Hey, welcome back to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Back in your feed, back up in your ear holes with a Spirits episode this week. It almost came out of his room. Another week, not another wine episode. Keep waiting, nerds. We're talking about Spirits this week. That's how we should end our shows, keep waiting, until we get a wine episode. There was wine in this week's episode. That's true. That's true. Yeah, we did have a little bit of wine. We forced the issue. I'm Pat from The Whiskey Hotline. I am responsible for the plethora of handpicked single barrels and taking over the available space in our stores. We're going to taste through a recent crop of them, spanning a few different styles of spirits. I'll strap in because it's a handpicked barrel madness volume, whatever we're doing here. Yeah. Who else is here? Hey, I'm Chris. I steadfastly refuse to plan a wine episode. I'm Roger. I work in beer and enjoy tasting through these handpicks. The best value in spirits, some have said. Jim, communications coordinator, podcast producer, social media, some light photography, corporate communications, customer service. Occasional videography. Occasional videography. Email forwarder. Email forwarder, a man of customer service. A man of many hats. Yeah. But do you wear them on top of each other? One on top of another hat on a hat. Guys, we're going to start with, I have a couple of tequilas and then a brofies of whiskeys here. So we're going to start with the tequilas. Isn't it more of a ha brofie? Yeah, it's a hey brofie. Hey brofie for sure. Listen to this Italian trying to be Irish. Come on. We're starting, we have two barrels of El Tesoro Reposado Tequila that just came in recently. So going around first is a barrel that was aged for six months, and then second will be a barrel that was aged for nine months. You may recall that to be a Reposado Tequila, it has to be in barrel between two and 12 months. Once it's 12 months in an hour, it's in a niejo. If it's under two months in barrel, it's a hoven. Wow, two months? Did they shorten that? That's the rule. Now you will see- They shortened it back in 1885. I thought it was four. I knew it was not a lot. Very pale color here because this distillery is using fairly spent cupridge because they want this to be an agave forward spirit. They want the agave to do the driving, not the oak. This is El Tesoro from the La Altenia Distillery. That's Nome 1139 for those tequila nerds listening at home. This yielded 240 bottles. It is bottled at 40% alcohol, El Tesoro Reposado. Just look for the Tahona cap. Yes. The Wee Tahona closure on the bottle. The Wee Tahona. The Tahona, for those of you aren't full on tequila nerds yet, the large earthen stone used to crush the piñas. Big granite stone used to crush cooked agaves to extract the juices. The advantage there is that it's very gentle on the agaves. You're extracting less bitter waxy elements out of the agave fibers. The downside is it's not as efficient as a modern roller mill. You're only getting a certain percentage of available fermentable sugars, but at the benefit that they are in theory much better tasting, fuller bodied. All you have to do to power it is to hang a carrot in front of your burro. These are mechanical, although there are traditional distilleries with burro-driven tahona. These are on the shelf at Binny's New Year for $69.99. Picture taking like a pineapple and hitting it with a rolling pin versus throwing it into a wood chipper. Yes. True. Exactly. It's an earthenware juice weezer. What's the ABV on these, bro? 40 percent. These are both cut down. Normally, you guys wear that as a badge of pride. Really, whenever possible, we ask for things we bottle that cast strength, but you don't see that very often in tequila. It's hard enough getting them to bottle a single barrel. That's a giant headache. Somebody from the government has to be signing off on pieces of paperwork many times along the way, all that stuff. I didn't expect necessarily cast strength, but people are starting to do what is it, like 100 around? What are they calling it again? Still strength is very popular, which is usually 110, which is what tequila is coming off its second pot still distillation at. One thing I wanted to ask you about when you were down there recently was, I know when we talk about time and again, we by no means want to perpetuate this further myth of Americans are way too preoccupied with age statements on things, but just out of curiosity, for the short aging times, I know preserving the agave flavor, not letting the barrel character take over is a big part of it. But what is loss like in that environment? It's very high. There are some distillers where if you're in barrel for six, seven years plus, there's practically nothing left. It's higher elevation, a lot of these places. Now there are lowlands and highlands of Huliesco for sure. All of it is a significantly higher elevation than Illinois. Higher elevation, a very dry climate. It's all ambient. I mean, these aren't like temperature control. No, no, they are not temperature controlled. A lot of them are dug into the ground a bit though, which helps. Which helps it not be entirely oak driven. That lower atmospheric pressure and dry environment. Yeah, just like the way you see whiskeys aged in Colorado and Utah. Their loss is incredible. Because that's always been a Caribbean thing where we talk about what a tremendous value rum is that they like to, and I don't know that it's really this extreme. They talk about how extreme the angel shares. You can double it or whatever, but it's in the hands. The Caribbean has the aid of usually high humidity. Humidity, yeah. The mountainous southwest region of Mexico does not. What do you guys think of this? It's nice. It's very earthy. Beautiful nose. Very earthy. Additive-free tequila, high elevation grown agaves, very mature agaves. Again, the Tahona Crush, this is all about that richer, nectare agave character balanced by enough oak spice that it's still a balanced drinking experience. I agree with you, Jim, on the earthy thing. This is the one that was aged for six months, and the next one, the nine month, is notably different. Yeah. I'm definitely zoning in on that earthy element that you're talking about. For me, it's expressing itself almost like earthy green vegetables, like a green bean or okra or something like that. It's really nice. There's a ton of agave nectar on the nose. The agave nectar on the nose is just like a punch, almost a punch in the face. That honeyed agave character. But I love it. Very prominent. There is a lime peel aspect, too, that I really like, that I think it gives you a sense of part of the reason that's become such an affinity thing with tequila and lime. When you drink some of these additive free ones, I think maybe you're not getting things masked up that would have been too subtle to pick up on otherwise. There is vanilla and some oaky spice, though, too, even only at six months. That's good. Yeah. These are really good. Again, $69.99, El Tesoro is higher price for tequila, but we have plenty that are more expensive than this, and I think it's nice that this is sitting at about the price of the regular El Tesoro Reposado, where the last couple of El Tesoros we had were, I think we might have tasted them on the podcast, were Inejos that were aged in Laphroaig casks, and those were more expensive. Those were like $140, so it's nice having these on the shelf for $70. It's really good. The depth of flavor is really great. It lingers for a long time. All right. The nine-month cask, cask number two here. I'm not going to bore you with the serial number of the Barrel, but listeners, they both yielded about 240 bottles, and on the front label, one says aged in Barrel six months, the other says nine months. Noticeably different. I feel this is softer, more rounded, less agave, more like vanilla. It's amazing how just three months has transformed this into a soft vanilla. It's soft and supple, very vanilla-driven. The agave is still there on the finish. It comes through more as a secondary note instead of a primary note. Soft, supple, and vanilla-driven. Was that on your dating profile? We'll veer off that path when shamrock shakes are in season. Oh, that is so good. It is delicious. Carlos Camarena, master distiller at La Altenia. Of course, they make other notable brands like Tapatio, Tequila Ocho, Villa Lobos, and all additive free, all just premium, outstanding tequilas. He does have some roller mills on site. Ocho, for example, is done with a roller mill. So El Tesoro is at the 100% Tejona milled. This would be good for people that I think like elements of Vignejos, but, you know, feel that they long for a little bit of the agave character that gets lost or some Vignejos are definitely too sweet for people. This is like an Vignejo meaning repo to me. It doesn't look much darker, but it definitely has much more oak influence. Yeah, for sure. I actually might just personally prefer the six month just because I like that more pronounced agave character. Yeah. If you're looking for more agave character, go six month. If you're looking for more vanilla and oak, go nine month now. Neither are, of course, over-oaked for a reposado. No, not even remotely. No, not at all. Really satisfying, full-bodied, full-flavored tequilas. All right, moving along. These are all, as usual, with these handpicked, round up, whatever we're calling them, episodes. I'm just kind of running a report of what's come in recently and seeing what we still have and just grabbing some stuff. So the next one, I brought two barrels of Teeling Irish whiskey, one single malt, one single pot still. We just took delivery of five barrels in total from Teeling, three malts and two pot stills. So I'm going to pass around the single malt first. Is this from the batch that won an award? It is indeed. This particular barrel is the World Whiskeys Awards best single cask Irish single malt of the year. Nice. Which is a Irish single malt finished in a chestnut cask and is 58.7% alcohol. And the runner up was a Tealene Virgin Cherrywood cask that is also a Binny's handpick and also just came in. Both the Binny's handpicks won. Yep. Nice. Number one and number two. Now this one that won the best single cask Irish single malt, all the category winners get pooled together for another blind tasting to determine World Whiskey of the Year for the World Whiskey Awards. So those get announced later in March. Actually, I think next week, we're recording this March 15th. So, Binny's Veterans in the room. This color reminds me of the old Binny's color. The old maroon polos, which I have to say I much preferred to the Fire Engine Red color scheme. Not that we've ever had those as polos. I think people were smart enough to not do that. There's still a few of those shirts floating around the t-shirts, Binny's maroon t-shirts. I got my old polos buried somewhere, I bet. Wow. Crazy, right? So, most Irish, this is triple distilled single malt at Tealings Dublin Distillery. Triple pot-stilled Irish single malt tends to be very tropical and fruit-forward. This picked up more of a chocolate character, and I'm not sure if it's from the Chestnut Cast or what, but it still has that lively bright fruit note in there. It's a dueling thing. Yeah, it's weird. It has Irish whiskey DNA for sure, but I've never tasted anything quite like it personally. Yeah, but it's got such a rich maltiness to it, like a cooked baked stewed malt. It's a big and round and boisterous whiskey. If you're used to drinking Irish whiskey because you want to drink whiskey and not taste it, this isn't the one for you. This is not a delicate floral, lightly fruity single malt. This is something else. It's really awesome. We brought in three single malts here from Teeling recently. We have this chestnut finish, we have the virgin cherry wood matured, so it's spent its entire time in a virgin cherry wood cask, and that's got a lot of real interesting stone fruit characters. Then we have a tawny port finish as well. The tawny port is of course very caramel and toffee forward. Wasn't one of the method in madness Irish whiskeys and chestnut cask? Yeah. Pot still, I believe. This strikes me as having a much more profound effect on the whiskey though, than that did, if I'm recalling correctly. This almost, the power of suggestion, it's hard to parse out what you're really experiencing sometimes, but it almost reminds me of a roasted chestnut, which I don't know if I'm saying. I don't get that. That might just be you getting romanced by the smooth sounds of a brofee handpick. So I am very old school, hate, hate, hate on small cooperage and unconventional finishes can sometimes just be way too. Usually what I respond with is that they say they taste like pencil sharpener emptying out. Pencil shavings. Yeah, the shavings or lumber yard. This is like right on the cusp of like just an amazing but not subtle wood character. It is not. But in a very good way. And normally I'm just like, too much, like it's like getting hit with a board. But this is really interesting. It flirts with it. And I agree with you on that, Roger. I'm very sensitive to whiskeys being over wooded. I would say other people who I pick barrels with tend to lean more toward wood and I tend to lean more more toward just round sweet. So arriving in the middle is actually good for us. But this is a this is a wood forward whisky that isn't out of balance. You know what I think makes it work is that I'm used to that in American whiskeys, where it's more like caramel and maple and vanilla driven, whereas this is more fruit character driven. And I think the two like the pear and apple component to this and almost like tropical pineapple, I think are a much better match for that level of wood. Yeah. And I think the wood express is more like spice. Yes. It's real spicy as opposed to soft and caramel and vanilla. Is there any chestnut wood used in wine maturation? There may be historically, but yeah. Historically, there was some in Cognac, I know. So it wouldn't shock me if there was some in wine. Although it's far out of convention now in Cognac. Well, then there's always the sad story of the American chestnut. Here's a tree guy decimated to the point of essentially extinction. Yep. Big debate about GMO whether or not they can bring it back. Yeah. They have the tools. Yeah. We have the technology. This is first step American chestnut, then wooly mammoth, then it's full on Jeff Goldblum fighting dinosaurs. I'm here for it. Let's try like a dodo first or something. Next. You're ready to move on that quickly, huh, Roger? Okay, fine. I don't know. I immediately thought of the extinct Irish elk. What are what's left to do, like blow off a Roman candle? It's pretty beloved. Yes, it's beloved and it's award winner. Fine. Let me know when next time you win a major award, Roger. Play some English trumpeters before and after. Up next, so I said we brought in five calves from Teeling. Three of them are single malt, two of them were single pot still. So Teeling listeners, everyone here at the table probably remembers, that's a mix of malted and unmalted barley. Teeling uses the maximum percent, which is 50 percent unmalted. So very spicy, very oily and rich. We did two casks of the single pot still, one in a Bordeaux red wine cask, which is really great and I really like because it's got the spice mixed with that dried fruit character along with that fuller body. For my taste, I think that's almost an Irish whiskey for a sherry scotch lover. The one I brought though is the real crazy one, which is a single pot still that was finished in a ginger beer cask. What? Yeah. So what is a ginger beer cask exactly? That is literally ginger beer that was barrel aged. So which is a thing in the UK and Australia, we've had some ginger beer cask finished Australian single malts before as well. Teeling has done them before, but these ginger beer producers that make the stuff don't make much of it. So there's not many of these barrels to go around, they're hard to find. This whiskey is so fun. I think this whiskey, this is what experimentation in whiskey is all about. It is just a blast of ginger and lemon. This is just so fun. This is just the most fun whiskey I've had in a long time. It's pretty amazing. That gingery heat is just like spicy. It is fun as hell. And I think it helps that it's the pot still where it's got that such that it's got that viscosity and the and the baking spice character already. That ginger is like it's like tingling. Yeah. Oh, man. I mean, I know we're just tasting out of these cheap little plastic cups right now. If you have it in a Glen Care nosing glass or something, the ginger and the citrus are really pronounced on the nose of this thing. These are some really bold expressions of Irish whiskey. They're so fun. You know, we have Glen Carens who would involve you washing some and giving them nos. They might be within somebody's reach even. I can see one right now. Listen, once the new dishwasher is up and running, I'll load some glassware racks in here. Spicy. Isn't that good? It's interesting. That's the Roger. I hate it. I mean, what's this going to cost me? That's my beef, I guess. All these tealings are a hundred bucks. Not the Roger and I's price guarantee. So I could, you know, buy a very drinkable, cheap tealings and mix it with quality ginger. You could, for sure. Because the regular tealings pot still is like 40 or 50 bucks on sale right now. That having been said, I have no joke talked to people before I said that making a Moscow Mule was, quote, too much work. So, you know, this perfect for people like that. That is pretty tough. It's not a fun whiskey, though. It's definitely very interesting. All right, more into Roger's Wheelhouse now with Big Tatery Bourbons. All right, so also recently, four barrels of Wilderness Trail bourbon came in. Two weeded, two high rye. Both of their match bills are 24% finishing grain, so 24% wheat, 24% rye. I took my favorite of the wheat and my favorite of the rye to try here today. These are on the shelf for $54.99, but these are cast strength single barrel bourbons. That's a very favorable price. Where are these guys at? These guys are in Danville, Kentucky. So Wilderness Trail was opened by a couple of yeast scientists, Dr. Pat Heist, and forgive me, I forget the name of the business partner. They own a company called Firm Solutions, which is a yeast supplier and fermentation consultant for all the big distillers in Kentucky. So if wild turkey or buffalo trace has a fermentation that stalls, and they don't want to dump 100,000 gallon batch, they want to figure out how they can get the fermentation going. They call these firm solution guys to figure it out. So if they get Stucky in Kentucky, then these guys step in? Yes. So on that note though, because these are fermentation geeks and biochemist doctorates at heart, they have a sweet mash distillery. Their whole thing is we have the capability to run a clean excellent fermentation every time without the aid of added acid to stabilize our yeast environment through sour mashing every time. So they run a sweet mash every time. So it is a very clean distillery because it's a brewery at that point. They've always only ever been in full-size barrels. They've only ever been low entry proof and toasted and charred barrels. I like these guys a lot and I think the whiskey offers a lot of bang for the buck, and they were purchased by Campari last year for something like 600 or 800 million dollars. Crazy. Oh my God. Yep. Well, I'm happy that some yeast nerds made that kind of money. Yeah, so this is barrel number 771359 for those listening at home. And this is the wheat or rye? This is the weeded bourbon first. This is very interesting, very fruit forward. It's like a cherry. Very fruity, weeded bourbon. This is 111.19 proof. Definitely drinks its proof, but I think it balances out the softer fruit forward elements and it gives it a little spice balance. Yeah, I agree. It is soft and stone fruited up front, but there's a minerally dry finish that is quite nice. It's pretty good. I like that a lot. Yeah, tons of fruit character. I mean, weeded bourbons can be very, you know, caramel, vanilla driven. I would imagine that a big part of this is probably the yeast. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sorry. I was looking at that. Yeah, because that that aspect of it is certainly not over the top. It's really a pretty focused whiskey. I think in general, Wilderness Trail Whiskeys, even though we're big fans of them and we buy and sell a lot of these barrels and we sell a lot of the regular product, I think it's still kind of overlooked by the kind of trophy-hunting bourbon crowds. And these whiskeys hang with the absolute best of them. And they're reasonably priced. There's so much bourbon is being bottled by non-distiller producers now and sold between $70 and $100 and it's four to six years old. And you get this stuff that's five to six years old and 50 to 60 bucks. This is great. Yeah, I'm going to say the price is remarkably fair here. Yeah, totally fair. Part of what I like about this and part of why I mention the yeast is that it reminds me of some Four Roses stuff. And they, you know, are so yeast driven. And some of the older Four Roses stuff, I think is the best whiskey that exists in the bourbon world. And this is bringing some of those flavoristics, some of the... Flavoristics, I like that. Come on down, take a look at our latest flavoristics. That would be a good, like a good combo. Portmanteau of the highest order. These flavors and characteristics, or if you're at a nice chicken place in Kentucky, maybe at least you could order some flavoristics. Ponsataki. So much of the sourced whiskey is going to bring the same thing to the table. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you have to pay through the nose for it... You're paying twice as much. Yeah, you're getting something here that is different and is standout and brings to mind four roses and not much else. And again, they're making their own mash bill out of this. They're not just copying an MGP mash bill or copying the purported wild turkey mash bill or something. This is them using sweet mash, being fermentation focused and still going big on the finishing grains with 24% wheat, or now this next one I passed around 24% rye. As much as I like weeded bourbon, I like this high rye one better. It's pretty good. And I think Roger's spot on. Tasting this blind, I would probably think this was four roses. And I would think it was more expensive. Jim, what do you think of these? I think I like the first one a little better, but I think this one, there is a spiciness there, almost like coriander or something, which is kind of weird, but that's what I'm getting is kind of a coriander. I don't want to say celery, but like coriander. Well, right. I feel coriander is on like more of the aromatic floral type of spice for my taste. But not hot doggy. But not hot dog coriander. I don't know. It doesn't have the garlic. The hot dog coriander, I feel, is a melange of spices. Yeah. Maybe Chinese coriander. I assume you're speaking of the seed, not the leaves. Yeah. Yeah. Obviously. I mean, that goes without saying. These are great. If somehow, listener, you haven't had one of these Wilderness Trail Barrels yet, do yourself a favor and grab one. Look at the tasting notes on them. Either Joe or myself writes all those. They're honest. These whiskies are great. Absolutely great. And when we have so much bourbon on our shelves at such a disparity of prices, these sitting around for $50 to $55 are some of the better buys you can get. Yeah. All right, Raj, I brought this one just for you. I have here a straight bourbon whiskey, finished in Madeira Wine Cask. Yay. And it's an interesting kind of apothecary. The Dark Arts. I like how you pointed that out. So this is Dark Arts Whiskey House, straight bourbon whiskey finished in Madeira Wine Cask. It's a six and a half years old, 55.63% alcohol. So Dark Arts was founded by a interesting character, I'll put it that way, a man named Macaulay Minton, who used to run the single barrel program at Wilderness Trail. And he has barrels of whiskey that he has sourced from all kinds of different people, and he has them at his disposal in his blending lab, kind of in Lexington, Kentucky. And he is experimenting with different barrel finishes with that and different blends, but he isn't just throwing the same thing into finishing barrels and saying, pick one, he's really trying to make different blends for different purposes. These are our first couple of barrels from him. He's actually future guest on the podcast, by the way, the next time he's in town. But this is a Binny's handpick that is out now at A Binny's Near You. It is 51% corn. This is actually what he calls his barely legal mash bill, which is the MGP- Unfortunately named. Yeah, purposely named. This is also a man who is making a so many other distilleries have made cigar batch bourbons. He's now making a blunt batch bourbon that will be out on 420. But this is 51% corn, 39% rye, 10% malted rye. 39% rye. Grand total 49% rye, though. So this is an MGP specialty that we've done a couple barrels of from Rossville before. You may have had one. I feel like I brought one on the podcast before. If we don't have handpicks, the standard Dark Arts offerings on the shelf are a Barely Legal Bourbon, a French Oak Finished Bourbon, and a Ambarana Stave Finished Rye. And this is the Barely Legal Bourbon finished in a Madeira barrel. Attractive color. Yeah. Yep. I like that a lot. It's like buttery on the palate. Even with all that rye, you're calling all buttery on the palate, which is pretty remarkable. That is weird. Like right up front, it's like so round and supple. And you assume it's going to be lean and herbal. Yeah. The Madeira is there, but it's not dominating the whiskey. That citrus. The citrus has to be for Madeira. Oh yeah, it has to be. That's super cool. This whiskey is outstanding. That is pretty darn good. And so to just say citrus is selling it short, I mean like the best Madeira's, like the drier kinds especially, like Circeal, Verdello. That orange zest. It's got a stone fruit, apricot quality too. So their whole thing, Raj, you mentioned The Alchemist, is they have this logo with this Alchemist monk thieving a barrel with a pipette and a nosing glass. And they have these runes that stand for all the different periods of the maturation and production of whiskey. When we have Macaulay on the podcast, he'll break it all down. But he's an interesting cat man who goes to Peru once a year to visit a shaman and have a... Wait, where does he go? Peru. A big, big ayahuasca guy. There's like a cayenne spiciness here. Like cayenne has a, I don't know what... Probably from the high percentage of rye. Like a certain sharpness. Yeah, there's a certain, you know, like habanero and cayenne are pretty distinct pepper flavors beyond the just general pyrazine and heat. Sure, yeah. I don't know. There's like a dried cayenne. Habanero's definitely fruity, tropical fruity. Depending on what Madeira used and how... Well, this is the question... . generous he was with it. There could be almost some acidity in this that would normally never be in a whiskey. Right. Yeah, I mean, that's the problem with something vague like sherry cask or Madeira cask. You don't know. Is it Malmsey? Is it Cerceo? Who knows? Ferdelo? Tarantez? Probably unnamed. Yeah, it's almost... Restardo mix. Well, whatever it is, it's great. Great whiskey. Again, Rod, sorry, a hundred bucks. Both of these dark hearts are a hundred bucks. I detect notes of dimethyltryptamine. You care to elaborate? That's just the... Oh, active hallucinogen in Iowa. Oh. How do you know that? How do you not? All right. Last whiskey of the day, Roger, saved your favorite for last. We've got an ombre on a barrel. But not just an ombre on a barrel, because it's not a barrel. It was just the staves. Yeah, it's all you need. You need to just show it to the whiskey. Dark Arts is about just having an influence there, but not a taking over. So they have toasted ombre on a staves into this seven-year-old rye, but those toasted ombre on a staves and the seven-year-old rye went into a maple syrup barrel. Brunch pour? It is cinnamon maple syrup with vanilla frosting. It's outstanding. I love it. It's cast, seven-year-old cast-strength, 108, some odd proof. Oh, boy. Yeah. No missing that maple syrup. It's awesome. So Pat, all the pastry boys that have left beer and not want to drink whiskey. Attention, kings of the pastry-archy. This is the whiskey for you. Drinking a cinnamon bun. It really is. Vanilla frosting is just like- How do you hate that, though? This is so delicious. I mean, they're not putting fake stuff in it, you know? No. It's like that's- That's coming from two barrels. It's just the wood. You know, it's not coming from some bottled extract like it does at, you know, Craft Brewer A, B or C. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, and I do salute that it's not just flavor blasted. This is not peanut butter and jelly whiskey, but it's a lot. I could see where tons of people will love this. Yeah. There's lots of sweet maple up front. Lots. But I enjoy it. It gets spicy on the finish. I mean, there's a lot going on here. Give me this with a big ice cube. I'll happily sip on this for an hour. This is fantastic. Yeah, it's kind of like- Maybe some vanilla ice cream, a sidecar. Make an old fashioned out of it and go easy or eliminate the syrup. Eliminate the syrup, yeah. I was just saying, this is almost like a cocktail ready. You pour that on ice, you practically got an old fashioned. In fact, this kind of reminds me of that super expensive old fashioned that we were selling premixed. Oh, the gold fashioned? That we were still selling. Interesting. So, Pedro, I honestly think you just have to switch your point of view to, it's almost like a premixed cocktail. It tastes like something you could pour right over ice and put a cherry and an orange slice in and you could probably serve that to someone and they'd be like, okay, give me a little bitters and I'm there. Honestly, I think this could be a floater on various tiki drinks. Dude, between the maple and the baking spice character, honestly, it could. I mean, it's full bore dessert whiskey, though. It is. Let's appreciate that we went from the beer world got hijacked by dessert beers. This is dessert whiskey. Yeah, no doubt. My tasty note on our website is decadent and dessert like nose of sweet vanilla and cinnamon cereal, carrot cake, maple and sweet oak with a whiff of spicy and herbal rye. It's pretty spot on. And then my last sentence in this long review is, this whiskey is over the top and just plain fun. Signed Pat Cinnamon Buns, bro. That's spicy buns to you. It's enjoyable and it's interesting that it's all in this wood. That is, it's just crazy. And it's just staves. This is this maple syrup barrel, so an old bourbon barrel that held maple syrup. And then they put however many ombarana staves just sitting in it, chilling in it. Crazy. And they toasted the ombarana. And so normally, here, let me pull this up because the last time I had Macaulay here, we were talking about it. And I said, you know what, I'm really not sure if ombarana is normally toasted. And I reached out and I asked the guys at Huber Starlight, are the ombarana barrels, you get toasted at all or is it just naked wood? And he says, I get a few toasted profiles of ombarana. Most are medium toast, but some are heavy and a small portion are light char. Interesting. I would think they would want to not toast them so they can keep re-toasting it to save money because they cost a fortune. Yeah, they're very expensive and you're dealing with some shady Brazilian company and you're paying for these barrels in advance and they're just shipping when they ship and you don't know when and it's screwing up your whole production schedule. I think that's a valid point though. Refurbish these barrels, shave off the... Shave it a touch and you're good to go. Retoast. All right, haters, that's what's new in Handpicks. Come on. There was lots of delicious stuff there, and I said that that was probably beloved by many, it just wasn't for me. But Roger, what did you think of the award winner though? Yeah, real talk, Roger. He's making a joke because I said 10 times that we've lauded it and it deserves praise, short of some Wisconsin Dells-esque water ski fireworks celebration. I don't know how we could convey in a better way to you, what a fine job you gentlemen did selecting that whiskey. I think we didn't make it. The Whiskey Hotline should really water ski in a pyramid formation. That would be phenomenal. Oh man. What a large pale lump of pain that would be. Lump of pain. Wasn't that your hip hop band? Yeah, that's true. You know what would be great is if during one of those giant shows with all the pageantry and the water skis and boards and tricks, and you guys just came by on one of those giant inflatable couches that they towed behind boats. I have one. You're just sitting on couches drinking whiskey. Literally couch taters. I have one of those at my parents' house. My parents live on a lake in Wisconsin now in their old retirement age. We essentially bullied my dad into buying one of those times. It's over behind his boat and it's three butts wide. It's this big thing and his pontoon boat can barely pull the thing around. It gets kind of fast, but not enough to even flip anybody off. So I'll sit on it and I'll have my brother throw me cans of hams from the boat and I drink them on this thing as we're getting towed around the lake. It's the best. Three seats, you say? Yes. Well, that sounds like Brett, Joe and Pat to me. Make this happen. Next time we go up and visit 45th Parallel Dissillery. You guys want to do a question? Yeah, sure. We got a question? Finally, listeners, you sent us some questions. How do we intro it? I can't even remember. And that brings us to the Q&A portion of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast where you send us a question about something involving our product at our store or Roger's Personal Life. And we give you a $20 Binny's Gift Card. Just send your question to comments at binnys.com or hit us up on the social media of your choice at Binny's Bev. Jim, what's our question this week? This week, our question comes from Carter via email. We got a lot of email questions. A lot of email questions. Rapid succession. Hi, y'all. Big fan of Barrel to Bottle, thank you. And had a question coming out of the Whiskey Advocate review episode. Episodes, because we did a two-parter. We had so many. We had so many. When tasting, the guys mentioned some drams would benefit from a splash of water. My question is, how do you know when a whiskey could benefit from a drop or two of water? Is it the heat from alcohol or something else? And are you using distilled water or is tap fine? Thanks in advance. Oh, great question. I wouldn't make the argument that if you're willing, all whiskey could potentially benefit from some water. Even whiskey that's only 40 or 43 percent. You really kind of know when you taste it, if it seems tight and linear and a little bit spicy on the alcohol side, I generally feel it could probably benefit from some water. The water I'm using, yeah, you're going to want to use a filtered water. You don't need to use distilled water. Not distilled. You know, you save that for my fellow CPAP gang, pulmonologists represent. You want to clean your water. And if you've got a little pipette or a little eye dropper at home, something like that, if you don't, literally just dip your finger in a separate glass of water and allow a few drops to fall off your finger. I mean, pipette sounds fancy. Straw also works. We've mentioned pipettes twice on this episode. We mentioned pipettes. Well, we did have an alchemist. Roger is like, hates the way I add water to my own whiskey. If you had a pipette, like, oh my God, if I said grab your pipette, Pat would be ruthless. Yes, you can always use the anatomical pipette, which is your finger. Just make sure to wash your hand first. Use a straw, grab some water over. Straw is a good one. But what you're looking for is when you add a few drops of water, especially with higher proof noncho filtered whiskeys, you're going to see kind of like an immediate little bit of like an oily fingers kind of develop outward from where the water droplets fall in. And that's actually separating a chemical bond of alcohol and water. And molecularly, alcohol is lighter. So once you break that bond, you're allowing the alcohol to evaporate out of the glass. So even though you have quote unquote watered it down, because you've allowed the alcohol to evaporate out, you have potentially, and I would say significantly, concentrated both the flavor and the aroma of the whiskey. It's science. So think of it this way. I mean, too many people get hung up on like what's the rule or what you're allowed to do. You're allowed to do whatever you want. Exactly. So people used to drink whiskey and water as a drink. So to many people, that drink tastes like a watered down mess. I'm always of the mindset that I enjoy not cast-strength bourbon necessarily, but just hundred proof bourbon like it all used to be with ice. And if you say you drink bourbon with ice, people start to give you looks and they're like, oh, well, do you use one giant cube because you don't know what you're doing unless you do. Like, no, I use multiple cubes of ice. I want it to melt some. If you use a giant round cube, you're going to chill it, but you're not really going to get any dilution. So two things. One try adding water to whiskey that you're not supposed to and taste what washed out whiskey tastes like. If you add ice or water to an 80 proof bourbon, which don't forget that bourbon in quotation marks never would have existed if it weren't for the repeal of prohibition and us needing to lower the 100 proof standard number to something that was even And as a reminder, the distillery has added water to hit this proof. So it's already happened. So try a below 100 whiskey, adding ice or water to it and see what it tastes like. If you enjoy it, then keep doing that. But that's, in my opinion, 100 is where you should start playing around with it and adding ice or water. And I would imagine that maybe part of where this question comes from are people that are getting into whiskey, especially bourbon, and they're seeing that cast strength is all the rage. And they see that people get great success on social media for talking about hazmat proof and things like that. So if you pour yourself a glass, and I've watched people do this at Whiskey Taste Things, of like 130 proof bourbon, try to drink it, you're going to burn your mouth, your esophagus. I've seen guys spit up, cough, almost throw up. I mean, we are professionals here, so. Yeah. You can't expect to do at home what we do on the podcast. I taste more cast strength whiskey than almost anyone in this country on a yearly basis. And when I am at home drinking whiskey, I am adding some water to my single malt scotch and I am drinking my bourbon with a big ice cube. Yeah. You know, almost always. It's remarkable. I agree. No hard and fast rules play around. You will be shocked at how a nose or a flavor profile might open up with just a drop or two of water. It seems counterintuitive. You're quote, you know, you're watering the whiskey down. Yes, but you can still concentrate the flavor and aroma through that method. If you go to Scotland and you order a glass of scotch at any bar in Scotland, you are handed a glass of whiskey and a little wee pitcher of water to pour into the whiskey. Yeah, and most single malts are not airproof. So again, if you dial it in correctly, you're going to get it to open up with some water. It's just whether or not you quote unquote drown it or not. But none of that matters if you enjoy it, you know. Great question. We need to de-stigmatize adding water to whiskey. And if you don't, and ice, which is still water. But if you don't want to add water to your whiskey, that's fine too. The important thing is drinking how you enjoy it. But I would argue you're potentially missing out on some hidden characteristics without adding a little bit of water. It can be revelatory, literally. Twenty dollars coming your way. Carter, thank you. Thank you. We appreciate the question. Listeners, again, if you got a question, hit us up. Comments at binnys.com or at Binny's Bev on the social media of your choice. Guys, it's been fun. We'll see you next week with not another wine episode. Until then, I'm Pat. Hey, I'm Chris. Don't speak. I'm Rod. I'm Roger. I'm Jim. Keep tasting. Waiting!