Perfect Picks for a Beginner Whiskey Collection

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0:43 Each sip reveals something new, something distinct, something that can only be achieved when craftsmanship meets patients. To raise a glass and taste what happens when we step back and let the barrel do the talking. Head over to blackwooddistillingcode.com and discover the unhurried elegance of Blackwood Distilling. Well, hey everybody, welcome into the podcast. It's time for another special bonus episode. Bonus episode. I love recording these bonus episodes that go live in between seasons. Brad 'cause I never quite know where to categorize them. You know, I save all of our audio files in a Google Drive and I never know if I should put them in season eight or season 9.

1:28 It's kind of like when when they made that movie Lion King 1 1/2. Like, that's good. That's how I feel about our season right now. 8.58. .5 man. Man, it's good to be with you. Yeah, you too, man. Not only is it in between seasons, but it's also 846 in the morning when we're recording this. Yeah, it is. And you know what they say, there's no better time to talk about whiskey than the moment you wake up in the morning. I mean, I've been up since like 5:00 AM, Bob. Too. Nah, not me man. These kids, these kids and I stay up too late. I got to get the sleep where I can. Yeah, I, I, I believe it, man. Well, we figured today, folks, while we're in between seasons, we would try something a little bit more fun than usual. We're known for being sticks in the mud, especially Brad. Yeah, that guy.

2:15 Brad, I feel like a lot of times we get stuck in the rut of reviewing whiskeys. And while we try to keep the average consumer in mind, sometimes we're trying whiskeys that are just really out of the price range of the average consumer and also a little bit too far down the rabbit hole, if I'm being honest, You know what I mean? Like people that are just walking into the liquor store looking for the first time to start building out their collection are not going to know all of the intricacies of a brand's vertical, you know what I mean? And so I think while we try to keep that in mind with our value score, sometimes we kind of just need to get back to basics. And that's what we're going to do today, folks. Brad and I are going to just have a two person draft going on. So it should go very quickly.

2:57 But here's the rules of our game that we're playing today. We're drafting our perfect starter whiskey shelf. We have 300 hypothetical dollars to buy real world bottles with. Yeah, we we definitely don't have $300.00 personally. No, let's be honest here. The the, the Patreon needs to get bumped up a little bit before we can do this for real. So we have 300 hypothetical dollars to draft our perfect starter whiskey shelf. Now, we've been pricing out all the whiskeys that we might potentially draft. And Brad, I guess the first thing I should say is when we set this at $300, you know, it was completely arbitrary.

3:38 And I thought that it was a good number to start with. Now I think that it's a good number, but because it's so challenging, like the the price of whiskey in this economy has gone on. Oh my gosh, dude. I'll give the perfect example of this, one of our most beloved whiskeys on this podcast from way back in the day when it still had two different year expressions. Is the Glen Moringy keen to Ruben? When we started, they used to have the 12 year and the 14 year. Now they just have the 14 year, which I think was a good decision. It used to cost 5299. A few years later jumped up to 5899. Still reasonable, right under $60.00. I checked it today in order to do this exercise. So I was like, oh, clear clear option for my bar. It is $74.

4:32 That's $74. It's not getting drafted by me, I'm not going to lie. Yeah, I I don't think it's going to get drafted by me either. It like it went from a lock in pick at like 60 bucks to like 74. Yeah, 'cause you could budget around like a $60.00 bottle of whiskey. 100%. And I think that's kind of, I don't know, I don't want you to give away your whole strategy here, Brad. And I'm certainly not going to give away mine. But I think that we need to set a minimum number of bottles to target for our shelf. Like you can't just say, OK, I'm going to go try to find a bottle of Eagle Rear 17 at cost and it just magically show up at MSRP. And that's my one bottle. I think you need to get, I would say at least three, hopefully 4 bottles.

5:16 And I would even say like maybe the target should be 5. Yes. OK, cool. Yeah. So I, I mean, I don't know, Bob, are you going for five bottles today with our challenge? Well, it kind of depends on how you draft because one rule that we did set down that the people should know about is that once a bottle is drafted, it cannot be redrafted. So I've got a range of prices on things that I'd be willing to spend for, but if you scoop up all of my lower end stuff, then I'm going to be forced to get fewer bottles. So it it really depends. I could have 9 bottles, who knows. Well, Bob, I just in my head started thinking through whiskeys that are in a price range that made sense. And the first five whiskeys I came up with added up exactly to $300.

6:04 Man, guess what though, I'm drafting all five of those. Are you now? I kind of doubt it. There's there's two that I'm worried about. Which two would those be, Brad? Who's to say? Canadian Mist. Yeah, dude. Is is one. Now I guess the question is, can I start buying 50ML bottles of stuff? Can I just throw in like that? We're talking handles. We're talking if. Here's the goal of the episode, guys. If you are starting off a little whiskey bar at your house and you wanted to spend 300 bucks, we think that this would be a good $300 to spend.

6:45 At least we hope it ends up that. Way absolutely. And I think that, you know, we've all also been kicking around this idea of maybe we should do an episode where we're just breaking down what is the best whiskey at each kind of price point that we talked about that like sub $25.25 to 4040 to 60, you know what I mean? And, and I think that that would be a good way to go as well because I don't expect that anybody who's just getting into whiskey is going to want to throw $300.00 behind it. But I think if you're serious about, hey, I want to buy more than two bottles and I'd like to have enough that I can entertain people when they come to my house, $300.00 is probably a good starter point. So I think we did said it correctly. A few more things I'll say before we dive in. I went back through every score we've ever done on our whiskies on filming whiskey.

7:35 And I think because of that, whiskeys that we tried on bonus episodes really suffered because we don't typically give those a score. We we kind of give our impressions, but not always a score. And so there's a lot of them that just slipped my mind. I'm sure that there are some that we've had on bonus episodes that would be in my top ten we've ever had on the podcast, but it's 8:00 in the morning and I can't remember them right now. So it's it's pretty much just ones that we've done on our regular episodes that that made my list at least. Yeah, I was going to say. And the other thing is every single whiskey I have on my top five I hope to get and I have about 10 alternates. Every single one is easily available nationwide. Like we're not picking these random like, you know, some barrel store pick from Lucky Joe. 'S like.

8:27 We're, we're, we're talking whiskey, you can get pretty much nationwide at a cost similar to what you would pay in Ohio. Now I will say that the inspiration for this episode was the new bottle of Green River, which I believe is called Green River 1885. Is that correct? Sure is. Oh yeah. We just received a bottle in the mail yesterday. We have not had a chance to try it yet. Now, I will say that it's the inspiration for this episode because we didn't want to drink it and then not included in our starter shelves just in case it doesn't, you know, it just in case it doesn't make like our top five ever. But the reason that it's the inspiration is Green River has just announced it as kind of their baseline.

9:09 It's called blended for the bar. They want to put it behind every bar in America. It's like 80 something proof. It costs I think $28.00. Like it's a really reasonable bourbon and. Do you want to? Do you want to know exactly what proof it is? Yeah, sure. It it's 85. Proof. Oh, oh, see, it all makes sense. Now see what they did there? I get it now, but I just respect the hell out of that and it really launched us into this conversation of what what is still a good bargain in the world of whiskey and that that launched us down the path. Now we will have a full review in our next bonus episode, hopefully, so stay tuned for that. Brad, I think we've vamped long enough. We need to do a two person snake style draft, which means we need to flip the coin of destiny to figure out who goes 1st and who goes second. Do you want to be heads or tails on this flip? I'll be tails.

10:00 All right, go ahead and flip that coin. Bob, I will be picking first in the inaugural draft. Oh yeah, I thought you'd be excited about that. Oh, I sure AM. I am going to pick wait, hold on. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Sorry. No, no, it's OK. I just want to say before we get started, you got to keep track of your own. You got to have your own calculator. I can't keep track of both of our three hundreds. I trust. I trust your calculations. Also, we should say we are not limiting ourselves to just bourbon or rye. Like we're trying to get a variety here. Hopefully it's not just a shelf of bourbon. Brad, as I look through my list, there's not a lot of rye on here, but you're also the rye guy, so maybe I tipped my hand a little bit. Honestly dude, I I was trying to work through, you know my list from the past few years and I couldn't, I couldn't find a lot of rise in the right price points for what I was looking at.

10:57 Agreed, it was really weird. All right. Anyway, with all that out of the way, Brad, you are picking first. Bob, you know what I'm picking. I don't. There's only, there's only one choice at the top of this draft. I am getting my value pick out of the way and I am taking Rubble 100. Good for you man. Yeah, it's such an easy choice. Like for me rounding out my $300.00, I had to have something that would be good as a mixer and also still good by itself. And and Rebel 100 is the obvious choice here. OK, that actually does help my strategy a little bit.

11:37 So I get 2 picks here and I think I am going to go bourbon heavy on the front end and I think that I'm going to kind of blow my wad a little bit up front too here Brad, and then go for the bargain stuff in a little. Blow, blow your wallet, Bob. No, no, no, Nope, not what I said. My first pick in the category of bourbon is going to be $56 now in the state of Ohio and it is Woodford Reserve Double Oak. That was my second pick. Yeah, man, I knew it was coming at some point. It is just perhaps the biggest crowd pleaser we've ever had on this podcast, and I knew I had to get it at some point or you were going to get it. Now with my second pick, folks, I don't necessarily recommend that you immediately jump into the world of high proof whiskey, but if we're talking crowd pleasing high proof whiskeys, I'm going to stick in the world of bourbon. And my third overall pick here, my second pick is going to be Wild Turkey, Rare Breed.

12:41 Oh, look at you. So I'm trying, I'm trying to knock out the ones that I knew were on both of our radars. And I think those are my, those are my first two. Man, you knocked off my second overall choice and my first overall alternate. Hey, there you go. So you, you're, you're taking it to me, Bob. I think for my second and third picks, I am going to take a $34 bottle of whiskey. It's going to be Cooper Crafts Barrel Reserve. Yeah, I had that on my list too. It's yeah, like still one of the most under utilized bottles that we've talked about. And I feel like people in the know they get it, but it's for some reason it's just it hasn't hit the like underground. Everyone appreciates this level that it should be at. No, it really hasn't.

13:36 There is so much flavor going on and I feel like it's it's hitting in that diminishing 30 to $40 range that it's to, to use the pun Bob, it's a rare breed anymore to find something in the $30 range that you really want to drink and Cooper's Craft absolutely knocks it out of the park there. I think with my next pick, I am going, I'm going to go a little higher, Bob. We're going to spend a little more money. I am going to spend $85 in the state of Ohio on Barrel Seagrass. Wow dude I didn't think that was actually going to get drafted here, $85 is a chunk of change man.

14:20 I got, I got 300 bucks to spend. We got to get. Going. Not anymore. You don't. I thought you were keeping tabs on this. It's not. It's not a constantly replenishing pot of 300, Brad. Bob, I had spent $54.00 so far and I, you know, I, I like to enjoy the finer things in life. Sure, tell. Me a little bit about Beryl Seagrass. Why are you picking in here? Film and Whiskey Nation. If you have not heard already the praises of Beryl Seagrass, this is a absolutely perfect whiskey. It is a rye whiskey finished in a variety of cask types that has all of the decadence of a bourbon with all of the depth and flavor of a high proof rye. This thing absolutely knocked my socks off when I drank it. I've bought a bottle since it is one of the best purchases I've ever made in the world of whiskey. I've drank the whole thing and normally I try to hold on the bottles that I really really like for way too long and I I can't like control myself with this stuff. Barrel Seagrass is the best whiskey consistently that I've ever had.

15:34 What a freaking endorsement man dude. Yeah, Barrel needs to hire me. I'm looking through my list. Brad and I have, I have two picks here now. It is a very bourbon heavy list. Now our podcast has also been a very bourbon heavy podcast. I do want to get a little bit of variety in there. And so I think both of my picks are going to be outside the world of bourbon. And in fact, I think they're both going to be outside of the United States. I'm a little iffy on the Scotch pick here, but I think I need to take it now or it might go a little bit later. So first I'm going to take a whiskey that we had like in our first ten episodes ever and has just remained our standard for blended Scotch.

16:14 You're just getting into the world of Scotch. I think you need to pick up a $35 bottle of Monkey Shoulder. That's going on my list. I, I could go with a single malt, but again, we're doing a starter shelf and the cheapest single malt that I have on my list right here is like 65 bucks. So I'm going to avoid that. I'm going to take the Monkey Shoulder. At the at the rate you're going, you're going to have like 19 bottles. Yeah, dude on. Your shelf. This is the frugal shelf. I thought, I thought we were going for like, here's 5 bottles, this is what you want. So my, my shelf's going to look a lot different than yours. I think you're going to have a lot of free picks at the end of this draft. Well, in fact, I'm going to go even cheaper than the $35 Monkey Shoulder, and this is the one I really wanted to get.

17:00 It's the only Irish whiskey that's going to make my list. It is $25 still in the state of Ohio. I'm talking about the Sexton Single Malt Irish Whiskey, perhaps still my favorite Irish whiskey we have ever had on this podcast. Yeah, 100%. Dude, it has so much flavor. And here's the wild thing. It used to be $35 in the state of Ohio and now it is $25. It's it's an even better. Deal. Maybe it's a victim of shrink flation, Maybe the bottle's only like 375 mil now. Who knows? Shrink flation. Yeah, that was also on my alternate list. Sex and single Malt's an incredible whiskey, Bob. Well, man, I I'm just getting the my pick of the barrel. I'm going to spend the rest of my money, Bob. Wow, this is the shortest episode ever. You really are here, huh?

17:55 Yeah, I'm, I'm spending the rest of my money. I am going to purchase next a incredible bourbon that we drank a few seasons back. I'm going to get the Old Forrester Prohibition series 1910. 1910, interesting. I have the 1920 on my list and I thought that that was always my favorite one. So I'm interested that you went with 1920 or 1910, I mean. Yeah, I I remember specifically thinking that the 1910 was way better than the 1920 and it comes in perfectly to replace the Woodford Double Oaked at $56. There you go. So are you left with exactly $0.00 here?

18:36 After my next pick, yes. OK, wow. Yeah, so I have $105.00 left and I am going to spend it on the pinnacle of Scotch whiskey. The price point at which you can get it paired with the flavor, you literally cannot beat this bottle. Now this is going to be your sophisticated drinker on your shelf. If if you ever get into the world of single malt scotches, then you cannot go wrong with Lagavulin 16. Oh yeah. Bob, tell me that this is not one of the most delicious things you've ever drank in your life.

19:18 It's really good man, and you have always I'm. I'm certainly not opposed to a peated Scotch, but I have always been surprised with the, I don't know what's the term, the vigor with which you jumped into the world of peated Scotch. I never expected you to to latch onto it so quickly and so easily. Dude, it's one of one of my best friends that I drink whiskey with constantly. We love all types of whiskey. He's a big Widow Jane fan and like, you know, all sorts of bourbons and stuff. But we've kind of come to the point where we're like, man, if we're going to spend money on whiskey, it's going to be on single malt scotches. Like I like.

20:00 There's very few things. Like honestly, my list of five here are all whiskeys I would buy and keep on my shelf, but mostly because they're not that expensive. If I'm going to spend more than 50 bucks on a whiskey, it's going to be barrel Seagrass or it's going to be Scotch. Oh man, what do I want to do here? All right, I have a question for you. This is really going to dictate where I go from here. Yeah, yeah, you, you have, you have full reign of the. I do. I'm completely taking over this episode now. So one of my picks was going to be Rebel Distillers Collection, which is like my favorite whiskey to drink day-to-day. Yeah, it is a typically 4499 in the state of Ohio. However, when I googled it or when I looked it up on Ohio's liquor Bureau website, they are currently doing a sale on it for 3149.

20:56 So I don't know if I should factor in sale prices or if I have to go by retail price. I mean, I would lean towards using retail because that's probably around what people will get it for nationwide that so that that's what I would lean towards. But Bob, you. But you don't have any money, so why should I listen to you? That's right. OK, here's where I'm at Brad. I have 5 whiskeys left on my list of like I really want to draft these. They added up to $187.00. I only have $134 left so I've got to eliminate something.

21:36 And then when you make me draft at retail price they it bumps up to like 200. So I'm going to take out Rebel Distillers Collection. Unfortunately, I'm also going to take out Weller Antique. Yeah, I that was on my alternate list. It's a good whiskey, but it's just it, it's it's creeped up in price and you're not going to get it at retail in most places anyway. So it would be unfair for me to draft it. And that leaves me with a list of three whiskeys. Now I have $134 left. These three whiskeys come in at 132 dollars. OK. One of them is a personal favorite of mine. It is from the Willett Distillery. It's called Johnny Drum. It's one that we had last year on the podcast. It's like a slightly lower proof version of Noah's Mill, which I absolutely love.

22:22 Johnny Drum it it like if you want a good picture of what the Willett funk is like, you could do a heck of a lot worse than Johnny Drum at $44. Secondly, I'm going to pick a whiskey that I really thought was going to go earlier in this draft to you, because it's from the company that we've been talking about all day that inspired this. It's the Green River. Foolproof. Yeah, dude. Like, I don't know if there's a whiskey that's come out in the last year that I've talked about more. I don't know, Like it's, it's so affordable. It's such an incredible flavor. And the fact that they're balancing those two things and they're riding the wave of the hype without hiking the price is like, I just respect what they're doing at Green River so much. Yeah, 100%.

23:10 They are making incredible whiskey. The Green River Foolproof is coming in at $60.00 and it is so much value at that price point for how much flavor you are getting. All right, my last pick I was going to go with like my my Bob book frugal pick, which is when I go to Kentucky, I always get a handle of a whiskey called TW Samuels. It is made by the Heaven Hill. Company. I knew you were going to get that. Or like JW dance or something. They were on my list man dance 15 bucks and to get a handle of TW Samuels for 24 is it's the best value in bourbon. It's like it's my mixer that I use for everything because it's 100 proof. It makes a heck of a cocktail.

23:52 I'm not going to draft it here because you can't get it nationwide. I am going to draft a whiskey that we immediately loved. I gave it to a buddy because I wanted him to experience this. And then I immediately regretted giving him that bottle because I've never been able to get another one. And that is the Jack Daniels triple Mash that came out about two years ago. They've raised the price slightly on this. I think it started at 2999. It's up to $38. So it is, you know, as far as Jack Daniels stuff goes, it's it's on the higher end, but I still think it's the best Jack Daniels product we've ever had when you're accounting for value. Yeah, I I remember doing that. And what was the other Jack Daniels that came out at the same time? Yeah.

24:34 It was the Jack Daniels bonded and I gave my buddy the triple mash because I, I had already hyped it up to him and I didn't want to give him the bonded, which I had said I didn't like as much. Yeah, because then you make him feel like, oh, he's just giving me the stuff he doesn't want. But man, I, I don't like the bonded nearly as much. And I missed that triple mash. Yeah, you should have, should have held on to it. Man, that that was a great bottle. I I remember both of those being really good. But you're right, the triple mash just had a depth to it that was incredible. All right, man. I think we're both out of money. I have $2.00 left. Now again, we drafted without the the presupposition of tax here. So in this world that we drafted in, there is no tax.

25:15 If you need to factor that in, just pretend like you found a $20 bill in your wallet after you your 300 was gone. It was just a a bonus surprise tax bill. A bonus episode Surprise pay for your taxes. All right, Brad. Let's go through our lists here. Yours is much shorter than mine. Go ahead and and run down what you drafted and at how much each one cost you. Yeah, starting from the top and going down, I have $105.00 bottle of Lagavulin 16, an $85 bottle of Barrel Seagrass, a $56 bottle of Old Forester Prohibition Series 1910, and two more a $34 bottle of Cooper's Craft Barrel Reserve.

26:00 And rounding it out is the film and whiskey peak of value, the $20 Rebel 100. That's a really good list man. I'm shocked that you were able to get 2 like high high price point whiskeys in that $300.00 because you said 105 and like 80 something or whatever it was and I was like 85 man. Like you really only had 100 bucks to work with after those two and you you managed to get 3 pretty good bottles after that. Yeah, I was going to say the the Old Forester 1910 is still a $56 bottle of whiskey, so that I think hopefully what it highlights for you is that you can have your cake and eat it too. A. 100% all right.

26:42 I was able to draft 7 bottles of whiskey with my $300.00 because I am a cheapskate and so starting at the top for me, my most expensive bottle was only $56. That was Wild Turkey rare breed. I had two bottles that were drafted at $50 on the dot. One of them is Green River foolproof, the other is Woodford Reserved double oaked. Oh, you know what, I had those backwards. Double Oaked is 56, Rare Breed is 50. There you go. Moving down in my list, I had Johnny Drum at $44, Jack Daniels Triple Mash at 38, and then to round things out I had a bottle of Scotch in Monkey Shoulder at $35 and the Sexton Single Malt Irish Whiskey at $25.00.

27:26 So there you go, dude. And if you want to spend $600.00, you could spend a lot worse money than this line up of 12 whiskeys. I mean, we like literally we would be averaging $50 a bottle for that, those 12 whiskeys. Yeah, 100%. And I like if you really wanted to go all out and like, stock your whiskey shelf, like tell me that this 12 wouldn't be absolutely perfect, I think. The only thing that's missing is rye. Like we really don't have any rise represented here at all. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and there's there's good options there like Templeton Rye would be a good honestly the Wild Turkey rare Breed rye I have not drank but I've heard incredible things about.

28:10 So that yeah, there's definitely options out there. They just didn't quite hit our list today. No, they did not. So folks, we want to know what would your shelf look like? But also, and even more importantly, who wins this battle today? Whose shelf looks better? Obviously I win that battle. I'm going to give another value pick that I think people might miss out on for high proof things. Maker's Mark Cask strength at $45. That was such a good whiskey. Yeah, I didn't even think about that one. Yeah, that. That was on my list. I I was very drawn to the spending exactly 300, but that was probably my top alternate that I didn't. Pick Yeah, that's a good one.

28:51 All right guys, you can find us on all of our social media accounts to let us know just how much I won by at Film Whiskey on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Or you can jump into the conversation on Discord if you want to talk movies, whiskey, and pretty much anything else going on in the world, you can find a link to our Discord at the end of every single one of our show notes. We want to give a special thanks again to our presenting sponsor, Blackwood Distilling. Zach, don't hate us for this one. We did not include Blackwood today because it's not available nationwide yet. But as you've heard in all of our ads, you can find a bottle of Blackwood by going to their website, blackwooddistillingco.com. That's Blackwood Distilling co.com. We'll be back next week with another bonus episode to tide you over until season nine.

29:37 But until then, I'm Bob Book. I'm Brad G. And we'll see you next time. Hey there whiskey lovers. You ever wonder what happens when you mix Kentucky Derby winners, legendary bourbon masterminds? In a dash of bold ambition? You get Blackwood Distilling Co, a premium brand born from the wild 65 to one odds victory of Country House in the 2019 Derby. They have crafted luxury toasted bourbon and America's first triple barreled toasted rye that'll knock your socks off in the most delicious way possible.

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31:16 Cheers to the good stuff.