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Incredible flavours, even better stories. One Pour,
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10 Minutes. Aussie bourbon lovers sharing bourbon with Australia.
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How good is this, H? We've got Karen and Jack from Honey Barrel
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joining us for this episode, and what have we got? Thanks for having us,
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guys. So this is a special bottle. So one
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of the brands that we import at Honey Barrel is called Ben Holladay. And this
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was a special kind of 18-barrel blend that happened, I mean,
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it'd probably be a couple of years ago now, right? I think about 2 years
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ago, I think. So a special group in the US called Bourbon Law, and they
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do a lot of blends, a lot of picks, cool things like that.
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And this, for us, was probably the first release that really kind of skyrocketed Holladay
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in terms of popularity and in terms of, I guess, showcasing how good
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they could be. So we were like, we'll bring it along. It's kind of one
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of the first bottles we had in the holiday journey, so I'm kind of keen
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to see what you guys think of it. So good. Well, I mean,
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yeah, cheers. Absolutely. Again, thank you for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us.
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Oh, thanks for coming on. But yeah, so 18 barrels went into this,
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which was pretty special. So we met with Kyle
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Merklin, who's the kind of master distiller, when we signed with the brand originally,
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and he took us through kind of history of the brand and kind of their
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whole process and things like that. And kind of explain the process behind this,
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which was kind of like a wild idea, right? Like, you release
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a single barrel, I guess there's a— it's one barrel, you bottle it, sell it.
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We're taking 18 barrels and then bringing that together and creating something that is pretty
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great and pretty special. How good's that? That's juicy
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and it's biscuity, and only 7 years as well, I think, which is
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the mind-blowing part, is like Yeah.
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Yeah, it is. It's just that big full flavor
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that's classic bourbon in the right ways, but it's just very distinctively
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Holladay too. So tell me, oh, sorry,
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you go. No, I was gonna say, you guys bring out a lot of Holladay.
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What was it about them that you guys liked?
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I think it's the overall, for me, it was the overall look,
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the packaging, the clarity of how they do things.
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So everything they do is distilled. In-house.
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And for it to be called a Missouri bourbon, even the barrels have to be
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from Missouri as well. So that's Missouri oak made in Missouri, which is really cool.
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And basically, I think just the quality, just the
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overall quality and the price as well. So I think the price is quite
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affordable. Yeah, it sits in a nice price point, both in the US and here
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as well. So yeah, I think transparency for me was the big
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thing. It was just like they were so keen to tell their story, but not
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hide it behind you know, how old it was or
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where it was stored. Like, even to an extent of, like, if you pick a
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single barrel with Holladay, you get a diagram of their kind of rickhouse, and it's
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highlighted where your barrel is and how old it is, when it was filled.
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Like, they can't tell you enough information. You get all the
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information. And we went into the call with, like, Kyle, who was doing the training
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with us, trying to find a question he would say no to, or that he
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wouldn't tell us the answer to. And for the life of us, we couldn't think
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of one. He just answered everything we asked. Because a lot of places will say,
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oh, we won't share that with you, or we can't tell you that, but they
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give you a general sort of— out like everything. He came with a PowerPoint.
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He— I mean, you guys saw the PowerPoint as well, right? Like, he just— so
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much detail. Yeah. And it was, it was that from the very beginning with us,
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and it was, it was really cool to see and kind of refreshing as well,
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which was, which was good. And, and as, as kind of like whiskey
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nerds, fans, we, we— it burst onto the set.
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Like, Holladay kind of came from almost nowhere into like, holy moly, what is this
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new thing? Yeah. And I think part of it is because they never
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sourced. So you never saw that slow transition. It was like,
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because I think, what was it? It was almost 6 years. 6 years, yeah.
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So first release. It was all ready to go and then they just went.
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That's it. Yeah, because the distillery came back in 2016 and then they just sat
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on barrels, just waited. And I think that patience to it was just like,
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they knew where their whisky was going to be right and kind of wanted to
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start things off on the right turn. They weren't willing to cut corners, which is
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really cool. And this particular bottle was part of it because it it
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kind of did the rounds, like everybody got sent, like there was PR packages that
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went around, so it kind of, all your kind of favourite like whisky YouTubers had
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bottles of it, so they did reviews of it, and it kind of quickly turned
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into like Whisky of the Year out of nowhere, like, and it was, I think
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at the time it cost like $80 as well, which was $40 a bottle,
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which was pretty crazy. When it's good, you can't hide it, like all the reviewers
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will, like everyone will have their different spin on it, but generally speaking, people like
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it when it's good. What's the, when you think about
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what typically is Holladay, if someone kind of is new to it or hasn't seen
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much of it before, maybe hasn't got a chance to sample it, how do you
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describe it? What can people kind of expect when they kind of come to the
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brand? I think for me it's like, it's familiar in good ways.
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Like, for example, they have a wheated product.
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There's elements of it that have a little bit of Maker's to it. It's not
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all what you'd expect from them, but it's got little highlights in there.
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And the same with this. So this is their High Rye Bourbon. So this is
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not their wheated, but to me, this has some similar characteristics.
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Missouri's not that far from Kentucky. There's a lot of influence in Holladay
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from what is going on in Kentucky, and they don't hide that. They're very transparent
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about it. So I think there is similarities there.
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We're not talking about a completely crafty product that's got a strange
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profile, or you're going to have to completely rethink what bourbon is. This is a
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lot of what you love, but just in a different package from a company who's
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doing things in some really cool and interesting whiskeys. And I
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think that's, for me, is how I tend to address it. How do we go
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with people who are hardcore, needs to come from Kentucky kind of thing? Because Missouri
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just doesn't have that same kind of— Oh, we get those. We do whiskey shows
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and we get those people coming to, we get them to say like, oh,
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this is not real bourbon. I'm like, what do you mean? It's like, oh,
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it doesn't
come from Kentucky, so it's not bourbon. I'm like, that's not one of
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the rules. But then again, those are not our kind of people, I don't think,
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at the same time. So, You know, it's the people that do
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like Holladay, they don't really question it. I mean, they question how it's made,
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obviously, but they don't really want it to come from Kentucky. And I think
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that was it with, like, the sherries as well, is like, you give it to
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people thinking, like, we really like this product, we love it, that's why we import
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it. But when you get to a point where people try it, they drink it,
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and they go, you can see it, you can see that change of like,
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ah, like, it doesn't really matter where it comes from in the end. It's just
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a good whisky. And that's kind of the thing
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that we always see with Holladay, which is pretty cool. Can you tell me a
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little bit more about the Bourbon Law? I've heard about what the Bourbon Law guys
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are doing. Tell me about this release being a Bourbon Law one. Yeah, so Bourbon
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Law is kind of like a specialist bourbon group in the US. I think there's
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a bit of a buy-in to it. Look, it's quite expensive and it's quite kind
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of prestigious, I guess, in what they do. So their projects tend to be quite
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big and quite big in scope and quite big in kind of approach.
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You do get a lot of blends in there, which is exactly what this is.
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And I think this was, you know, they tried some things from Holladay, were impressed
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with what you could get on the shelf, and wanted to create something unique for
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them and their kind of customer base, I guess. And I think that
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in itself was kind of an interesting point. A customer
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base that is probably on the higher end of where they're spending their money in
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American whiskey, but this was, like I say, it was $90 US
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retail. So it kind of hit that price point where it was affordable to
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a lot, but it was also just really good whisky for what it was.
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And I think it, like I say, it put them on the map in terms
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of that broader audience outside of Missouri or Kentucky.
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Did that help Holiday? I think so, because I think Bourbon Law
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are very good at building hype around a release. So there was a lot of,
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like I said, you had influencers and YouTubers and things like that
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reviewing it. And it was probably like the first Holladay bottle that you'd seen on
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a lot of channels. Like, I remember watching it on Bourbon Junkies. That was my
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first experience with Holladay and coming away from it being like,
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well, you know, maybe there's something to this Holladay thing. And then
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we tried it and we were like, well, you get it. Like, it is a
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great product. And that was, yeah, that was really— The secondary for it
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was crazy as well. So it still goes for just under $400
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US on auction sites. So it's, if you can find it, it's around $380 to
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$400 US. This is that thing. That's how you know it's good. Yeah. If you
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want to know if something's good or not, it's something— check out the second market
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and see. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me about the—
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because I know you guys are about to drop a whole bunch more Holiday back
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into Australia, which is so exciting for us as big Holiday fans. Tell us about
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what Aussies can expect on our shores. Sounds good.
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Yeah. Big, big couple of months ahead for Holiday, which is exciting. So we've—
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so far we've released their soft red wheat. Products. So we had Bottled in Bond,
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which was minimum 6-year, and then we had their Rickhouse Proof, so their cask strength
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equivalent. There's a whole story to the Rickhouse Proof, but it basically
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is just cask strength, is kind of their way of describing it. So what we're
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now bringing is the rest of the lineup from Holladay. So it will put us
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into a place where we're one of the few markets worldwide that have everything
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from Holladay, which will be really cool, as I
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think I've drank more Holladay than I've drank anything else that we've imported. So it's
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a good excuse to restock the shelf, but we've got, yeah, so there's some high-rye
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products. So we've got the Bottled in Bond and the Suffragette, sorry, the Rickhouse
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Proof of the high-rye bourbons, which would be pretty cool. So that's what
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this is. And then we've also got, which is pretty interesting, is the, I guess,
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mellow corn equivalent. It's a corn whiskey. So, and it's a minimum 7-year
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too, so. 100% corn? 100% corn, yeah. What? So 7-year,
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I think. I think there is some malted barley in there, maybe.
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Maybe 5%, but like 95%. It is there, but yeah.
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It's in that corn whiskey bracket. But it is, it's, you know, for them it
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probably ticks the experimental bracket. Like, they've been playing around with a few things,
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like I think Rise in there. I think they've got some experimental finishes going on,
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which is also part of this. So yeah, the combo's going to be cool,
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and the price is going to be great as well. So it's going to be,
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you know, sub-£100 kind of price, which is going to be great for it.
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Well, our holiday bottle needs restocking, they're about down to the last
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bit, so we're just in time. I guess that's the perks of importing it,
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right? You can just restock without having to worry about it. But But
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also the 8-year is coming as well. Yeah, we've also got the 8-year, which is
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cool. So the 8-year High Rye, so they'll be same label as this,
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but an 8-year, and that's a single barrel too, so it'd be good to see
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how that plays out. And we also have the Ancient Caves too, so the Ancient
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Caves are kind of their experimental releases that they've got, so 375ml bottles,
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but it's kind of their, I guess, testing ground for new releases,
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so some interesting finishes in there, I think we've got 4 or
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maybe 5 different finishes coming, which is gonna be pretty cool. So they'll all be
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relatively limited in quantity, so it's not gonna be hundreds of bottles, but it'd
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be really cool to see what they've been doing in that space. So I think
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there's a toasted, there's a smoked in there as well, there's a couple of other
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things. So it's gonna be a good mix, which is really exciting. So it's,
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like I said, it takes us to a full holiday lineup, which is pretty cool.
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So how good is this? And I think as someone who literally paid
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all of the shipping to get of the holiday bottles into Australia before you guys
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were doing it. So happy that you guys have done this. So thank you,
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and thanks for bringing out the, the full lineup. Um, well, here's to drinking
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more holiday, and, and thanks for coming on, and thanks for bringing more holiday to
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Australia. Thank you for having us. Cheers,
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guys. Thanks for listening.
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