النص 🔗
WEBVTT
00:03.055 --> 00:06.387
Incredible flavors, even better stories. One Pour,
00:06.920 --> 00:10.559
10 Minutes. Aussie bourbon lovers sharing bourbon with Australia.
00:13.505 --> 00:17.203
We're super excited. We're with Whitney Rye at The Parlour Room in
00:17.235 --> 00:20.852
Bardstown and host of the Mashbill podcast and of
00:21.352 --> 00:24.719
course owner of The Parlour Room. Here we are. Yes. So good. Thanks for coming
00:24.833 --> 00:28.426
and letting us in. Listen, I didn't do anything. I came to work. You all
00:28.474 --> 00:29.850
came here from a very, very long way away.
00:32.317 --> 00:35.625
Yeah, exactly. So thank you all for coming here. We're excited to
00:36.125 --> 00:39.223
be here. Yeah. Cheers. That's awesome. I'm super excited. Yeah.
00:39.383 --> 00:42.531
Should we start it off? Yeah. What have we got in our glasses? What have
00:43.031 --> 00:46.578
you poured for us, Whitney? So this is a 15-year sourced Willett that I
00:46.787 --> 00:50.963
picked with Drew Colesveen and Pablo Moy, along with a few of our closest
00:51.463 --> 00:55.459
friends who paid me a lot of money to be there. And we decided
00:55.959 --> 00:59.250
to do this one, but this is barrel number 4242. I only have
00:59.750 --> 01:01.889
a few bottles left of this, so I wanted to share it with you all.
01:01.985 --> 01:05.267
So I'm going to talk less, drink more, and let you guys kind
01:05.767 --> 01:08.841
of tell me what you think. Yeah. Wow. We'll ask a little questions.
01:09.780 --> 01:10.702
It's got a lovely,
01:12.918 --> 01:16.342
lovely nose. My goodness. I know I can barely smell right now.
01:18.818 --> 01:22.215
My voice is almost gone. Just like the weekend took
01:22.715 --> 01:24.686
it out of me and my body is like coming back punching me.
01:25.660 --> 01:29.256
So I've been a little congested recently, so I just went
01:29.756 --> 01:33.238
straight in, but it still tastes good. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. It's delicious.
01:34.378 --> 01:38.504
The, actually, I'm getting some lovely fruit, like some stone fruit characters
01:38.553 --> 01:41.202
on the, both on the nose and on the palate. And then, yeah.
01:41.683 --> 01:45.055
Yeah. That kind of great Willett body is so pretty. Right.
01:45.151 --> 01:48.346
This is very Willett. This feels to me like
01:48.846 --> 01:50.867
whenever we went through, so we, we had 6 lined up in front of us.
01:50.980 --> 01:54.320
And we got to try. And when I sat down initially and
01:54.820 --> 01:57.440
talked to Drew, I was like, hey, I got this new license. Like, I really
01:57.940 --> 02:00.780
want you to be my first barrel pick. And he was like, sure, let's do
02:01.280 --> 02:02.820
it. But then he was like, well, I want to come and see what you're
02:03.320 --> 02:07.180
doing. Like, I've heard about it. I've seen you around, like, whatever. Because we knew
02:07.680 --> 02:09.590
each other, obviously. I texted him to be like, hey, can we have coffee?
02:10.360 --> 02:13.820
And so he was like, I'm not going to wear any swag. Don't tell anybody
02:14.320 --> 02:15.920
I'm there. I'm going to come and take a classic. And I was like,
02:16.420 --> 02:17.767
do you want to do the Willett one? And he was like, no, just whatever
02:18.267 --> 02:21.516
you got. So he came in and did a like $40 ticket class,
02:21.692 --> 02:23.999
right? It was Buffalo Trace. It talked about the mash bill.
02:25.473 --> 02:29.174
So like E.H. Taylor Small Batch, Eagle Rare, like that sort of thing. Very base
02:29.238 --> 02:32.443
intro level to Buffalo Trace. And he came and he sat right over there.
02:33.068 --> 02:36.112
And at the end, like he, you know, he was just like
02:36.612 --> 02:39.717
drinking and going through the motions just like everybody. At the end, everybody left and
02:40.217 --> 02:42.376
he was like, I'm obsessed with this place. He was like, I love what you're
02:42.876 --> 02:45.308
building. I love that you're not doing tasting notes. I love that you're not doing
02:45.420 --> 02:48.773
mash bills. And I was like, yeah, this is called mash bill 1,
02:48.789 --> 02:52.063
2 wheat. And I was like, but I don't actually talk,
02:52.143 --> 02:54.903
I don't tell people the mash bill. I just tell them like, hey, this one's
02:55.112 --> 02:58.498
mash bill number 1, this one's mash bill number 2. This is why they
02:58.998 --> 03:01.675
have those mash bills. This is why they do it. And he was like,
03:01.691 --> 03:05.013
can I call Pablo? And I was like, of course. And I was like,
03:05.077 --> 03:08.158
well, Ethan, your barrel manager's right next door. Can I have them come over?
03:08.206 --> 03:10.934
They were gonna come by. And he was like, absolutely, bring 'em all over.
03:11.672 --> 03:14.995
So about 2 hours later, I have about 30 bottles
03:15.028 --> 03:17.934
lined up on the table because everybody just started bringing stuff.
03:18.641 --> 03:22.110
And Drew's like, here's what we're going to do. We're going to plan this 2-night
03:22.610 --> 03:26.253
event at Parlor. You're picking a 15-year with me. You're going to pick a 15-year
03:26.753 --> 03:30.654
with Pablo. And then they wanted to talk about each other's brands and
03:30.766 --> 03:34.396
really kind of break down any barriers between that. So this is the
03:34.621 --> 03:38.057
barrel pick that we did for that event. And yeah,
03:38.539 --> 03:42.530
and so my thing is with this one, I picked this immediately.
03:43.030 --> 03:45.090
Like there were 6 in front of us. I slid this one forward, kept trying
03:45.590 --> 03:47.550
them, went back to this and I looked at Drew. He's sitting right next to
03:48.050 --> 03:51.130
me and I was like, number 3. And he was like, number 3. And everybody
03:51.630 --> 03:54.510
else is still kind of tasting and we were whispering and I was just like,
03:55.010 --> 03:58.730
yeah, it's number 3. And then everybody was like, well, I really like number 4.
03:59.230 --> 04:02.510
I really like number 2.
Load full transcript
And I was like, I was like,
04:03.010 --> 04:06.630
well, let's revisit 2, 3, and 4.
04:07.106 --> 04:09.772
And they were like, oh yeah, yeah, number 3 was really good. And so we
04:10.272 --> 04:13.063
go through and finally it dwindles down and it was half and half.
04:13.930 --> 04:17.351
3 people wanted number 4, 3 people wanted number 3. Luckily I
04:17.399 --> 04:21.429
had a majority stake. You get to push the—
04:21.798 --> 04:24.801
But the second Drew was like, number 3 was my favorite, everybody was like,
04:25.010 --> 04:28.462
all right, we're good. We made the right call. But my, when I
04:28.638 --> 04:31.641
pick a barrel, what I look for is chocolate.
04:32.428 --> 04:35.882
I was going to say I get a burnt finish, like a burnt chocolate finish
04:36.382 --> 04:38.820
on the end of it, which is really nice. And I feel like chocolate just
04:38.949 --> 04:42.444
balances out every other thing, right? So you said stone fruit, like if you had
04:42.944 --> 04:46.012
stone fruit, if you have banana, like Old Forester and Barton have these notes of
04:46.512 --> 04:49.988
banana, all of those go really well with chocolate. So do
04:50.328 --> 04:53.892
any type of floral, any type of herbal goes really,
04:53.908 --> 04:57.539
like mint and chocolate go really well together. I just feel like chocolate has this
04:57.590 --> 05:01.176
ability to really combine and balance out a
05:01.240 --> 05:04.850
pour. So the second that I tasted this and I got that chocolate,
05:04.930 --> 05:08.460
I was like, this is it. This is my favorite.
05:08.540 --> 05:11.829
And so here we are. However long later.
05:12.230 --> 05:15.327
Well, you're a Bardstown local, so your favorite
05:15.439 --> 05:18.873
is going to be a good recommendation because you get to try all of them.
05:19.017 --> 05:22.306
100%. So I have a really great relationship with a lot of the distilleries.
05:22.884 --> 05:26.622
I've always loved Willett. I have not always been able to afford Willett,
05:27.072 --> 05:30.702
But I do this other podcast that we've just kind of
05:30.750 --> 05:33.899
done live on social media called Bourbon Bracket. I'm sure
05:34.399 --> 05:37.498
you all get this question all the time. What's your favorite pour? And I'm like,
05:37.514 --> 05:40.502
in what category? Yeah. That's a good response.
05:41.112 --> 05:44.036
And also on what day? Like what do you feel like? Right.
05:44.100 --> 05:48.180
'Cause sometimes I just want a martini. I don't even wanna drink bourbon. So I'm
05:48.680 --> 05:51.956
like, it depends on your mood. It depends on everything. Like if someone asks me
05:52.456 --> 05:54.767
what's the best pour you've ever had, I can answer that pretty quickly. If they
05:55.267 --> 05:58.154
ask you, you know, oh, out of these 4, what's your favorite? Great, I can
05:58.654 --> 06:02.537
answer that. So Crystal from Evergreen and
06:02.650 --> 06:06.118
Nikki from Liam Ashe, all of us did a barrel pick and we were
06:06.618 --> 06:09.168
talking and I was like, we should just do this live on Instagram. And so
06:09.668 --> 06:12.989
we did. And we pick a category. We're basically building like a bracket of bourbon,
06:13.005 --> 06:16.874
like a fantasy football draft, right? So the first week we did our favorite
06:17.374 --> 06:20.567
single barrel, but there were limitations. Can't be more than a year old.
06:20.910 --> 06:24.040
Can't be more than $150 because we want it to be approachable for people to
06:24.540 --> 06:27.680
go out and find. And it can't be a barrel pick. That was a big
06:28.180 --> 06:30.500
one that got us. Oh, because a lot of single barrels would be barrel picks.
06:31.000 --> 06:34.180
Exactly. Because they're technically, obviously a barrel pick is going to be one single barrel,
06:34.680 --> 06:38.240
but it's not like designed to be a single barrel, right? That's not what somebody
06:38.740 --> 06:40.850
can go pick up at the store. Well, it wouldn't be as readily available.
06:40.860 --> 06:44.600
Right. Exactly. Like this one. Not readily
06:45.100 --> 06:48.520
available at all. But we were surprised because then we would record
06:49.020 --> 06:51.864
it and we would all bring our favorite But we were surprised by the limitations
06:51.976 --> 06:55.584
of that. It was just like, dang. So mine was Blanton's Gold. Yeah. Okay.
06:55.809 --> 06:58.920
And I was like, this is probably the thing that made me really love story
06:59.337 --> 07:02.448
of bourbon, right? And then Crystal brought in,
07:03.266 --> 07:05.976
Crystal and Nikki both brought in a Heaven Hill product. I forget which ones.
07:06.089 --> 07:09.713
I think Elijah Craig 15 and a Henry McKenna 10-year. What they brought in.
07:09.921 --> 07:13.289
They're all great picks. Right. But then we did it blind 2 weeks
07:13.305 --> 07:16.915
later and I picked Henry McKenna. And so it
07:17.415 --> 07:19.164
was just, it's so cool to think about it that way and to break it
07:19.664 --> 07:23.886
down of like, when you ask, what is your favorite single
07:23.902 --> 07:26.343
barrel? I can answer that a little bit easier now,
07:27.355 --> 07:30.696
but you have to really think that question through because
07:30.728 --> 07:33.394
that's a really hard question for someone who has as much bourbon as we do.
07:33.603 --> 07:35.836
Right? Right. Yeah. And I mean,
07:36.333 --> 07:39.963
our appreciation of bourbon, we're comparatively
07:40.463 --> 07:42.821
new to it, having not been able to grow up in Bardstown. What's it been
07:42.837 --> 07:45.465
like growing up around here and then like having it always as part of what
07:45.641 --> 07:49.663
you do? It's amazing. I mean, I always tell people what you
07:50.163 --> 07:53.573
don't— people come into Bardstown and what they don't realize is that I'm friends
07:54.073 --> 07:57.226
with pretty much every master distiller. But beyond that, like, that's the cool thing,
07:57.338 --> 08:01.040
obviously. But beyond that, I'm
friends with most of the brand teams. You know,
08:01.056 --> 08:03.732
these are people that I've worked with in the past or that I see consistently,
08:04.325 --> 08:07.466
and they're just out and about. You know, the amount of times I've ran into
08:07.610 --> 08:11.595
Ross Cornellison, or Drew Koolzveen, or even Connor
08:12.095 --> 08:14.907
O'Driscoll. Like, they'll just be at Mr. Tubb's or at Neat, and like, we'll just—
08:15.407 --> 08:18.982
I'll just be like, hey guys, how are you? You know, whatever. So growing up
08:19.482 --> 08:20.978
in Bardstown, if you don't already love bourbon,
08:22.811 --> 08:26.153
like, I feel bad for you because there's nothing else here.
08:27.732 --> 08:30.502
I mean, it is why we come here. That's why it's the bourbon capital of
08:31.002 --> 08:33.985
the world, right? We have 11 distilleries within a 15-mile radius of here.
08:34.646 --> 08:37.915
And they're great distilleries. I mean, if you think about Jim
08:37.947 --> 08:40.976
Beam, Maker's Mark, 1792, we have Four
08:41.476 --> 08:45.126
Roses Bottling, we have Bartow Bourbon Company, we have Luxco. I'm forgetting
08:45.158 --> 08:48.667
some, but you know what I mean. So many. Like, I apologize if there's
08:49.167 --> 08:52.049
one that I didn't mention. I'll randomly shout it out later. But I think it's
08:52.549 --> 08:56.487
one of those things where there's so much access that you almost
08:56.616 --> 08:59.740
lose the desire to access for a
09:00.240 --> 09:03.336
lot of people. I was not one of those people. I was like, why would
09:03.836 --> 09:05.922
I go anywhere else and open up a tasting room? Why would I have my
09:06.422 --> 09:09.632
podcast anywhere else? Like, this is my home. Yeah, but it's
09:09.681 --> 09:13.262
a lot of fun for me because I love bourbon. And I just remember,
09:13.374 --> 09:16.892
you know, I was like 7, 6 or 7 years old and I was driving
09:17.068 --> 09:19.751
home from Louisville with my dad. And if you've been here,
09:20.072 --> 09:23.814
Louisville's about 45 minutes north of us and you have to take I-65 south and
09:23.894 --> 09:27.363
then you turn off of the Clermont exit. Well, right there at the corner
09:27.379 --> 09:29.307
of 65 and Clermont is Jim Beam Distillery.
09:30.574 --> 09:33.347
I was 6 or 7, didn't know. And we were driving by, it was nighttime.
09:33.860 --> 09:36.585
And I look over and I was like, Dad, what's that little city right there?
09:37.210 --> 09:40.095
Because, right, if you've been at night and you drive past Jim Beam,
09:40.656 --> 09:44.327
everything's lit up. There's like little— and they're in this like valley,
09:44.359 --> 09:47.549
so you can kind of see it all. There's like smokestacks and
09:47.565 --> 09:51.717
different things. And he just laughed and he was like, little city, they make
09:51.733 --> 09:54.587
bourbon there. And, you know, obviously I was like, what's bourbon?
09:54.939 --> 09:58.530
He's like, you'll find out when you're older. Yeah. And then
09:59.030 --> 10:03.116
another story, like, I— we were driving by and my dad always drove
10:03.616 --> 10:06.774
me around. But I was like, why are there those prisons in the middle of
10:06.966 --> 10:10.752
Bardstown that have gates around them, but nobody ever comes
10:11.252 --> 10:14.153
or goes? Like, in my head as like a child, I was like, these are
10:14.185 --> 10:17.842
haunted. That's why they roped them off. And he's like, no, that's where they have
10:17.939 --> 10:21.452
barrels in there. And I was like, oh my gosh, those poor barrels. Because,
10:21.548 --> 10:24.388
you know, the Heaven Hill ones, if you look at them, I think they still
10:24.888 --> 10:27.837
do. Maybe not. But they paint all of them white. Yeah. Well, then you have
10:27.885 --> 10:31.272
like this black, you know, the black fungus is like seeping down from
10:31.337 --> 10:34.837
the windows. So it's like every child's horror. Yeah, yeah, right. Has that creepy feel.
10:34.949 --> 10:38.418
I was like, what's happening? Like, are all those prisoners just like stuck
10:38.918 --> 10:42.271
in there? And so, I mean, you know, there were, there were a lot
10:42.771 --> 10:45.226
of parts of it that I had to figure out, but I'll never forget like
10:45.726 --> 10:48.999
my first time stepping foot on Maker's Mark campus, you know, and just going and
10:49.015 --> 10:52.596
walking through and seeing the beauty. And I mean,
10:52.628 --> 10:56.706
this was 2012-ish. So I don't
10:57.206 --> 11:01.346
think they had Chihuly yet. But, you know, they were still touring Margie's Kitchen
11:01.619 --> 11:05.456
at that time. And it just changed. It changed the way that I
11:05.956 --> 11:08.859
thought about bourbon. I was like, this is beautiful. This is stunning. And then you
11:08.907 --> 11:11.653
look around and you see hundreds of tourists. Yeah.
11:12.038 --> 11:15.297
And I was like 23 at the time bartending. And I was like,
11:16.389 --> 11:19.600
this is people's Disneyland. Yeah. Like this is— I grew up here.
11:19.745 --> 11:22.763
This is a happy place. Yeah. This is the world, the happiest place on earth.
11:23.196 --> 11:25.632
I won't say the whole thing because I don't want y'all to get sued.
11:25.936 --> 11:29.510
Happiest place in the world. I'm like, not trying to get
11:29.526 --> 11:33.323
y'all trademarked, but that's how I felt about Bardstown.
11:33.403 --> 11:35.711
And so, you know, the more people that come in and see me,
11:36.432 --> 11:39.332
that's how I approach it is you're here.
11:39.557 --> 11:43.242
This— you could be at Disneyland. Yeah. You could be in Australia.
11:43.787 --> 11:47.393
You could be in Ireland or in Scotland or Mexico. You could be on the
11:47.893 --> 11:51.049
beach somewhere. But you chose to come here. Yeah. I take that seriously, and I'm
11:51.549 --> 11:53.986
going to make sure that you have the best darn trip you possibly can with
11:54.486 --> 11:57.646
some of the best darn whiskey that you possibly can. So that's kind of,
11:57.902 --> 12:01.289
you know, growing up in Bardstown made me who I am through
12:01.789 --> 12:05.189
and through. And it's something that I absolutely love.
12:05.285 --> 12:07.548
I'm very, very happy. The only other place I would have liked to grow up
12:08.048 --> 12:13.149
is probably Australia. So, but y'all have a lot of spiders. I was like,
12:13.198 --> 12:16.440
snakes and spiders. Yeah, snakes and spiders. Snakes and spiders and
12:16.940 --> 12:20.660
sharks, oh my. Like, there's just like, yeah, y'all got a lot of
12:21.160 --> 12:24.840
the, the danger of the bad. I've got a lot of good stuff. So our
12:25.340 --> 12:28.920
first trip here was we, we brought the kids over and we left them with
12:29.420 --> 12:31.920
our niece at Disneyland and we came out to see— yeah, yeah, yeah,
12:32.560 --> 12:36.100
you were like, we could go to Disneyland, we're gonna go to Bardstown
12:36.600 --> 12:38.330
instead. A great time. And then we all met up in New York afterwards.
12:38.520 --> 12:41.700
It was like, how was that? Cheers to that. Yeah, cheers. Thanks for coming on.
12:42.200 --> 12:45.228
This has been amazing. And thanks for having us here. And, uh, when you come
12:45.728 --> 12:47.948
to Bardstown, you got to come check out the parlour. Please do. Thanks, Benny.
12:48.141 --> 12:48.431
Cheers.
12:49.735 --> 12:52.970
Thanks for listening. Make sure you connect
12:53.470 --> 12:57.331
with us on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and stay connected with us by clicking subscribe
12:57.460 --> 12:58.844
on your favourite podcast app.