit youthful to me? It smells it smells young to me. It's I don't know young-ish.

SPEAKER_06 2:28:00

I don't know, yeah, maybe young-ish. I don't know if I like immediately go, oh, that smells young when I when I notice this. It it smells a bit there's like a bit of funk to it, but I would say not in like the best way.

SPEAKER_05 2:28:17

Is is is it fair to say that um it's very hard to finish bourbon? Yeah, totally. And I've seen this in all the other American brands we worked with over the years. The finished bourbons, it it's like it's uh I don't know if it's the strong flavors coming out of those heavily charred new American oak casks, yeah, and then you're trying to find a way to make them meld. And I'm guessing usually you're doing it in too short of a time. So, an example I will use is single cast nation when they finish casks, typically it's like three years. I'm guessing most of the finishes in the bourbon world are like quick finishes because bourbon's typically not that old, anyways. Totally, so you're throwing it in and you're just like, take on some Armagnac, and this is just my synopsis. I don't know if this is accurate, but they're just like, here, get some Armagnac flavor, but it doesn't have enough time to really become a whiskey, a congruent, yeah. You know what I mean? And so you're you're left with bourbon and Armagnac fighting for for control of the overall experience, and what we're left with, I think, is like uh just a whiskey that feels just like it's it's we've all kind of agreed, it just feels a little bit off. Yeah, there's it if off might be a strong part, but yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_06 2:29:44

It's like disjointed, like like uh if you okay, compare this directly to the Bardstown at the beginning, that feels like a delicately nuanced piece of art, typically blended at the distillery level, right? And then yeah, you compare that to this one, and you're like, it feels disjointed. You're a little bit like, what exactly is going on here? Um, and it's a bit of a bummer because I had such I mean, I really I really wanted it to win.

SPEAKER_05 2:30:24

Super cool brand, yeah, harmoniac finish. It was like that Laws. You remember the Laws Whiskey House, the cognac one we brought in? Yeah. But that one they did let it sit for like because they had the solar almost like a that giant cognac cask. Yeah, just add whiskey, and then they would just pull out a little bit at a time, so it actually had time to meld and and become a real uh whiskey. I think I think what the biggest issue with finishing whiskeys in any in any industry, whether it's the Scotch whiskey, Canadian, bourbon, whatever it is, is if you try and rush that process, you end up with the spirit, the original spirit, battling with the finishing cask. Yeah, and and they're like, who's the star of this show? When really there shouldn't be a star, it should be, it should be the star should be a final product that just tastes like a delicious whiskey. And and this is I agree, this is where first fill finishes scare me sometimes if they're not done properly. And I don't know, that's it. This is where like if Enoka left the five liters of oloroso in that cask, could really fuck up one of their whiskeys.

SPEAKER_01 2:31:39

I was just gonna say, like, I've been out there obviously fairly often, and I've tried stuff that's been in a finishing, like wine cask or whatever for less than six months, and yeah, it's it's weird, it's not congruent, it's disjointed, but then you try that same cask six months later, and it's like, oh, oh, okay, now I get it. And like obviously, Gerprit's gonna know, like, tasting it, okay. Try this now, but then remember this and then come back it's six months from now, and then try it, and you're like, Holy shit, okay, I get it. Now, it doesn't always work. There's a stout cask out there that still is like, whoa, what the hell happened here? No, and yeah, but that but look at look at um Boulder. Uh, wasn't there one that they had that they like tried it after two or three years? And it was just like, uh oh, this was a mistake, but then after six years, it was like, holy shit, this is really good.

SPEAKER_06 2:32:46

Yeah, well, everything in Colorado gets better at six years. It's six years is the golden age in Colorado. Yeah, it really is. It's Kate, I got a question. Do you guys have a bourbon finished in a cask that you loved? Yeah, the boulder cherry. Dude, that that was my immediate answer. That one slaps, it was so good.

SPEAKER_05 2:33:10

Boulder cherry was delicious, yeah. Yeah. Um, the laws cognac.

SPEAKER_06 2:33:17

Laws cognac was good. You know, on the bourbon episode, I do think we need to mention, I think possibly my favorite bourbon of all time was the Laws PWS cask, the four-grain.

SPEAKER_05 2:33:29

That was really good.

SPEAKER_06 2:33:30

I've I all the laws PWS stuff's gone. Like, I wish I had one of those in the in the bunker. I wish I destroyed two of them. Like, destroyed two of them.

SPEAKER_05 2:33:44

The whole law story was so good. The bottles are beautiful, the everything, and it's just but like we'll talk about it after. Like, $100 plus bourbon, it's a fucking tough. It's a it's a hard sell. Yeah, it's a really tough market.

SPEAKER_01 2:33:56

Yeah. I still remember the time I went over to Trav's old house. And he's just like, Oh, I got something for you here. Take this, and it was literally like not even a heel, it was like two ounces of a law's four-grain, but that he'd had for a couple years. And I got home and I was like, What the hell is this? And then he's like, Yeah, we're we're we're talking to them right now. I was like, What? So, yeah, they're they're like from Edmonton too. I'm like, What? This is awesome! And then when that first four-grain came, and then the PWS PWS one came after, and I was like, Oh, yeah, this is unreal.

SPEAKER_05 2:34:35

And they're ri we could probably do we could probably do a we could probably contact Laws and say, Hey, I know things are tough for everyone right now, it's not, but I bet we could bring in a Laws cast right now, and it would do very well. And just say, let's support these people from Alberta that are down in the states that have nothing to do with this guy and his decisions, and they're just trying to keep their fucking business afloat, and and so are we. And let's bring in a cool bourbon that supports a bunch of really good people, and I bet it would do okay. I bet it, I dude, I bet it would.

SPEAKER_01 2:35:10

Yeah, we should reach out to them. It's there were that's a good idea. You should I think that's a tasting job. The tasting the tasting that we hosted in your basement with me and Steve, yeah. Like they came on and they were awesome. Uh, forget her name, but she's Mountain Time on Instagram, and she was awesome. Like, oh man, yeah, yeah. They were such cool people.

SPEAKER_05 2:35:33

There's so many events I forget over, anyways. Okay, suck it up, everyone. Let's let's figure this out. Well, laws distillery. We're gonna reach out to you, maybe. We still love you, we still love you, still love you, guys.

SPEAKER_06 2:35:46

We love those and boulder. What and boulders, I except I don't even know if they exist anymore. Wait, uh, chair.

SPEAKER_00 2:35:56

Jared, end that part all later. Hey, Ryan Nagley. We love you, Nagley. Love you, Nagley, man.

SPEAKER_05 2:36:04

All right. Um, Sean, yeah. Can you give me prices of each whiskey? Oh god. I will type them in. Well, you should have put, I thought you were putting this in. I'm I'm on it. On it. Bardstown, ball and bond origin series. Give me a price. Just give me, just let's just do Alberta and Ontario and Quebec can figure it out if they want.

unknown 2:36:28

Too much.

SPEAKER_01 2:36:29

You type that in and only American. Oh, there we go. Got some Canadian ones. Well, just go to the Whiskey Drop website. Okay, have all these. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 2:36:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:36:39

That's a good call.

SPEAKER_06 2:36:40

Whiskey drop.

SPEAKER_05 2:36:42

Because the the bar sounds first, and um, I think the price points of all these are really gonna be a big factor. I just man, I you guys, anyone that says bourbon all tastes the same, I think this is a very good example.

SPEAKER_06 2:36:59

It's a super good example. I am like I'm dying to see the prices on these. Yeah, well, if Sean's dial-up modem. No, I've I've already looked up the first one. You guys shut up if it's dial up modem. What do you got? Uh just logging into AOL.

SPEAKER_01 2:37:20

Yeah, I was just gonna say in one year is just that weird fax noise. Um Barstown, bottle and bone, Kentucky Straight Bourbon original series, $89. Oh fuck.

SPEAKER_06 2:37:33

89. Oh fuck. That's a drop, so that's like Canadian. Oh shit.

SPEAKER_05 2:37:40

Yeah, that's Canadian dollars. I'm not gonna say, I'm not gonna comment yet, but oh shit.

SPEAKER_01 2:37:46

Um you could probably if you attend a tasting there, you can also get that for 10 to 15% off.

SPEAKER_05 2:37:54

Okay, all right.

SPEAKER_01 2:38:00

They have lots of them.

SPEAKER_05 2:38:02

Oh uh it's it's oh boy.

SPEAKER_01 2:38:06

$124.

SPEAKER_05 2:38:08

It's not horrible.

SPEAKER_06 2:38:09

It's not horrible. It's it's not horrible, but also okay. No, well, keep going, keep going.

SPEAKER_01 2:38:17

Oh, the J Henry bottles are nice.

SPEAKER_05 2:38:21

They look nice, yeah. Oh fuck. We need we don't have the bottles. Can you show a picture?

SPEAKER_06 2:38:28

Yeah, show a picture. Oh, that's nice. Oh, yeah, those are sick.

SPEAKER_01 2:38:34

Yeah. Uh $129. Yeah, you're in that range. $129. Okay, all right. Now now they have a a Wisconsin straight bourbon whiskey, uh it's single barrel, so not finished or anything. That's a hundred bucks on the dot. Yeah, but that's not that's not what we're drinking.

SPEAKER_05 2:38:59

So we don't talk about it. We're drinking armor the eye. Okay, I I for me, number one, the must-buy is it's uh it's not even close right now.

SPEAKER_06 2:39:09

Not even close. It's just for you are correct, sir. It was my favorite to drink. Like both times I tried. Price was better than the other two. You buy that one.

SPEAKER_05 2:39:22

I was in my mind thinking, if this barred down Ball and Bomb Bourbon is 140, where am I gonna sit? Totally 89. I was like, Jesus, I'm I'm gonna go buy Lisa four.

SPEAKER_06 2:39:37

And they'll be gone next month. Lisa, we got some more barbed. Ray said, bye by the case.

SPEAKER_05 2:39:46

You got yeah, so that's that's I don't even think so. That to me is the that we don't even have to talk about the must-buy now. No, good there. Yeah, I don't know if I updated last episode's must-buy list, but we'll worry about that later. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:40:02

So I don't even think it's it's I did find a couple other places that have this in Alberta, and it's literally 80 to 90 bucks. Yeah, at every place.

SPEAKER_05 2:40:13

So it's a must-buy. That's that that that is if you're gonna be buying bourbon, which we talked about, some people aren't, and that's fine. But this is a must-buy if you're gonna buy bourbon. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, uh hundred percent. It's it's a premium bourbon at a at a just sub-premium, sub-premium price, I'd say to me, the premium stuff's like a hundred plus.

SPEAKER_04 2:40:38

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05 2:40:40

Um K. I think this is the fucking easiest one we've ever done. It's such a clear standout. Yeah, if the next two aren't aren't crazy price differences, then Buzzers Roos Ball and Bond is you should probably probably buy as a tough $124 for a bourbon that we just said tastes like a lot of other bourbons is really tough.

SPEAKER_06 2:41:05

I agree. Yeah, you can probably find a $60 bourbon that tastes kind of similar. Tastes kind of similar. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:41:13

I don't know if that's worth $124. I agree. Is this our first ever must buy buy the kit, buy the kit? If you're a bourbon fan, it's a very, very, very nice bourbon. There's nothing knocking that buzzer juice bottom on a bourbon. If you're a bourbon fan, buy a kit and and you can try all three of them and pick your favorite. Yeah, I think doing it. There'll be no bars down left because me and Lisa bought it all.

SPEAKER_01 2:41:46

I think save one for me. The the fact that you can get these in a kit and try all three, you're committing to way less money, and then you can form your own opinion. And there is gonna be people that like all three of these, like each people that will like each one separately.

SPEAKER_05 2:42:06

Uh, every every episode we do, yeah, there's gonna be ones that we say buy a kit and try it, and someone's gonna try and be like, No, this is right up my alley. Yeah, totally. Totally. And I would say last episode, the Nick Neon, it was just the price point, we loved it. Yeah, but someone might go with what's what you said, Sean, like the whole organic nature of it and all that is what caught justifies the higher cost. I pay six dollars for a red pepper at the farmer's market. I'm okay paying $140 for Nicknean. Yeah, as a and that's so I feel like we're kind of in the same thing. Buy a kit, try it. We're telling you must buy is the bardstown. That's I think the for sure out of this episode. 100%. Um, if you were gonna buy the Buzzards Rivers Blind at 124, I don't want to go ahead and just be like, you're gonna be super happy with that purchase at 124.

SPEAKER_01 2:43:05

Yeah, if you like bourbon, you're gonna like that whiskey. You're gonna like it. You'll totally like it. You might not like paying 124 for it.

SPEAKER_06 2:43:14

It's value-wise. I think you can probably find something for less money that will scratch that itch.

SPEAKER_05 2:43:22

Yeah, 50 ball and bond. Yeah, there's probably there's actually probably quite a few. Yeah, totally. And again, they're craft producer, and this is this is this is guys. This is why I don't carry American brands right now. Yeah, this this right here, what we're talking about, this this was several brands I had that sat right in this mark, that right in this, whatever Buzzard's Roost is doing right now, were several brands that I had that were very tough to sell because of the conversation we're having right now, right? And this is what I we were talking to Ray Daniel about. You can go and buy a really good bourbon for $60. So why are you how are you convincing someone to spend $125? Yeah, and it was really hard for us. So it's it's kind of this almost makes me a little emotional because this is like I've I've been the Buzzards Roost rep for not Buzzards Roost. Well, according to Gemini, I am sorry, Rob, I'm not. Um, but I've been that brand, and uh that's a tough world to be in. This bar town price point, much better world to be in. Totally. Yeah. If you're gonna go between the Buzzard Zeus and the Jay Henry, uh you go straight to the Buzzard Zeus between those two, in my opinion. I don't even think it's close. I agree with that.

SPEAKER_06 2:44:54

I don't even yeah. Yeah, Jay Henry and Sons doesn't even hold a candle, does it?

SPEAKER_05 2:45:01

Um, this this is another really good example uh also of scale. So uh Bardstown's making 68 million liters a year, right? Uh the big, big dogs down there are making, I don't even know, like Buffalo Trays, Jim, Jim's. Oh, yeah. We're talking 100 million plus, right? Yeah, yeah. But Buzzards Roost, 60 to 70,000 liters a year, Jay Henry, and Sons around the same. This goes right back to craft producing and how do you put out a product that people will buy at a price that can still make you money? Yeah. And it's this is so Bardstown's like they're not quite at the Buffalo Trace level yet, but they're able to produce a fucking really nice whiskey for 89 85 bucks, let's say. And and these other small producers that you just can't, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:46:01

I think with Buzzards Roost, like we said, like what they're known for is their finishing. And I'm just looking up like shopping in Alberta for Buzzards Roost, like they have a rye that was finished in a peeded whiskey barrel, and I've tried it, and it is good. Yeah, yeah, you can find that 105, 110, but you can find like their number one rye, number one char Rye Whiskey, like they're their basic rye, that's 90 bucks. You can find char number one rye whiskey, 80 dollars.

SPEAKER_05 2:46:40

Yeah, so they have other options, yeah. Yeah, at their number one char bourbon, 93. So the other, the other thing, Sean, and this is maybe another conversation, but like they're sourcing this stuff from MGP, like Buzzers Roos. They're yeah, they're not making this stuff like Jay Henry and Son. So but they gotta buy the barrels to finish this shit in. They gotta, they gotta, you know, pay for their warehousing, they gotta pay for all these things, and again, on a very small scale.

SPEAKER_04 2:47:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:47:12

And these big brands can make pennies on the dollar on every single bottle sold. I don't know if I've ever talked to you guys about like the airline industry and the way they make money. It's literally every person that flies on an airplane, they profit like dollars, like we're talking a couple bucks a person. Um, Buzzers Roots can't afford to do that, right?

unknown 2:47:37

J.

SPEAKER_05 2:47:38

H. Henry can't afford to do that. Barstown's getting closer to being able to do that. They're probably profiting like six, seven bucks a bottle. Um, but like Jim Beam, Buffalo Chase, they're profiting like a buck a bottle, maybe. I don't know what the margins are, but we're talking tiny margins because they're moving so much. Yeah. So as a small per importer myself, I'm convincing people to spend that extra money all the time on single cast nation and all these different brands. You know, you just gotta decide where to spend your money. And and you go buy that Buzzard's Roost, you put it on your shelf, someone comes to your house, you pour for them, you're like, this is a fucking cool company. Yeah, no one hardly anyone else in the world can tell you they've tried this. Not, I mean, not that small, but you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah. You're not gonna try this at anyone else's house, and it's really cool. You can't do that when you pour someone a glass of Jim Beam. No offense to Ray Daniel, but you can't. Um, so you're you're kind of just paying for all of that. I don't know. I feel I feel bad where we're at with like this buy or not buy, and you can hear it in like I'm just because this is the world I live in, and this is this is kind of uh like shallow. I know the world he lives in. I don't even know if like when's like he they must be still bringing this stuff in. Yeah, that this is a new product. This is a brand new product, so it's it's moving to some extent.

SPEAKER_01 2:49:11

Yeah, I get it, but like I think it goes back to you know, half hour ago where you know we're doing this podcast to drink whiskey, hang out with friends, but also to share new whiskey with people that probably have never heard of it or may never heard of it, and we're just giving our opinions on it. But yeah, if we if we're not truthful to ourselves and to everybody that's listening, the the 12 of you, um like if we're not truthful with it, then what are we? Yeah, we we we have to be truthful, and sometimes truth hurts. I get it, believe me, I get it. Yeah, I get told all the time that I'm an idiot, and it's the truth.

SPEAKER_06 2:49:53

But I and I do think that's the beauty of the kits with the podcast. Because not everyone's palette is gonna be the same, no, exactly, right? So, you know, you can you can try these whiskeys and form your own opinion.

SPEAKER_05 2:50:10

Um but Jared, you say that, and like our palettes aren't the same either, but we're we're not saying we don't like these whiskies, totally, right? So, like we're saying we might we're saying we like, and same with last episode. We like what it comes down to is you look at the price, you look at what it tasted like, and then you talk about you have that conversation. And it's I I go back to the farmers market. Is it worth me going to a farmer's market and spending six dollars on a red pepper versus three dollars at a local grocery store? And you have to decide as a consumer, are you willing to pay that extra? Yes, you're supporting a local farmer, you're you're getting something a little bit more unique, a little bit more cool, but it's twice as much money, right? You're doing that with Jay Henry and Sons, Buzzards Roost versus Bardstown, and then on another level, after Bardstown, you're doing it with um with um Jim Beam or um um you know wild turkey or whatever it is. You have to make that choice as a consumer. The problem is right now in this economy in this economy is people are fucking people are keeping their money a little bit tighter right now, and it's it's a reality we're all living in. I'm not eating out at restaurants as much anymore, and and oh Sean's call Sean's calling time out.

SPEAKER_06 2:51:39

We had a little uh pet emergency there. Sean had to go let his dog out, but we're back.

SPEAKER_01 2:51:46

We're back, we're about the dog's asleep again, and we're back.

SPEAKER_06 2:51:51

We are back. Um, should we grind a malt?

SPEAKER_01 2:51:56

I think so. It's you know, we haven't really had a grind a malt a segment, not like before on the old one, but you know, every every so often something comes up that just grinds my malt. Hit us, what do you got? All right, so the title of this grind my malt is Dalmore, what the fuck? And so this is very recent. In in between the 16 hours that we recorded our last episode in this one, this came out, and um, so we know as whiskey consumers and you know, watching the market that the past couple years the Dalmore core range, I guess, has gone up and has jumped the shark in price beyond belief. 18-year-old went from it was like 170 bucks before, and it's like almost a thousand dollars now. The 15 went from 120 to like 500, 600. Like it's they're all very low ABV, super colored, you know, they have a cool emblem on the bottle, but like nothing about it screams premium except for the brand themselves. They are trying to make it an ultra premium brand, and that brings us to the malt. Um, it was recently released from them that they I don't know if they totally revamped their entire visitor center or whatever, but now the starting price to visit the distillery and go on a tour is 250 Great British pounds per person minimum of two people. So to even step foot in there to go on a tour there, it's costing you 500 Great British pounds, which is over 800 Canadian dollars.

SPEAKER_06 2:54:01

800 Delmore wouldn't even be on my list to visit.

SPEAKER_00 2:54:06

No, it went over there. So here's the funny, here's the funny thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:54:10

So unless I get to throw a little bit of whiskey out of my glass and just my hands on it so some very high profile people, Master Malt, um oh Christiane, she posted about now. She used to work with Master Malt, so kind of blurred lines there. I really like her, I thought I like everything that she does. Um, but there was Whiskey Wednesday, I think was the other one that kind of had the opposite. But there's people commenting on these posts, and I said for 250 Great British pounds, I better be able to swim in that vat of E150A that they have on site, and then have Richard Patterson throw whiskey out of a glass and anoint me as the chosen one because that is fucking ridiculous. That like maybe it comes with a happy ending. Yeah, that's what the E158 is like so many people that commented that my whiskey journey started at a tour. My whiskey journey started because I visited two distilleries and went on tours, right? That's the and it was the whole reason I fell in love with what whiskey was because before that it was something to shoot at the bar that my wife managed and get drunk as quickly as possible. Then I saw the other side of it, I saw the beauty of it, I saw the elegance, I saw the time, the you know, the honor that goes into it, the passion. Like I saw all that, and that's what led me to this moment right here. I get if you want to be ultra premium, cool, but now it's becoming like elitist, like you have to have a Six seven figure portfolio to even step foot in our distillery and the three of you last cool whiskey podcast fuck you guys you guys can't afford to come here we don't want you like that's that's the signal that they're giving is that they don't give a fuck about 99% of the people that drink whiskey well honestly I don't if the Dalmore uh experience was free it wouldn't be on my list no clearly so again funny funny story they can go fuck themselves because I'm not going anyway so funny story rookie drinker just decided I'm gonna drink whiskey now because I went to Scotland and Ireland first bottle I ever bought Highland Park 12 second bottle I ever bought Dahlmar 12 why because it was dark as fuck and it had a cool deer on it and it was cheap it was 80 bucks yeah now that same bottle like I'll look it up but it's really not even close to that but like I drank maybe a quarter of that bottle and it got given away right because it's it's people may love Dalmore and I apologize to you Dalmor whiskey is shit I'll say a cigar model maybe one that I can get by but not at the price not at the price that they would $150 Dalmor 12 it's almost doubled in price in less than 10 years you can get like an incredible single cast nation for around that price point single cast cast strength non-chill filtered non-colored everything that Dalmor is not is what you're paying for the same price to get totally Dalmor 15 240 dollars dude I'm not even looking at that yeah well am I muted I'm a muted I muted myself to eat popcorn uh after listening to the last episode I realized how loud my popcorn chewing was uh it is ridiculous it's dumb Dalmor isn't just not even on my list I don't have a bottle of Dalmor on my shelf i i'll probably complete my whiskey alphabet back here without a bottle of Dalmor I just might not do it dude you can you can find an indie bottled Dalmor for a quarter of the price of their OB releases it and it will not be colored it will not be chill filtered there's not many of them out there is there no but you can find them I'm sure you can um yeah but it's just it's it's crazy to me that they think that's something people will pay oh and you go on their website and it states right there exactly what I said two offerings per day oh that's just to get in the doors if you want anything else you gotta pay more do they maybe just not want tourism so they're just like ah fuck for a couple they just rebuilt their entire visitor center and based on tours like so I wonder if it's a bit like wow that cost us way more than we thought this is the price we have to charge people to help pay it off but like I'm not an uh I'm not an economics major and I'm not a linguist either clearly but a thousand tours at 50 bucks two tours at 250 you're making more given an better price you can get a little bit of oh sorry go ahead like supply and demand at the basis of all the capitalist economy I cannot see there being that high of a demand to pay 500 pounds to go to Dalmor.

SPEAKER_05 3:00:10

No it's dumb it's dumb yeah I don't know we can't it's dumb we just can't keep harping on it it's dumb it's silly it's dumb no one's going I want to talk to someone after they go and pay that money and say was it worth it that's that's the interview I want yeah as investig and investigative investigative journalists we need to look into that the problem is the only people that have done the tour are the people that were given it for free as like a press thing.

SPEAKER_01 3:00:45

Yeah promos and I ain't taking anybody's word that gets it for free. Is anyone getting cherry out of the barred stown now? I went back to the Jay Henry and sons I got a weird peanut flavor that I always get off of uh Jack Daniels has like a nuttiness to it now.

SPEAKER_05 3:01:03

Oh weird I got some cherry out of Bardstown late I'll go back to it which I don't normally love cherry notes and bourbon but it's very subtle but it's I feel like it's there.

SPEAKER_06 3:01:17

Yeah I totally get it now it's crazy. It's good though it's again it's like it's nuanced it's yeah it's not coffee but I didn't pick up cherry before because I don't I I normally get I'm not a huge cherry guy.

SPEAKER_01 3:01:32

Have you guys tried the uh Nika coffee grain and got a coffee note off of it okay we don't have to pile on Sean Sean I'm just saying power suggestion you put cherry in my head and I oh okay I see what you're doing.

SPEAKER_05 3:01:47

I got it power of suggestion yeah yeah um whiskey club shout out we forgot well I emailed the club today because I was like oh shit we need a club uh they didn't get back to me so there'll probably be our club next I reached out to the um Cardean whiskey club out of Vancouver our buddy Brad oh yeah yeah yeah he's awesome um hoping to do an event with him but uh I emailed him at like 2 p.m and just said hey if you can get back to me by eight you're the club so I might ban him for a month if he doesn't get I check my email ban him for a month and then bring it back you don't check your email once a day Brad it's you but I I feel like with him on Instagram even it's like sometimes it's 24 hours to listen well it's probably email's different for some people and it's probably a club email and he he he probably checks that less or he might have good boundaries maybe you haven't responded to my club email in like six weeks so it's all good.

SPEAKER_01 3:02:51

You sent me a club email no I'm just kidding um uh tasting kits so it's May 8th right now yeah the last kits went out seven days ago may 1st yeah they are for sale that's the Japanese and the new distilleries very cool tasting kit that's that's I think it might be the coolest most unique one we've done I agree here I think so six whiskeys that are not alike at all it's a very cool taste across a whole palette of a whole range of uh notes but yeah um this current episode which it is now fast forward to it's June 1st and you're listening to this buy these ones yet nope these will be out July 1st and little sneak peek the kits in July 1st will be a little USA versus Canada because July 1st episode is Canadian whiskey so that'll be actually a really fun kit. That'll be a cool kit these three whiskies and we honestly don't even know what we're drinking for the Canadian episode yet so no it's you know what you know what would be fun is if Rachel makes us a little uh legend that tells us but we drink them blind completely blind live on the podcast that would be cool that would be fun so she just labels ours A, B, and C.

SPEAKER_05 3:04:20

Yeah there's a legend so we can reveal it live on the podcast and everyone that buys a kit gets the real yeah like label the full label. Yeah but we drink them blind and we try and fucking predict what we're drinking. That might be fun I like that idea. That would be a fun Canadian episode do we have and literally you'll take all bias out. We'll have to rank them oh yeah everything's yeah uh do we have a guest for that yet well there's a couple people we could get I'm thinking maybe our friend down the road he might have a cool perspective on it no no group read we'll edit he's banned he's banned we'll edit we'll we'll edit this banned no Sean there's not I'm not editing this out there's none of that there needs to be three hands and that was only one hand there's only there has to be three hands for an edit that's one hand Jair no editing uh we have Girpri but he's banned from drams for fans but he might not be banned from the podcast um Dr. Don I bet he'd come on if we're interested to fist up the fucker what are you doing I'm just kidding I'm fucking around to fist up what's that mean? Like you're elbows up with I don't even understand what you're doing. There's no descending line arms okay who do you want Sean?

SPEAKER_06 3:06:04

I don't it doesn't matter to me I don't know either we haven't even discussed it so let's just bring Caitlyn back on an ADL perspective it's well it's I just well let's listen to her accent like she's great.

SPEAKER_05 3:06:24

Uh we got Bob Baxter at the two brewers would be a a good interview oh yeah that would be good's gotta earn his stripes he needs a few more whiskeys on the market before before he gets out with us well I was kind of hoping that he'd have a whiskey out before that podcast but he's being patient he's being like aberaragi patience um it's 1230 for our time should we should we part the glass yeah it's getting let's part the glass it's getting late um the music's playing it's delightful i when this episode airs will be in probably Osaka Japan when do you actually leave i leave um may 20th and I get back June 6th so this episode is recording on May 8th I leave in 12 days and I get back five days after this episode airs when are you in our when are you in Ireland? We leave in eight days you leave in eight days I leave next Friday yeah so you leave on the 16th four days before me six four days before four eight days eight days nice so we're flying trip that's a short trip it's a short one uh my dad kind of has it it dialed though like he's been going back there for ages um it'll be cool so it's my dad his wife me and my brother and our two sons that are 15 and 16 unreal so it'll it'll be fun my dad did this thing with us when we were like early ish teens where he took us over and he wants to continue the tradition with his grandkids so my oldest nephew has been already um but my son and my older brother's youngest son are the same age so we get to go together which is which which cousins that uh so it's Liam oh sweet so we're going with Liam and Jason and Mac and he just got back from Regina I don't know a week ago I think so crazy enough today was the bantam draft for the WHL last year I was at work watching it live yeah with my phone I know it's we were we had it on both of our screens here at the office when that was going on to see what would happen with Liam so cool yeah well you have a good time in Ireland thanks you have a good time in Japan I've been talking to Shane and Brendan and we're swinging by both spots yeah I'll be I'll be obviously drinking much better whiskey in Japan but like you and your Irish whiskey could have stuck on not even a chance you're teeing up with Michael though right yeah that's cool for it's super cool for you guys Michael Pang and I are going to Chichibu Distillery on May 29th so cool night before we'll be at the Tokyo Dome for a baseball game it's gonna be it's gonna be a riot you know what you guys uh I'm reading a book right now it's called Die With Zero or Die with nothing and uh the whole premise is take your kids travel if you can if you're fortunate enough just do it all because there's no point trying to like predict what's gonna happen down a row money just go on trips go to Ireland go to Scotland go to Japan go to Kentucky um just do whatever you gotta do because these experiences are gonna be so much fun and uh the money will come and go you're gonna be broke for while it's gonna be fine. Yeah how many Guinness do you think you'll drink in Ireland?

SPEAKER_06 3:10:38

Murphy's Murphys whatever how many Irish stouts in eight days eight days so okay I'll tell you a story about this so when I was 17 or 18 I did a trip over there with my dad was just the two of us my dad I think I my minimum was two pints of Guinness a day that's that's like that's child's play that's nothing. Right I I believe that I came home from that trip 14 pounds heavier than when I left at 18?

SPEAKER_05 3:11:16

Yeah at 18 your metabolism should be high enough that that's something of an issue oh it was like I man I was in super good shape um but I just like and part of it is the eating too though it's like so good yeah yeah I uh so just loaded up on Guinness and like eight days let's do a Jeremy Guinness tracker okay I like not you to I want you to on Instagram just a story every time you have a Guinness okay and you gotta split the G every time I always try every time splitting the G I'm I'm over that I'm I'm just it's it's enough already just drink the beer however you want to drink it we're always like drink your whiskey however you want drink your beer however you want but when you drink Guinness you split that G. Because it'd be oh Jerry's oh I thought you're splitting the G. No I I guess it's just I've never been able to do it but that's probably why I'm there.

SPEAKER_01 3:12:19

So in eight days I'll be uh at work on day shift and when this episode launches I'll be on night shift at work so yeah I kind of figured you had no cool updates like me and Jer. Yeah my my cool updates in in July uh share Sean I'm reading a book it's called Die With Nothing so you're gonna have to not so much I have to get above nothing to that die with nothing.

SPEAKER_05 3:12:44

Yeah it's it's a little bit of you still have to make the money yeah trips.

SPEAKER_06 3:12:52

It's but I think when uh in July Sean and I are gonna try to connect right it's July right that you're coming out here your wife has told me that there's an issue with the date that we're gonna be there but I say fuck all kids plans we're going to the amusement park Jeremy we're going on rides okay I love it. Alright I know I put it in my calendar I'll double check it.

SPEAKER_05 3:13:20

Connect travel have fun enjoy your time the whiskey is the accompaniment the the the full experience is just doing the travel itself and and it's it's pretty cool that we're both going to be around the world at the same time Jared we'll we'll have we'll have several tales we don't even have our Canadian episode scheduled yet. No I know we'll schedule that right after we end this recording and and then we'll figure it out but um anyways this was a fun episode Ray Daniel was fantastic yeah uh it was cool revisiting bourbon um I don't know just it just flows it's fucking 1240 my time right now that's three and a half hours in flew by honest like honestly you guys know when when this bourbon episode was first brought up I was kind of against it but yeah I had a blast it was it was good it was yeah I thought you were a good sport I thought you were gonna be a bit more of a dink oh Dalmor Dalmor took the the grinding in my mouth yeah but Dalmore that was like the I you could have been madder at Dalmore actually you could have been a little bit Dalmor.

SPEAKER_06 3:14:31

You were kind of like well I don't really like what they're doing and uh no I literally said tours are you could have yelled fuck yeah it's and did uh like did Ray Ray pick these samples we didn't pick these ones did we correct yeah we just go for it because we're not bourbon we're not bourbon people so she picked them all and like honestly the Bardstown that is a it's a cracker so thank you Ray Ray yeah thanks Ray Ray get a sample kit uh dudes always a blast three hours on the nose remember where we were like we can do two and a half no we cannot no we can't we cannot it's the less structure we have the more we just talk and hang out yeah it is what it is one day we'll look back on these and we'll be like you know what who gives a fuck exactly yeah three hours of sleep and 36 hours who gives a fuck uh we'll see everyone on July 1st for first the Canada episode with a guest we do not know TDD TD Take care everybody thanks for listening if you're still here the Last Call Whiskey podcast is sponsored by Whiskey Drop Canada. Don't forget that every two episodes you'll be able to order a kit through whiskey drop where you can taste through all of the whiskeys that we taste on this podcast. And special thanks to our friends Really Jiggered for the use of their recording of Parting Glass in this episode. We'll see you guys next time.

SPEAKER_05 3:16:11

Good night