TRANSKRIPTIO 🔗
WEBVTT
00:03.044 --> 00:06.380
Incredible flavours, even better stories. One Pour,
00:06.930 --> 00:10.655
10 Minutes. Aussie bourbon lovers sharing bourbon with Australia.
00:13.680 --> 00:16.906
How good is this, H? We've got Karen and Jack from Honey Barrel
00:17.341 --> 00:20.616
joining us for this episode, and what have we got? Thanks for having us,
00:20.632 --> 00:23.938
guys. So this is a special bottle. So one
00:24.438 --> 00:28.134
of the brands that we import at Honey Barrel is called Ben Holladay. And this
00:28.230 --> 00:31.910
was a special kind of 18-barrel blend that happened, I mean,
00:31.958 --> 00:34.417
it'd probably be a couple of years ago now, right? I think about 2 years
00:34.917 --> 00:38.305
ago, I think. So a special group in the US called Bourbon Law, and they
00:38.369 --> 00:40.940
do a lot of blends, a lot of picks, cool things like that.
00:41.487 --> 00:45.584
And this, for us, was probably the first release that really kind of skyrocketed Holladay
00:45.841 --> 00:49.601
in terms of popularity and in terms of, I guess, showcasing how good
00:50.101 --> 00:53.360
they could be. So we were like, we'll bring it along. It's kind of one
00:53.860 --> 00:56.140
of the first bottles we had in the holiday journey, so I'm kind of keen
00:56.640 --> 00:59.940
to see what you guys think of it. So good. Well, I mean,
01:00.440 --> 01:03.540
yeah, cheers. Absolutely. Again, thank you for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us.
01:04.040 --> 01:07.440
Oh, thanks for coming on. But yeah, so 18 barrels went into this,
01:07.940 --> 01:11.680
which was pretty special. So we met with Kyle
01:12.180 --> 01:15.850
Merklin, who's the kind of master distiller, when we signed with the brand originally,
01:16.130 --> 01:18.760
and he took us through kind of history of the brand and kind of their
01:19.260 --> 01:22.921
whole process and things like that. And kind of explain the process behind this,
01:23.161 --> 01:26.592
which was kind of like a wild idea, right? Like, you release
01:26.640 --> 01:30.135
a single barrel, I guess there's a— it's one barrel, you bottle it, sell it.
01:30.632 --> 01:35.489
We're taking 18 barrels and then bringing that together and creating something that is pretty
01:35.505 --> 01:39.897
great and pretty special. How good's that? That's juicy
01:40.010 --> 01:43.424
and it's biscuity, and only 7 years as well, I think, which is
01:44.194 --> 01:48.168
the mind-blowing part, is like Yeah.
01:48.458 --> 01:52.018
Yeah, it is. It's just that big full flavor
01:52.227 --> 01:55.433
that's classic bourbon in the right ways, but it's just very distinctively
01:55.449 --> 01:58.814
Holladay too. So tell me, oh, sorry,
01:58.830 --> 02:01.095
you go. No, I was gonna say, you guys bring out a lot of Holladay.
02:01.320 --> 02:04.389
What was it about them that you guys liked?
02:05.031 --> 02:08.311
I think it's the overall, for me, it was the overall look,
02:09.215 --> 02:12.812
the packaging, the clarity of how they do things.
02:12.860 --> 02:15.624
So everything they do is distilled. In-house.
02:16.314 --> 02:18.640
And for it to be called a Missouri bourbon, even the barrels have to be
02:19.025 --> 02:22.715
from Missouri as well. So that's Missouri oak made in Missouri, which is really cool.
02:23.437 --> 02:27.062
And basically, I think just the quality, just the
02:27.206 --> 02:31.249
overall quality and the price as well. So I think the price is quite
02:31.749 --> 02:34.858
affordable. Yeah, it sits in a nice price point, both in the US and here
02:34.906 --> 02:38.291
as well. So yeah, I think transparency for me was the big
02:38.791 --> 02:41.195
thing. It was just like they were so keen to tell their story, but not
02:41.259 --> 02:44.450
hide it behind you know, how old it was or
02:44.950 --> 02:47.130
where it was stored. Like, even to an extent of, like, if you pick a
02:47.630 --> 02:50.770
single barrel with Holladay, you get a diagram of their kind of rickhouse, and it's
02:51.270 --> 02:54.020
highlighted where your barrel is and how old it is, when it was filled.
02:54.290 --> 02:57.470
Like, they can't tell you enough information. You get all the
02:57.970 --> 03:00.610
information. And we went into the call with, like, Kyle, who was doing the training
03:01.110 --> 03:04.090
with us, trying to find a question he would say no to, or that he
03:04.590 --> 03:07.410
wouldn't tell us the answer to. And for the life of us, we couldn't think
03:07.910 --> 03:10.090
of one. He just answered everything we asked. Because a lot of places will say,
03:10.590 --> 03:12.250
oh, we won't share that with you, or we can't tell you that, but they
03:12.750 --> 03:15.675
give you a general sort of— out like everything. He came with a PowerPoint.
03:15.755 --> 03:19.120
He— I mean, you guys saw the PowerPoint as well, right? Like, he just— so
03:19.136 --> 03:22.053
much detail. Yeah. And it was, it was that from the very beginning with us,
03:22.165 --> 03:24.937
and it was, it was really cool to see and kind of refreshing as well,
03:25.033 --> 03:28.623
which was, which was good. And, and as, as kind of like whiskey
03:28.671 --> 03:32.276
nerds, fans, we, we— it burst onto the set.
03:32.324 --> 03:35.834
Like, Holladay kind of came from almost nowhere into like, holy moly, what is this
03:35.930 --> 03:39.071
new thing? Yeah. And I think part of it is because they never
03:39.571 --> 03:42.960
sourced. So you never saw that slow transition. It was like,
03:43.460 --> 03:45.580
because I think, what was it? It was almost 6 years. 6 years, yeah.
03:46.080 --> 03:47.840
So first release. It was all ready to go and then they just went.
03:48.340 --> 03:51.380
That's it. Yeah, because the distillery came back in 2016 and then they just sat
03:51.880 --> 03:55.500
on barrels, just waited. And I think that patience to it was just like,
03:56.000 --> 03:58.900
they knew where their whisky was going to be right and kind of wanted to
03:59.400
Load full transcript
--> 04:02.700
start things off on the right turn. They weren't willing to cut corners, which is
04:03.200 --> 04:06.940
really cool. And this particular bottle was part of it because it it
04:07.440 --> 04:09.880
kind of did the rounds, like everybody got sent, like there was PR packages that
04:10.380 --> 04:12.980
went around, so it kind of, all your kind of favourite like whisky YouTubers had
04:13.480 --> 04:15.560
bottles of it, so they did reviews of it, and it kind of quickly turned
04:16.060 --> 04:19.020
into like Whisky of the Year out of nowhere, like, and it was, I think
04:19.520 --> 04:22.309
at the time it cost like $80 as well, which was $40 a bottle,
04:22.809 --> 04:25.160
which was pretty crazy. When it's good, you can't hide it, like all the reviewers
04:25.660 --> 04:29.260
will, like everyone will have their different spin on it, but generally speaking, people like
04:29.760 --> 04:33.160
it when it's good. What's the, when you think about
04:33.660 --> 04:36.206
what typically is Holladay, if someone kind of is new to it or hasn't seen
04:36.706 --> 04:39.027
much of it before, maybe hasn't got a chance to sample it, how do you
04:39.527 --> 04:42.698
describe it? What can people kind of expect when they kind of come to the
04:43.198 --> 04:46.353
brand? I think for me it's like, it's familiar in good ways.
04:46.690 --> 04:49.046
Like, for example, they have a wheated product.
04:50.056 --> 04:53.647
There's elements of it that have a little bit of Maker's to it. It's not
04:54.384 --> 04:57.766
all what you'd expect from them, but it's got little highlights in there.
04:58.087 --> 05:01.229
And the same with this. So this is their High Rye Bourbon. So this is
05:01.729 --> 05:05.366
not their wheated, but to me, this has some similar characteristics.
05:05.702 --> 05:09.535
Missouri's not that far from Kentucky. There's a lot of influence in Holladay
05:09.711 --> 05:12.982
from what is going on in Kentucky, and they don't hide that. They're very transparent
05:13.482 --> 05:16.734
about it. So I think there is similarities there.
05:16.782 --> 05:20.582
We're not talking about a completely crafty product that's got a strange
05:20.598 --> 05:24.638
profile, or you're going to have to completely rethink what bourbon is. This is a
05:24.703 --> 05:27.990
lot of what you love, but just in a different package from a company who's
05:28.490 --> 05:31.640
doing things in some really cool and interesting whiskeys. And I
05:32.140 --> 05:35.020
think that's, for me, is how I tend to address it. How do we go
05:35.520 --> 05:39.280
with people who are hardcore, needs to come from Kentucky kind of thing? Because Missouri
05:39.780 --> 05:43.740
just doesn't have that same kind of— Oh, we get those. We do whiskey shows
05:44.240 --> 05:46.900
and we get those people coming to, we get them to say like, oh,
05:47.400 --> 05:48.760
this is not real bourbon. I'm like, what do you mean? It's like, oh,
05:49.260 --> 05:51.620
it doesn't
come from Kentucky, so it's not bourbon. I'm like, that's not one of
05:52.120 --> 05:55.680
the rules. But then again, those are not our kind of people, I don't think,
05:56.180 --> 05:59.720
at the same time. So, You know, it's the people that do
06:00.220 --> 06:03.270
like Holladay, they don't really question it. I mean, they question how it's made,
06:03.360 --> 06:06.820
obviously, but they don't really want it to come from Kentucky. And I think
06:07.320 --> 06:09.740
that was it with, like, the sherries as well, is like, you give it to
06:10.240 --> 06:12.540
people thinking, like, we really like this product, we love it, that's why we import
06:13.040 --> 06:16.120
it. But when you get to a point where people try it, they drink it,
06:16.620 --> 06:18.450
and they go, you can see it, you can see that change of like,
06:18.480 --> 06:20.520
ah, like, it doesn't really matter where it comes from in the end. It's just
06:21.020 --> 06:24.455
a good whisky. And that's kind of the thing
06:24.488 --> 06:27.233
that we always see with Holladay, which is pretty cool. Can you tell me a
06:27.733 --> 06:30.669
little bit more about the Bourbon Law? I've heard about what the Bourbon Law guys
06:31.169 --> 06:34.780
are doing. Tell me about this release being a Bourbon Law one. Yeah, so Bourbon
06:35.280 --> 06:37.911
Law is kind of like a specialist bourbon group in the US. I think there's
06:38.411 --> 06:40.384
a bit of a buy-in to it. Look, it's quite expensive and it's quite kind
06:40.884 --> 06:44.285
of prestigious, I guess, in what they do. So their projects tend to be quite
06:44.398 --> 06:47.015
big and quite big in scope and quite big in kind of approach.
06:48.300 --> 06:50.710
You do get a lot of blends in there, which is exactly what this is.
06:51.706 --> 06:55.080
And I think this was, you know, they tried some things from Holladay, were impressed
06:55.580 --> 06:59.162
with what you could get on the shelf, and wanted to create something unique for
06:59.662 --> 07:02.777
them and their kind of customer base, I guess. And I think that
07:03.277 --> 07:06.746
in itself was kind of an interesting point. A customer
07:06.794 --> 07:09.509
base that is probably on the higher end of where they're spending their money in
07:09.702 --> 07:13.687
American whiskey, but this was, like I say, it was $90 US
07:13.800 --> 07:17.718
retail. So it kind of hit that price point where it was affordable to
07:18.218 --> 07:21.073
a lot, but it was also just really good whisky for what it was.
07:21.491 --> 07:25.103
And I think it, like I say, it put them on the map in terms
07:25.603 --> 07:28.539
of that broader audience outside of Missouri or Kentucky.
07:29.198 --> 07:32.618
Did that help Holiday? I think so, because I think Bourbon Law
07:32.650 --> 07:36.086
are very good at building hype around a release. So there was a lot of,
07:36.150 --> 07:39.345
like I said, you had influencers and YouTubers and things like that
07:39.393 --> 07:42.060
reviewing it. And it was probably like the first Holladay bottle that you'd seen on
07:42.560 --> 07:44.900
a lot of channels. Like, I remember watching it on Bourbon Junkies. That was my
07:45.400 --> 07:48.800
first experience with Holladay and coming away from it being like,
07:48.980 --> 07:52.020
well, you know, maybe there's something to this Holladay thing. And then
07:52.520 --> 07:54.900
we tried it and we were like, well, you get it. Like, it is a
07:55.400 --> 07:59.040
great product. And that was, yeah, that was really— The secondary for it
07:59.540 --> 08:03.080
was crazy as well. So it still goes for just under $400
08:03.580 --> 08:07.500
US on auction sites. So it's, if you can find it, it's around $380 to
08:08.000 --> 08:10.950
$400 US. This is that thing. That's how you know it's good. Yeah. If you
08:11.450 --> 08:13.610
want to know if something's good or not, it's something— check out the second market
08:14.110 --> 08:18.230
and see. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about the—
08:18.730 --> 08:21.190
because I know you guys are about to drop a whole bunch more Holiday back
08:21.690 --> 08:24.629
into Australia, which is so exciting for us as big Holiday fans. Tell us about
08:25.129 --> 08:28.730
what Aussies can expect on our shores. Sounds good.
08:29.230 --> 08:32.870
Yeah. Big, big couple of months ahead for Holiday, which is exciting. So we've—
08:33.370 --> 08:36.817
so far we've released their soft red wheat. Products. So we had Bottled in Bond,
08:37.572 --> 08:40.303
which was minimum 6-year, and then we had their Rickhouse Proof, so their cask strength
08:40.803 --> 08:44.223
equivalent. There's a whole story to the Rickhouse Proof, but it basically
08:44.723 --> 08:47.854
is just cask strength, is kind of their way of describing it. So what we're
08:48.354 --> 08:50.424
now bringing is the rest of the lineup from Holladay. So it will put us
08:50.924 --> 08:54.247
into a place where we're one of the few markets worldwide that have everything
08:54.344 --> 08:58.006
from Holladay, which will be really cool, as I
08:58.038 --> 09:01.187
think I've drank more Holladay than I've drank anything else that we've imported. So it's
09:01.687 --> 09:05.000
a good excuse to restock the shelf, but we've got, yeah, so there's some high-rye
09:05.500 --> 09:08.560
products. So we've got the Bottled in Bond and the Suffragette, sorry, the Rickhouse
09:09.060 --> 09:12.180
Proof of the high-rye bourbons, which would be pretty cool. So that's what
09:12.680 --> 09:16.820
this is. And then we've also got, which is pretty interesting, is the, I guess,
09:17.320 --> 09:20.900
mellow corn equivalent. It's a corn whiskey. So, and it's a minimum 7-year
09:21.400 --> 09:25.280
too, so. 100% corn? 100% corn, yeah. What? So 7-year,
09:25.780 --> 09:28.540
I think. I think there is some malted barley in there, maybe.
09:29.040 --> 09:32.260
Maybe 5%, but like 95%. It is there, but yeah.
09:32.760 --> 09:35.330
It's in that corn whiskey bracket. But it is, it's, you know, for them it
09:35.830 --> 09:38.150
probably ticks the experimental bracket. Like, they've been playing around with a few things,
09:38.430 --> 09:41.370
like I think Rise in there. I think they've got some experimental finishes going on,
09:41.870 --> 09:44.560
which is also part of this. So yeah, the combo's going to be cool,
09:44.790 --> 09:46.890
and the price is going to be great as well. So it's going to be,
09:47.390 --> 09:49.570
you know, sub-£100 kind of price, which is going to be great for it.
09:50.050 --> 09:53.570
Well, our holiday bottle needs restocking, they're about down to the last
09:54.070 --> 09:55.830
bit, so we're just in time. I guess that's the perks of importing it,
09:56.330 --> 09:59.970
right? You can just restock without having to worry about it. But But
10:00.470 --> 10:03.810
also the 8-year is coming as well. Yeah, we've also got the 8-year, which is
10:04.310 --> 10:08.050
cool. So the 8-year High Rye, so they'll be same label as this,
10:08.550 --> 10:11.350
but an 8-year, and that's a single barrel too, so it'd be good to see
10:11.850 --> 10:15.010
how that plays out. And we also have the Ancient Caves too, so the Ancient
10:15.510 --> 10:19.790
Caves are kind of their experimental releases that they've got, so 375ml bottles,
10:20.290 --> 10:24.110
but it's kind of their, I guess, testing ground for new releases,
10:24.250 --> 10:28.300
so some interesting finishes in there, I think we've got 4 or
10:28.800 --> 10:31.280
maybe 5 different finishes coming, which is gonna be pretty cool. So they'll all be
10:31.780 --> 10:35.360
relatively limited in quantity, so it's not gonna be hundreds of bottles, but it'd
10:35.860 --> 10:37.460
be really cool to see what they've been doing in that space. So I think
10:37.960 --> 10:40.640
there's a toasted, there's a smoked in there as well, there's a couple of other
10:41.140 --> 10:44.300
things. So it's gonna be a good mix, which is really exciting. So it's,
10:44.800 --> 10:47.560
like I said, it takes us to a full holiday lineup, which is pretty cool.
10:47.740 --> 10:51.500
So how good is this? And I think as someone who literally paid
10:52.000 --> 10:54.860
all of the shipping to get of the holiday bottles into Australia before you guys
10:55.360 --> 10:58.220
were doing it. So happy that you guys have done this. So thank you,
10:58.720 --> 11:02.120
and thanks for bringing out the, the full lineup. Um, well, here's to drinking
11:02.620 --> 11:05.460
more holiday, and, and thanks for coming on, and thanks for bringing more holiday to
11:05.960 --> 11:06.960
Australia. Thank you for having us. Cheers,
11:07.460 --> 11:11.680
guys. Thanks for listening.
11:12.180 --> 11:15.240
Make sure you're connected with us on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and stay connected with
11:15.740 --> 11:18.380
us by clicking subscribe on your favorite podcast app.