You're listening to part two of Flavor Blasted, Fruit Blasted. Thanks for sticking with us. And if you didn't listen to last week's, this is a fine place to jump in right here. Do we need to? Yeah, we need to go around. Oh yeah, right. Barrel the Bottle, Binny's Podcast. I'm Greg, communications. Hey, I'm Pat, Specialty Spirits. I'm Jenna, also communications. Roger, Beer. Chris, I do wine. I'm gonna try to go in some kind of order that might make sense if only in my head here. So we're gonna start with, I brought a vodka, and I'm sorry, but you know. What are you doing? I make us taste vodka like once every three years. But this is an interesting vodka. At least we're gonna get it out of the way. Yeah. This is from the Cat Head Distillery in Jackson, Mississippi. They are a small craft distillery. They also source some excellent bourbon from MGP, of course. We have that as well called Old Soul. We've done some handpicked casks. Their vodka is Cat Head, and I brought the honeysuckle flavor because where else have you seen a honeysuckle-flavored vodka? I don't, right off the top of my head, I can't even think of what a honeysuckle is. A honeysuckle is a flowering plant that like plagues one side of my house. Yeah. You know, when I was a kid, it was my mother taught me to pluck honeysuckles. They're like long horn or tubular shaped flowers, and they have a lot of nectar in them. And if you pluck the flower off and then pull the stamen out, you can suck a little bead of nectar, and it's delicious. It tastes like honey. So yeah, honeysuckle flavored vodka. And this is just, it's made with neutral spirit and honeysuckle and a little bit of cane sugar. That's it. Smells like gin. Very simple gin. Is this parallel with cat head biscuits? What the hell are cat head biscuits? Big ass southern biscuits. On the gin note, though, when a... Size of a cat head. One of the wine buyers walked by and was obviously curious on why we had dozens of bottles open on the table in the conference room here. And he smelled this and he said, oh, is it, what is this? A gin? And then he looked at the label. So I can see the gin thing because it's got this floral and almost greeny kind of character to it. Yeah. But then it finishes with some nice honeyed sweetness, though. I think for a flavor vodka, it's pretty damn good. And it's not neon colored. Is it 40 proof? Or sorry, 80 proof? No, it is 70 proof. So 35 percent. It has that kind of spicy quality to... I mean, it's definitely floral and sweet, but it still has that base vodka spirit. Yes. Oh, yeah, for sure. I don't know what I'd do with this either. Right. I mean, I wasn't like, I don't need more honeysuckle in my empty life as it is, nor do I need more vodka in my life. Tell them that they should make this into a gin. That would be better. I actually think it would be much more interesting if there were more botanicals involved. It's okay. I mean, and it definitely gets across the honeysuckle flavor on the palate, but, you know, it's well made. Cathead honeysuckle vodka, not bad, 20 bucks. Makes sense. 20 bucks is not bad. Yeah, that's pretty cheap for a craft spirit. There's a cat on the label, so I'd probably buy it. All right, Pat is going to promise us that there's not 12 more turns to go through. All right, well, on that note, let's just taste a gin. This is a gin in the interest of full disclosure. I have not tried yet. It is from France and it is made with yuzu. It looks like a giant perfume bottle. It sure does. Yeah, it looks French. He says dismissing. Yeah, so this does for a gin, though, because they wanted to focus on the yuzu and then they have to focus on some juniper. They kept the botanical bill very simple. This is just yuzu, Sichuan peppercorns, juniper and coriander. Ooh, the electric battery test. Yeah, will it make your tongue tingle? It feels like touching a nine volt battery to your tongue if you eat a lot of them. They are magical. This is pretty good. It smells fruity. It's nice. It's a nice gin. It's not overtly yuzu flavored. It's still actually a gin, but the yuzu is there. But I don't know that it's distinguishable from the usual lemon and lime rinds that are in most gins, you know? I wouldn't know that's flavored. The one thing that like stands out is that Szechuan peppercorn. Are you getting that buzz on your tongue? Well, the heat of it, but also the like vague spicy quality that it brings. No, I'm not getting the buzz on my tongue. Are you getting that kind of numbing feeling on the tip of your tongue? Oh, yeah. Now I guess I am. Yeah, I am. Yeah. There it's there. That's the peppercorn. All right. It's an interesting gin. Oh, I've got the prices, actually, for once. Hey, he's so not used to bringing notes that he forgot to get out his notes. For being called a yuzu gin, yeah, the yuzu is really subdued. Yeah, exactly. For being actually flavored with it, I wouldn't get that necessarily. It's not a bad gin. It tastes just fine. It's very refreshing and I would drink it, but wouldn't classify it as flavor blasted. Yeah, kind of disappointing. And there are so many gins out there that don't even call themselves necessarily citric centrist, that have more of a lemon, lime flavor. Yeah, I think they underplayed probably because they're such a potent spice. I mean, this should almost be marketed as Szechuan peppercorn gin, not yuzu. That's the star of the show here. This could probably make some really great, like, the way people do like Sake with sushi. I could see doing like a chilled shot of this with sushi. Oh, yeah, that would be interesting. Well, it's a pretty good gin. I don't know that it's great. Forty five dollars, though, pretty expensive. What? Forty five dollars? At least 15 of that is in the fancy bottle. Yeah, probably. The dime store perfume bottle. We're gonna keep going on the herbal train here, but also some interesting fruit. So next up is Apolog Persimmon Liqueur. Chris, what's a persimmon? Isn't that a golf club wood? Actually, they grow right around here quite well, but they also are very widely grown in Asia. And they're kind of look almost like a tomato, but they're sweet. They're berry though, like a tomato. They're only sweet and if you let them ripen to they're very soft. They're famously amazingly astringent. That's right. They can be very astringent when underripe, but quite sweet when ripe and pulpy. There are some cultivars that are non-astringent, that you can eat when they're in a crunchier state. But the safest bet when eating a persimmon, if you don't know, is to let it get. Basically, as Chris mentioned, some of the varieties look literally like an orange tomato. Other ones look more heart-shaped. You want them to ripen to the point where you can basically push your finger into the flesh, and then they will have transitioned into the really sweet phase. This is flavored. We're not flavor blasted yet, but- Joke's on you guys, I snuck an Amaro in here. Yeah, it is an Amaro. This is a bittersweet liqueur. obviously, it has persimmon, but it's also got some spice and some citrus, and almost like some rhubarb in there or something. It smells like it has wormwood on it, on the nose. Yeah, I just smelled it. There's got to be like gentian or something in there. There's definitely a bitter, rooty note in the nose. Yeah. Ingredients, persimmon, hibiscus flower, bitter orange peel, orange peel, lemon peel, cinchona bark, gentian root, rhubarb root, ginger root, cardamom, spearmint, cinnamon, cane sugar, and grain neutral spirit. Well, it actually smells exactly like that, so. Yeah, right. This is awesome. You know what this would be really good in is to put some of this into a root beer. Yeah, I like that idea. It would lift the root beer. It would lift the root beer and give it a more true, the kind of root beer taste you never get anymore. Because now- I'm officially doubting this idea. How about sparkling lemonade? That'd be good. I mean, this is like a very mellow, kinder, gentler sfumato, Pat. What do you think of that? I think it's a milder, gentler, Zucca rhubarbero. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, rhubarb amaro. Raj, I know what you're saying. You're saying it'll add a little bit of that sassafraspa. Yeah. Give it a root beer of today. More of like- because nowadays, root beers are just way too- the main notes are vanilla and menthol. So it's like mint and vanilla. This would give it some true root herbaceousness. Yeah. Of which it's lacking. And that was Roger's Root Beer Grapes. All right, well. I actually think this is really good. This is a really like an entry level Amaro. Yeah. Not every entry level quality wise, but like flavor profile wise. Well, sweet enough to be kind of gentle, but bitter enough to hold its own. We all fondly remember just how grossed out Roger was by all of these Amari. And this one is one that I think he can handle. No, yeah, I like this a lot. Yeah, it's very good. Is this how they market it as Amaro? They market it as a bittersweet liqueur. Which is more like Amaro. Which is Amaro. Like an Italian bitter. And it's 27% alcohol, so it's in the Amaro wheelhouse. How much more than Campari is this? This is 35 bucks. That's right there. Yeah. Yeah, I think Campari is even more, isn't it? It got expensive. Campari got expensive. I don't think Campari is 40 now, is it? I'd have to check. I found a bottle at Sunset Foods for 25 bucks, and I bought it. Wow, yeah, it's pretty cheap. Yeah. They clearly have not updated their pricing in the last year and a half. I mean, I'd rather drink this thing. I mean, I famously hate Campari, but I definitely would. Well, Campari is orders of magnitude more bitter than this. And more sweet. It's bigger on both sides. Campari is $29.99, so. Yeah. It's five bucks more for the local version. So where is this made? This is actually made in Thornton, Illinois. Thornton. Now, but they're moving. So it's not their own distillery. They use the facility. I think they're moving it to a different local distillery that they're going to start making stuff out of. Do you know what the base is on this? That's a neutral spirit. So these were a couple of mixology focused guys, and they make in the epilogue lineup. There's a persimmon, there's a celery, there's a saffron, and there's one other. That's skipping my mind right now. But they're all high-end mixology focused. And then they did a really high-end ready-to-drink old fashioned over the winter, too, called Sunday's Finest Gold fashioned. Oh, this is those guys? Yeah, which was really outstanding. I tried that the other day. Is it so good? It's pretty good. I don't think it could hold up to ice, though. Interesting. I liked it neat, but I don't think it would be too watered down. It's on the thin side. All right, a couple of herbal starters here. Now let's get into the real flavor blasted stuff. You ready? Let's do it. All right, I brought a sweet and flavorful liqueur, really because you get a lot of questions about like, what does that taste like? And so next we're gonna try Tempest Fugit's creme de noyau. Did I say that right, Chris? We. We. That just refers to the almond kernel or like we were talking about on last episode, the kernel of related species like a cherry or a peach. Yeah. So this one is made with apricot and cherry pits, bitter almonds, and added botanicals. There's gotta be cherry flesh in there too. Although when we did that, I did Jim's simple syrup, cherry syrup method, and there's no juice, and it pulls the juice out of the seeds, and it's enough to make cherry syrup. So maybe I'm wrong. Yeah. Well, this is, Tempest fusion makes really high-quality stuff. If you have a need for creme de coco or creme de menthe, like you should, theirs that are $40 are worth every penny. They have a creme de benin that tastes like liquefied banana bread. That's really cool. But I wanted to highlight this because this is one of those spirits that even a lot of our younger employees have no idea what this is or what it tastes like. Smells amazing. It smells like cherry syrup. It's very marzipan-y. If you're going to buy the creme de coco, you got to make a pink squirrel because that's maybe the most famous drink made with creme de noyau. This is legit. This is leaps and bounds above your other creme de noyau options. Oh man, it's got such a tingle of cherry pit. It's like numbing the front of my tongue. Not Szechuan peppercorns. Yeah, the cherry is huge up front, and then the almond is this long, slow on the back end. Yep. It's really good. If you've ever smelled like almond extract, you know how floral and exaggeratedly almondy almond extract is, that's taken from bitter almonds, which have very high cyanide content, so you just generally don't eat them unless they're processed, but you make marzipan and extract and stuff out of them. The nose on this is all about that high toned almondiness that you got to get out of that kind of extract. Chana, you were about to say the same thing, huh? Yes. Yeah. It's very amaretto-ish in its own way. Yeah, it is kind of. It's basically the same kind of spirit. A friend of mine always uses almond extract instead of vanilla extract in baking, and I find it distracting and gross. And I don't need almond-flavored everything cookies. But can you relate that experience to what you're smelling here? Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, it's in tons of pastries. So if you go to your old school local bakery, it's going to be in their sweet rolls and stuff. Oh, yeah. This would be an excellent pairing for hashtag national Nougat Day. You are correct. It is very nougat-y. It actually tastes straight up like nougat. It doesn't just have the nuttiness, it has that actual honey, nougat-y flavor. So Chris, you said you use creme de noyau to make a pink squirrel. A pink squirrel, yeah. It's kind of a classic drink. It relies on, I'm pretty sure that classically, this is colored with the cochineal, the little insects for the red. It could be. What do you think this is colored with? Let me see here. Food coloring, hopefully. No, no. I think maybe something. It was hoping for the cherries. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. Contains cochineal extract. Yeah. Boom. Nailed it. Hashtag not vegan friend. That's what you would expect historically in a color that you're getting here. And that's why you can make a pink squirrel out of it rather than using say like amaretto or something. You could make a very similar drink, but it wouldn't turn out pink. Oh, they've got a pink squirrel recipe on the back of the bottle, which they are saying is one part creme de noyau, one part creme de coco, and one part fresh cream. Shake heavily with ice and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Nothing like a big glass of milk. Or alternately use ice cream like they do in Wisconsin. Yeah, that's pretty old school. I wouldn't do equal parts. I would do a little more cream. I mean, it would be a little longer drink too. I mean, that's literally just like three ounces. I would do like two ounces of cream, one ounce. Not if you use two ounces of each. Are we in Greg's basement? Yeah, I don't sit around in the basement drinking creamer. And you also can garnish it with nutmeg. That's a popular garnish. Exactly. It's an awesome drink. I mean, any excuse at all to talk about nutmeg, am I right? Nutmeg. You know, most pink squirrels you'd get in the world, maybe up until recently, would be made with like DeKyper. Yeah, Hiram Walker. Creme de Noyau or something, and the same brand of Creme de Cacao. So cherry pucker. You know, you could make a really good one out of this. This is a fine product. Well, here's what I'll say about it. Flavored? Yes. Blasted? We're headed in the right direction, but it's not blasted. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's flavored. We're working our way up. All right. Pat missed the assignment. Listen, my whole purpose with this was try to bring higher quality flavor blast thing. Yes, I could have brought Evan Williams' Peach. We want trash that's flavor blasted. I could have brought Hartley Brandy Apricot. But I didn't want to drink those things, and neither should you. Thanks, Pat. All right, next up is a favorite of Roger's, favorite of mine. Favorite of mine. Favorite of Greg's. This is plantation Stigin's Fancy Pineapple Rum. Jen, have you had this? I've not had the pineapple flavor. This stuff is truly remarkable, and they make it in just a crazy way. So they take their regular plantation Three Star Rum, and they infuse it with the bark of Victoria pineapples, and then they further distill that in a Cognac still in France. The rum itself was made in Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad. Then they take the plantation Original Dark Rum, made in those same three countries, but the darker rum, and they infuse that with the flesh of the pineapple, with the pineapple fruit, and then- Wait a second. When you say bark, you're talking about tree bark or the pineapple? The rind, the rind, the scales, the skin of the pineapple. I was going to say, that would be unusual. Then they take that pineapple skin-infused and distilled light rum, and blend it with the pineapple fruit-infused dark rum together to make this. It's just unbelievable. It's named after a character from Charles Dickens' Pickwick Papers, by the way, who famously liked pineapple rum as his drink of choice. This is made with Victoria pineapples, which are a smaller type of pineapple that is intensely flavorful and sweet. Yeah, they're adorable. This is like the perfect, don't worry about cocktail recipes, you just make your own cocktail by using this as a base, and then just experiment adding little additions to it, because it's basically a ready to drink cocktail as is. Now, I get that Jenna's gonna again complain that this isn't flavor blasted, but this is the perfect amount of flavoring, so it still tastes like a high quality rum. It does. And it's a proper rum proof. Jenna, what's the proof on this thing? This is, I don't know, I don't know how to read, 40. Yep, there you go. So most flavored rum is 35, 30% alcohol. This is a full 80 proof. Next time I ask about a question about a label, you should look at the front of the label. Yeah, but it's not always on the front of the label, and the back of the label was facing me. This is delightful, I have to say. It's pretty tasty. It is lightly sweetened, but honestly, it's really not that sweet. I think they're saying they have 20 milligrams a liter or something of added sugar, which is not much at all compared to many, many, many other rums that aren't even flavored. Well, if we want to put a fine point on that, and I mean, this is apples to oranges or pineapples to oranges, but we just had creme de noyau, and liqueurs are divided into different styles, and to be a creme, you've got to have a lot of freaking sugar in it. Yeah. So that last thing, the minimum to qualify for creme is like, I don't know, 250 grams per liter, and this is 20. Not that this is even a liqueur, I mean, it is, but it's no where even in the ballpark with a lot of things. And it has genuine real pineapple flavor. It's really good. It just kind of fans out on the finish with fresh pineapple. plantation Stiggins Fancy. Awesome rum, awesome price, $33. Worth every penny. Yeah. So we've had availability problems in the past, right? Not for a while, though. That's awesome. Yeah, wide open. Available at every Binny's. It's a hit at local cocktail bars, too. They use it for a lot of stuff. Oh, yeah. Did you shake this up? I did. I've been eyeing this one the whole time. And this, I have a feeling, is going to be a great mix with Stiggins Fancy. Yeah. Now we're really going to flavor country here, and this is truly flavor blasted. Up next, we're staying tropical. Up next, we're going to try Chinola. Why is it so thick? Chinola is a passion fruit liqueur. Chinola is, it's made in the Dominican Republic, and Chinola is the local name for the passion fruit. This is another one that Jim is absolutely going to kick us for doing this without him, because he loves this. This stuff is- Yeah, he's the one that told me about this. Absolutely incredible. Holy cow, it finishes so tart. I was in Hawaii on vacation a couple months ago, and I ate passion fruit everything. He hasn't shut up about it since. Because it was that incredible. Everything was, there's lilikoi everything on every menu, and I tried all of that I could, and I'm truly a convert to the passion fruit thing. And this is just taking me right back. This is something else. It's thick. It starts off like apricot juice, and then it just gets more and more zingy, and more and more bright. Yeah, so this is 21% alcohol, pretty typical of corn. It's thick. I mean, there's a lot of sugar in this, but man, it's natural tasting though. It really is. Yeah, that is just straight up pure passion fruit flavor. It's really, it's really good. I mean, this is just one of those things where it just expresses itself exactly as you would want it to. passion fruit. You could put a little bit of that in your bird's-eye-lender vice. Indeed. And if you want to be making some hurricanes that are truer to the original origin drink, it is typically more of a passion fruit based drink. Yeah, hurricane should have passion fruit syrup in it. I think we all experienced that pretty recently, early some of us. Oh, man, this is so good. So mix some with the Stiggins Fancy. Yeah, can we make a tiny little cocktail here? Yeah. A little cocktail break right here? I'm going on vacation, bitches. It's also just Friday, so. Yeah, also Friday. Don't drink too much, Greg. You won't know you're chit from Chinola. The two of these, maybe some fresh lime. It doesn't even need the lime. There's enough cut in the Chinola. I would like it with the lime. That sounds even better. It doesn't need the acidity, but I'd like the aromatics. Yeah. Maybe if nothing else like the garnish. Just a garnish. I just want something pretty on my glass. It basically does. I could see pineapple juice. I would just like a little handkerchief that was perfumed with lime to wave in front of my face as I drink this. You could cut a wheel and put it in the drink as opposed to on the rim, so then it's like passing through it as you drink it. That would be good. This is so good. Yeah. I'm just using the pen method of mixing our cocktail, except it's for pinky. Did you make sure it's 50-50? I'm 50-50. Yeah, I'm 50-50, and it's incredible. Here we go, man. Oh, that's an awesome cocktail. Yeah. Oh, that's such a good cocktail. You know what you're talking about? It needs a little bit of lime. You need this in a fish bowl with the top of a pineapple just sticking out the top. Or a hollowed out pineapple. We should get our blog mixologist on using Chinola in this for something here coming up in the early summer months. Indeed. With lots of Pebble Ice. Stop by your local Sonic. Yeah. Get some of their ice is the key. You can get a Pebble Ice machine for your kitchen countertop now, and it's like a few hundred bucks. Roger, I was thinking that, but I was afraid you were going to get mad at me. Chinola, Awesome Liqueur, we all love it. It's only 30 bucks. All the good cocktail syrups are like 15 bucks for a 375. Yeah, it's a 750 of Awesome Liqueur. passion fruit is not cheap. Yeah. That's just... What's the ABV on that, by the way? It's 21% alcohol. That's respectable. That's good too, because then it'll last longer than some of the cocktail syrups that cost just as much, but you need to use in like two weeks. Yeah. All right. Was that sufficiently flavor blasted? Yeah. We're on the right track now. All right, we're through the non-whiskies. I have six truly flavor-blasted whiskies here for us to try today, including two maple whiskies from Quebec for an old-fashioned Québécois maple off. Maybe we'll save them for last, or should we do those first? Is Pete any of the blasting flavors? No. I think we should save them for last. All right, well, we're gonna start with the newest entry in town, and I think it is very clearly flavor blasted. We're selling the hell out of this, though. I've already had this. Does that mean I get to skip it? No. Okay, cue the REM, Jim. This is truly flavor blasted. Truly flavor blasted. This is a new kid on the block. We're selling a ton of it for I have no idea why reason. What next up is Jameson Orange. It smells like Fee Brothers orange, aromatic bitter. It smells exactly like orange crush soda. Wow. I've got my spine. I got my orange crush. This reminds me of- You can't even smell the whiskey. No. There's nothing at all in here that tastes like whiskey. It's just purely orange. It's like an orange Tootsie Pop. It finishes with, I suppose, a little more orange rind character. Like it's kind of pithy on the finish. Orange slurpee. It is kind of pithy on the finish. So Jenna had on the bitters episode, Jenna said that the orange bitters smelled like the McDonald's orange. This smells like the McDonald's orange. I say orange, baby. That you left in your car with the ice and it got watered down. Yes. Yeah, yeah. All right. So that's kind of the standard. That's what you expect when you have a flavored whiskey, right? Like most of the flavored whiskeys on the shelf are truly flavor blasted. They're loaded with sugar. We're going to try some. That's not overly sweet, but oh my God, is it? Is it flavor blasted? Let me defend the Jameson orange liqueur for just a second. Because that's what it is. It's orange liqueur. Irish whiskey is a hit because you can shoot it. Irish whiskey with natural, natural orange flavors, 30% alcohol. And it's easy. There's no challenge here whatsoever. And that's why this is a hit. Dude, it's $25. I'll spend an extra five bucks on Chinola and have something interesting. Oh yeah. I guess my question is, what is the purpose of this? You can buy all kinds of orange liqueurs with more orange character, but it doesn't bring any whiskey character to it. So the fact that it's an orange whiskey doesn't mean anything. This is for 21-year-olds who have no palette yet. Jamison's a shop brand. For sure Applebee's is making a orange margarita out of this. I mean, they just say to try it with your favorite mixer over ice for a crisp and refreshing taste. Are you reading the back of the bottle? I'm reading the back of the bottle because all the backs of the bottles are facing me. Pat's bogarting the labels of the bottles. I mean, this truly does fit in to the original concept of this of, all right, we're putting out products like seltzers, FMBs that are catering to readily identifiable tastes and smells usually from a nostalgia of one's youth. So whether it be sour candies, slurpees, energy drinks, Gatorade. Well, all right, you're totally right. Here's my other defense of this, and this has been going on for 20 years. At least this one doesn't, it's not vanilla, cherry, honey. Yeah. Right? Yeah. It's a new flavor of flavored whiskey, mainstream flavored whiskey. Kind of. I mean, Jim Beam Orange beat them to the punch, I guess. They, I guess, never even saw that, because I'm not shopping in that aisle. Yeah. Unless it's vodka, flavored vodka, the first duty of anything is to have the character of its base spirit. You know, liqueurs don't, they use a lot of times neutral spirits, or vodka, of course. But why can't we have a little bit of Irish whiskey in here at least? Because really this is just catering to the idea of that some people think it's cooler to say you're drinking whiskey, because especially American whiskey slash bourbon has caught on fire. They want to be saying they're a whiskey drinker, even though they're drinking this. The horse is dead, but I'm going to need you to explain it one more time. The horse is dead. Oh, put your flogs away. Ugh, what is this? Next up. Wow, that bad, huh? Next up, we got New York apple-flavored whiskey from Leopold Brothers. And this is just made, they have a whiskey that gets aged in used oak with a bunch of apples. So it turns out Pat understood the assignment. He was just leading us in, he was like rewarding us and then punishing us. It's so sweet. It's like sweeter than the mead. It smells like a brie. A brie? What? Yeah, it has like a cheesy, rindy funk. So, yeah, it does. It does. I think it's pretty pleasant. It tastes like boozy apple juice. Yeah. Who the hell is using apple juice as a mixer though? Who's drinking boozy apple juice? Justin Bauer's oops-tler. Yeah. When you say boozy apple juice, I think of Apfel and this is way boozier. Now, you know what this reminds me of? Because this is 80 proof. Yeah. This reminds me of you just said, Johnna, who uses apple juice as a mixer. There's a tradition with a vodka called Zubruvka. The grass vodka? Bison grass vodka. Yeah. They'd mix that with apple juice and that is coming back to me. I had a buddy who introduced me to that decades ago and I was like, what are we drinking? I believe Eastern European legend has it that it helps you make babies. Pretty sure that's how that goes. Yeah. I know. It isn't quite as bad as I revisited, but it's crazy sweet. It's crazy sweet. And Greg nailed it, man. There's some weird funk going on with this. There is some weird funk going on with this. Yeah, I agree. I think the brie rind is a good call in that it smells fungal, almost like a clean mushroom, earthy mushroom smell like brie rind has. It has a very rich, almost bruised apple aroma too. When I put it on my tongue was the real surprise though, because it is flavor blast. I mean, it's just explosive. And it's just apples and apple juice from their hand-selected varieties, because these guys keep it real. I mean, this is a distillery that had Vendome rebuild in 18th century still that nobody had ever seen before out of some found blueprints and stuff. Like they're a legit distillery, and they have a cherry whiskey too that's really good, but we were out of stock of it in Lincoln Park, so I didn't pull it. I think maybe they're envisioning, Leopold's got some serious chops. I think they might want you to drink this in a cocktail setting, maybe. Probably. Maybe that sweetness would make a little more sense if there was some dilution and chill involved. Also sounds like they have too much money. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty interesting. I don't know what the base whiskey is. It's whiskey, right? But there's a little bit of rye spice in there, maybe. Which I think is nice with apple sweetness. Leopold Apple Whiskey is 35 bucks. It's not bad. That's not bad. I was expecting something more than that. Next up, we've got Dead Drop Pecan Whiskey. So this one is made at the Thornton Distilling Company down in Thornton. It's just their house made whiskey flavored. What they do is they use the last remaining active pecan farm in Illinois to source all this stuff. And they take pecan wood and they mill it into staves and toast them at the distillery. And they insert pecan wood staves into the barrels. They make hers mark 46 with pecan wood. And then they infuse that whiskey with roasted pecans from that pecan farm. And then if you go and do the distillery tour, they'll just slap you in the face with a bag of pecans. They slap you in the face with one of those staves because this is like you're It is wood. Hanging out at Home Depot. Yikes. It's kind of interesting they went that way with the staves. It's interesting that it's 86 proof. They went there with the added wood and the added roasted nuts, but with no added sugar. I want more pecan flavor, not wood flavor. I was going to say, I don't really get any actual pecan flavor. Yeah, the nose is so woody, so woody. If you blinded us on this, I would not have guessed. No, yeah, not at all. It's like walking into a lumber yard. Yeah. This is my first time tasting it. You're at Menards and somebody like, they waft of Pearson's nut roll by your nose. That's as much pecan as you get. And then they hit you in the face of the two by four. Boy, you go to the same Menards I go to. The postmodern Menards. Yeah. Dead drop. Not my favorite. How much does that set you back? $35. It's the right price for what it is. But yeah. After I've sat with it a minute, there's definitely a pecan flavor that kind of rests on your palate on the finish. But it is understated compared to the tannic wood nature of the beverage overall. What do you got next for us, Pat? Next up, we're going back to a fruit whiskey, and in what I have long considered to be the best flavored whiskey in the store. The best flavored whiskey in the store. Bold statement. So this is Starlight Distillery, so the Huber Farm and Winery. This is their Blackberry Whiskey. It's 84 proof, and so- These are the guys who made your honey barrel, right? Yeah, they did that. So they are growing all their own grains and making their own whiskey there. They got a big column still and some pot stills and stuff. They do a lot of brandy. Everything's aged on site. So this started as a blend of their four of their three grain and four grain light whiskeys. So they distilled the whiskeys themselves ahead of time, a little higher proof. occasionally, they use bourbon in this as well, depending on the blend and what's available. So then it gets barreled in used bourbon and rye casks from their single-barrel program, and it just gets blended with sun-ripened blackberries and left alone in the barrel. All right. I haven't tried this yet, so I'm going to talk about it before trying it. Did you just say that they mix the base spirits based on whatever they have on hand? What's the recipe here? Like, I don't know, what do we got? They have to keep it consistent. Oh, so they're doing it for flavor now. Yeah. It's also light whisky, which you've not spilt too highly of in the past. So light whisky, in theory, yes, it can be distilled up to 180 proof or whatever. But knowing that distillery, yeah, it's distilled higher than 160, but I doubt they got to 180. Plus, they're using it for a fruity product in the end. They're making a more, if you want a more expressive fruit flavor, you do need a more neutral base spirit. Right. Now we're actually diving in here. But it's not actually distilled to neutrality. But this is just purely the blackberries. That's it. No added sugar. All the sugar in this is coming from the blackberries. This is good. Really? Was I right? What gives it the chocolate flavor? Because that's awesome. The combination of blackberries and oak, I think, more than anything. That's amazing. This is very good. It's 84 proof. It's like chocolate covered raspberries. Yeah, like chocolate covered raspberries. And it's $27. And it's $27. Oh, even better. That's pretty good. And how they make money and we make money on it after they grow all the shit to make this thing, crazy. Comes in a handsome bottle too. This almost has a chocolate covered cherry thing going on too, like in a very good non-medicinal way. It's like a raspberry truffle. Yeah. Isn't it good? Yeah, it's nice. Can you visit this place? It's superb. Yes, you can visit this place. That's how they have all this money to do whatever they want, distilling, because most of their business is as like- Weddings and stuff, right? Is as agricultural tourism and like a pumpkin patch and a Yupick berries. They get 20- Wait a minute, we can drink this so cheap because they have Hayrack rides? They get literally multiple tens of thousands of people a day visiting in the prime Yupick season in the summer. Do they have goats that you can pet? They are printing money, just printing money on this so of course, so they just have a state of the art distillery and they can just do whatever the hell they want with their whiskey. How? Well, and clearly they chose to offer a good product at a really reasonable price for craft spirits under $30. Yeah, crazy. But is there a petting zoo? There was not a petting zoo when I was there in January, maybe in the summer. They're the largest fruit grower in Indiana. They're the largest winery in Indiana. They have almost 800 acres. Do they have pawpaws? They're a seventh generation on the same piece of land. That's crazy. Roger had joy in his voice when he asked that, but he was deadly serious. Yeah, I'm deadly serious. If they have pawpaws. No, seriously though, do they have pawpaws? We are almost through the last episode of Flavor Blasting, and finally the fruit king comes out, wanting to know if there's pawpaws. Do they have the Banango? The Hoosier Banana. The Hillbilly Mango. Will you answer me? I don't have the answer. I don't want to misspeak. You need to find out. And I want to go there this fall. Remember, fall is harvest time. Yeah, no, we can go there anytime. All right. Roger is going to be like boxing people out in line. Pushing kids away. The younger generation that's taken over are these two brothers, Christian and Blake, and they're taking over from their father, Ted. And they're both professionally trained wine makers. One of them went to the whatever the big winemaking school is in ontario, near Niagara or something. And one of them worked for some first growth Bordeaux winery the last few years, and the other worked for the place that makes Dominus. Wow. And now they're making wine in southern Indiana. Pretty crazy. So, I didn't bring this up on the last episode when we were talking about persimmons, but both pawpaw and persimmon would grow in Indiana. And persimmon pudding is a big Indiana thing. Has anyone ever had that? Persimmon pudding? Yeah, it's like an English pudding, Roger. If you've never had it, you would probably like it. I've never had it, but I've always wanted to go to, there's a persimmon festival in Indiana. How far apart from that is the pawpaw festival? That's far, the ohio. ohio, sorry. Which is quite a trek, but you said you would go to that. I will go to the pawpaw festival with you one day. Then COVID came and ruin that plan, but I'm trying to think we're in Indiana, the persimmon festival is, that would definitely be a shorter drive, I think. You definitely have a chance to taste persimmon pudding. Yeah. Roger is really keyed into this subculture. The fruit lovers digest. He gets a subscription to every year. All right. Was that sufficiently flavor blasted? That was flavor blasted. Yeah, that was flavor blasted. It was awesome. It was artfully crafted as well. I agree with that. I'm falling down on the side of maybe moderately flavor blasted because I think the blackberry was so well judged in this. If you recall the meads we tasted, where there were blackberry in them. Blackberry can be really intense and sweet, but this has just the right amount of sweetness and enough blackberry, you know exactly what's going on, what it is, but it's not so rich that it dominates everything. Yeah, I agree, man. With a couple of exceptions, I tried picking some stuff that was going to be flavorful but not one note. Yeah, that's good. Five hours away in Mitchell, Indiana is the seventh, this year will be the 75th edition of the. Five hours, that's like on like the very southwest corner then or something. It's only an hour from Louisville. Yeah, OK. Well, isn't that where this place is? This is in Indiana. Yeah, so Huber is right across the ohio River from Louisville. If you're in Louisville, it's 35 minutes north. Yeah, so we do a double stop. Yeah, sure. Book it. I'm in. Persimmon Festival, here we come. Yes, we're doing a Barrel to Bottle hits the road. Yeah. And we're going to go to a fruit festival. And we're going to you pick blackberries. Live from the Persimmon capital of the world. Right. How was the whiskey? We're like, what? All right, I have two left here of the dozen I brought, and they are the two maples, both Canadian maple whiskey liqueurs, both about 30% alcohol. So I have two, I have Sap 56, and I have Sorda Ledge. Sorda Ledge was available back when I started working at Binny's, you know, way back in the day, and it was a 375, and it was very popular, and then they didn't have export for a long time. So it's back in a 750. That 750 is now only $20 at your local Binny's. Pretty awesome price. And Sap 56 here, there was some NHL player is, you know, involved in starting this. I don't know who. There's only one P in Sap, right? Yeah. Sap 56 is 30 bucks, and it is 30.8% alcohol, Sorda Ledge is 30. I think 56 might be the guy's number or something. Brett would know, I don't know. All right, so I'm passing around Sap 56 first. Oh, sorry. That's me. Oh, that's you? Is it? I went to Sap 56's website. Oh, yeah. They have a terrible autoplay video. Autoplay's music. Oh, it's horrible. It got me in the Orland Park store earlier. I was sitting on my laptop and my volume was all the way up from the last time we did Zoom or something and it just started blasting. I thought it was Greg just impatiently waiting. Yeah, that's what I thought too. Yeah. The way he looked, I was like, wow, he put on waiting music because I was taken to that? No, because every time I do that, I go like this. I thought Roger was about to start singing Mango Banana Tree or whatever it was. Yo, that was so good. Underneath the mango tree. Sword of Ledge. Sword of Ledge notably pours a lot thicker. You can see it coming out of the bottle. See, getting on my hand. Oh, yeah. Yeah, my hands are so sticky. It was sticky underneath the plastic foil, the plastic seal. Gross. Yeah, when I opened it yesterday. Oh, gross. All right. So we're doing these two side by side. Sword of Ledge is way more candied on the nose. And that makes the other one smell a little more. The Sap 56 smell a little more serious or a little more quiet. Oh, I really like the Sword of Ledge. So it's thick, but it's so maple-y. It's mega flavor blasted. Mega flavor blasted. The smell really translates to the flavor. The Sword of Ledge is much richer, much more maple-y. Wow. Sword of Ledge is just drinking maple syrup that's lightly watered down. And who doesn't like that? Watered down with booze. Literally pour it on pancakes. Let it soak in. I was just going to say, I want pancakes now. 20 bucks for that Sword of Ledge. That's a steal. Pancakes or waffles, you guys? Oh. And these both have like a Canadian whiskey base? Waffles have syrup pockets and they get crispier. You pronounced butter pockets wrong. Okay, butter. Either way. But I eat pancakes more often for some reason than I do waffles. Yeah, me too. It takes less esoteric tools. I don't have a waffle maker, so my waffles are limited to the frozen ones, which generally aren't bad. They're pretty good. I thought that until my mother-in-law brought the waffle maker. I knew Chris would just take it personally that someone would eat frozen waffles. No, no. Wrong, wrong, you're wrong. All right, sorry for that detour. The 56 refers to 56 days of harvest and boiling of maple water. I know that's what their website says, but I swear to God, it's NHL guys number two. Could be. Seems like an arbitrary. Yeah, is every season exactly 56 days? Probably not. I mean, can't we just Google NHL player involved with that 56? It is the maple run season right now. There's a guy down the street for me that's got a bunch of maple trees in his property that he has buckets and hoses and connected to. Thank you to our indigenous forebearers for teaching us that. I think it's worth noting that both of these have a very natural maple syrup taste to them, not maple extract. I wasn't going to bring the cheapo gross fake maple things. These are both well-made. They're respectable 60 proof. I think that's certainly for two things that are labeled liqueur, I think that's a pretty respectable proof. I thought they had a natural maple character to them. They do. I mean, there's a lot of sweetness here, which makes sense, though. If you're going to get that much natural maple flavor, there's probably kind of an impressive amount of maple syrup in these, I would say. Sap 56, you can still taste the base whiskey. You can. Which is a very light Canadian whiskey, but it still tastes like whiskey, whereas the Sword of Ledge is just maple syrup. Yeah. Contrary to my comments about the Jameson, I think that's appropriate here, maybe just because I like it. I think the Sword of Ledge is pretty incredible. The Sword of Ledge is just decadent and excellent. I mean, it does what the Jameson tries to, I think, but with a natural flavor and a natural sweetness to it. This would make an incredible milkshake, like a maple milkshake with the Sword of Ledge. I think you could use it as the simple syrup in an old-fashioned and make a maple old-fashioned. I like that idea. Yeah, that sounds amazing. Yeah. And you wouldn't even need that much sugar. Maple, yeah. And you use, I mean, even if it's a little too sweet, you could hit it with Roger's favorite Fee Brothers Black Walnut. Yeah. There you go. Little dash in there. So a moment's Googling yields no answer to our question, but there are several articles about Warren Sapp, and also this one from mirror.co.uk. Lou Bago reveals the secret sadness behind his global hit song, Mambo No. 5, which is just heart breaking. Oh, wow. What a delightful song. Is that a tragic? I don't... The weight of having so many girlfriends was too much for him. I don't want to even click the link. I don't want to know. Where was my breaking news alert on that one? Yeah, right. Breaking news like 20 years ago. I can't think of a maple spirit that I've had that's better, and I've had several maple spirits. Crown Royal used to do one that totally sucked. There was a Jim Beam maple for a while. The one with the wolf on it? I was maple pecan. Oh, William Wolf. So I almost brought the William Wolf pecan because it's kind of like a guilty pleasure. It's sweeter. And it tastes like sweet, roasted, like cinnamon sugar coated pecans. It's actually pretty good. Yeah. There was one called Cabin Fever for a while, which was it was made in Vermont. It was just sourced whiskey blended with maple syrup. And it was very popular around the same time Sordelage was like 15 years ago. And then Diageo bought it and then just like killed it. They just like stopped paying attention to it. And eventually they just discontinued it, which is a shame. It was never on the same caliber of either. Not at all of these though. Yeah. I thought Knob Creek maple is decent. Oh yeah, Knob Creek makes that smoked maple, which is decent. You can still taste the whiskey in it, you know, thankfully. Flavored, yes. Blasted, yes indeed. Yes. Sufficiently blasted. All right, that's what I got, guys. There's limitless options as far as flavor blasted liqueurs go. So, we can do this again whenever you want. We could have a spinoff podcast. Yeah. All right. I mean, I genuinely enjoyed a number of these. Without a doubt, my top picks are the plantation Pineapple, the passion Fruit, the Cianola, the Starlight, and the creme de noyau, I thought was a stellar example of this style. Yeah. Those five were amazing, in my opinion. Just looking at this bottles on the table, how many cocktails do you think you could make from this? Limitless. Limitless. Those three that Chris just named, I mean, they should be in anybody who's interested in tiki tropical drinks, three of those should be in your arsenal for sure. Hell yeah. And that that starlight blackberry at a full proof, you can just have a blackberry Manhattan, a blackberry old fashioned or whatever you're going to use a whisky in. Yeah. A bourbon and you could use that instead because it's not so over the top flavor that it's going to fight with other ingredients. I think that ice cream alcoholic drinks are going to start having a retro. I mean, that used to be a huge thing in the 50s. And Chris and I always talk about it's still a thing in Wisconsin. They have a milkshake mixer behind the bar at Niche in Geneva, and they have a couple of different rotating boozy milkshakes on the menu. I could see that blackberry whiskey being great in that capacity too. Yes, people, drink actual milkshake cocktails. Forget your milkshake. Exactly. All right. Don't be afraid of the flavor blasted spirits if you find a good one. They are out there and they are amazing. If you enjoy this podcast, leave us a review on iTunes, Apple Podcasts. Stars on Spotify. Stars on Spotify. Tell your neighbors. Tell your friends. Tell your mom. Tell your mom. All right. We'll be back in your feed with, I don't know, we got a wine episode coming up. We have some wine guests. That'll be fun. Oh, right. And not boring. They will not be boring. You can tell it's the end of the day on a Friday. Roger is mixing mead and maple whiskey right now. Yeah, it's time to punch out. All right. We'll see you next week. Thanks for listening to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Till next time, I'm Greg. I'm Jenna. And I'm Roger. I'm Chris. I'm Pat. Keep tasting.