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How a House Swap Sparked a Bourbon Brand – Fernhill Station · Aussie Bourbon Lovers

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  Incredible flavours, even better stories.
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  One pour, 10 minutes.
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  Aussie bourbon lovers sharing bourbon with Australia.
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  That's such a good caught pop.
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  I'm so excited, Hedges.
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  We got James Summerland back from the Mount Pleasant Whisky Club project
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  with the Fern Hill Station bottle.
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  It's a single cask, straight bourbon whiskey, which is coming out of DC.
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  We spoke about this a little ago.
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  It's such a cool project that we've got.
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  What is probably the first truly Aussie, but still- It's like an Aussie bourbon.
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  Absolutely a bourbon. But it's a bourbon.
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  But it's like an Aussie bourbon.
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  Very fascinating that we're able to get to this.
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  So congratulations on the project, James. So good.
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  Thank you.
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  Last time, we spoke a lot about the dram itself, but we didn't talk too
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  much about the story, which is just a cracker.
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  Tell us, how did this project come to be?
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  What happened that led you to the point of having this delicious bourbon in a glass?
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  So my wife and I obviously have a house.
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  It's our biggest asset.
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  And a long time ago, she thought, well, how do we get the most out of this?
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  Well, let's swap houses on holidays.
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  So she joined a website called People Like Us, and we wanted to go to DC.
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  I've always wanted to go DC.
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  And she found a swap.
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  So Troy and his partner, Tony, they wanted to come to Australia.
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  We hooked it up.
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  We're about to fly out, and Tony messages to say, Hi, I've realised
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  James owns a bar.
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  Well, Troy has a bourbon business, so he's left you some samples.
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  We got there.
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  I arrived in DC, like 36 hours.
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  Yeah, it's a long flight.
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  We went the long way as well.
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  Then I tasted it.
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  I'd never been into it.
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  I tasted this and I thought, Hang on, just throw the Scotch whiskies out.
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  I can relate.
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  That was it.
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  We spent time in Mount Pleasant I guess why this exists, Mount Pleasant
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  Club Whisky, it's made through Troy and John's company called Reboot Beverages.
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  They basically took the old label of Mount Pleasant
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  because they actually found a bottle in the house during a renovation, an
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  old bottle from pre Prohibition.
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  That's incredible.
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  And you can actually see it on the book. There you go.
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  Yeah. Amazing.
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  And they thought, Let's bring this back.
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  So they selected their barrels and they brought it back.
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  They called it Mount Pleasant Club Whisky.
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  They've honoured all the streets of their suburb.
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  What was important was actually quite funny.
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  We got locked out of their house one day. Oh, no.
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  We came back.
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  The electric door wasn't working.
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  We're trying to contact them in Australia.
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  Different time zones. Yes.
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  We waited in the park a while, but it was no stress.
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  Eventually, they said, We're going to send John, who's my business partner in Reboot,
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  he'll come around and help get you in, which was break the window.
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  And it was just chatting to him once we got in.
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  We had a quick beer together, a little bourbon, and I just said,
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  Why don't I have this in Australia?
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  Why am I…?
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  And there's a price point, right?
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  I look at your top level of your gin beans or your wild turkeys.
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  In the gifting range, in the restaurant range, you start cap
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  out 140 a at all, 150.
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  But then you want to go and find something else really special.
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  You got to jump a long way to $600.
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  There's big price tags. Right.
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  And I thought, we need a premium product in Australia, independent Kraft.
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  And I thought, well, let's do it.
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  Yes. So good.
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  I'll go and get a licence.
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  I I thought I had the paperwork.
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  Because even when you do the house swap, so you have a little bar in Sydney.
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  In Hudson Park. In Hulson Park.
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  And he had an already existing bourbon business.
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  But then there's so many more themes that run through this story because
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  they love celebrating the local streets.
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  That's how they name their whiskies.
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  And you, as such a locally focused venue at HP Bolo.
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  Yes, we live in Hulson Park.
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  We have our business in Hulston Park.
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  My business partner, I went to school with.
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  He owns a cafe next door.
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  He lives in Hulston Park.
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  We went to Holston Ag High School in Western Sydney.
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  So we love the community.
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  And I thought, Well, let's celebrate Hilton Park.
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  Dimitri is a Ukrainian artist who came to Australia 20, 30 years ago,
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  and he got us the Artwork for it.
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  Stunning artwork.
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  It's a beautiful bottle, too.
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  I love the wide sides.
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  Yeah.
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  And the New South Wales and DC flag on the tag.
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  The fun of it was selecting everything.
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  Do you want a wood top?
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  What colour foil do you want?
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  Yeah, all the little details.
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  Writing the story, selecting the artwork, scaling the artwork, what to call it.
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  Pick a name.
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  Who got the final say of the liquid that went in the bottle?
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  I picked the barrel.
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  Through six samples that got sent here, we selected one blind.
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  We all agreed on the same one.
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  Then they sent me some more samples of that barrel.
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  We cut it down, different ABVs, selected blind, the same 50.
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  7.
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  So there were all decisions we had to go through.
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  It was time.
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  It was little samples turning up in the mail called olive oil.
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  Love it.
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  Yeah, or you could just confuse it for olive oil until you put it in a glass.
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  Actually, speaking of that, the more time this spends in a glass,
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  getting a bit of air on it.
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  I'm getting these lovely Christmas spicy notes, a bit of almost
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  Christmas pudding-y notes from it.
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  But before we started recording, you told us that you got some interesting notes the
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  more you sit with it that link back to when you were a bit younger.
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  Yeah, well, smell is your strongest sense.
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  I was sitting down one night and, hang on, shearing shed.
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  But the memory was shearing shed, but the oil was lanolin.
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  Yeah, it's that oiliness that gives it that really smooth finish.
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  Beautiful smooth finish.
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  It's got quite a bit of hard red winter wheat.
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  So make his mark bang on about this soft red winter wheat, but this is a hard red
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  winter wheat, so a different variety of that.
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  I agree with you that there is a lovely bit of wheatiness that comes through both
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  on the nose and then on the palate as well.
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  I feel like it's a cross between.
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  It's like my farm where I grew up was sheep and wheat,
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  and I feel like it's this in a glass.
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  Since you've said the lanylin thing, now all I can think about is what it
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  smells like at your family farm.
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  Now you've said this, it's going to stick with me.
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  There's a very earthy, warming.
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  I think this is a big hug.
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  I just love the beautiful smooth finish.
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  That's what I got from the first bottle I tasted, the Brown Street Bourbon,
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  my all-time favourite still.
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  This is a very similar blend in the mash, four grains, some different percentages.
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  But when they gave me this one, I was like, this is it.
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  This is a good one. This was the winner.
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  Tell us-We picked a good one.
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  As the three of us love bourbon, we're all Aussies, we talk about this idea of what
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  the Australian attitude towards bourbon is.
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  We've spoken about this a little bit earlier about that idea of there's a bit
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  of a Scotch focus and all that thing.
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  And because you're at HP Bolo and you see what people are buying and how people are
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  drinking things, what do you think the attitude...
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  Do you think there is a shift towards bourbon in Australia
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  with the Aussie drinkers?
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  There's a shift broadly It's really towards quality.
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  So it doesn't matter what you're drinking.
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  People want experiences.
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  They want quality drink.
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  They want to enjoy two or three, not 10.
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  When I wrote my paper to get my licence, I said, I want people to
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  drink less but drink better.
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  Well, the reason I never was a bourbon drinker was because I grew up
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  in the old bourbon and Coke days.
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  That It was it. I was a Johnny Walker and Kate growing up.
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  Yeah, I was bourbon and Coke for sure. Yeah.
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  I put off for me.
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  It wasn't until recently, my mate brought back a bottle from Texas,
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  and he forced it on me one time.
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  But I thought, hang on, this is not bourbon.
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  This is not what I remember.
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  So there's good stuff out there.
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  Let me go and find it.
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  But our bar, we We focus on independent craft.
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  We don't do the RGO, the big ones.
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  I had to find it. And then it was for.
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  It was just a house swap.
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  It's an incredible story.
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  The house swap, the website is called People Like Us.
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  I love it.
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  It's actually People Like Us.
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  Like, literally.
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  You're like some an ad for them. Well done.
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  Well, hey, thanks so much for bringing quality bourbon that we can
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  enjoy in the right quantities.
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  And there are limited quantities, 132 bottles.
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  Where can people get their hands on them?
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  It's released on the 10th of July at the bar.
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  I'm going to have it in a local bottle shop.
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  But I want to push most of it into restaurants and high-end bars, hotel lobby
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  bars, like your Intercontinental Capella.
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  I want them to have a better offering.
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  It's going to retail around that 265 a bottle.
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  On the launch night, 245 a bottle.
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  But I don't have a retail licence, so I can only sell wholesale.
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  So it's not publicly available, but the local bottle shop will
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  carry it, and the Green Poria. Great.
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  Quick trip to Sydney.
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  Yeah, quick trip to Sydney, head out to Hilton Park, head over to the HP Bar.
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  I'm pretty sure there'll be something behind the bar for you to try.
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  It will be behind the bar.
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  And what we think is probably the first Australian-labeled bourbon that's truly
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  Australian-labeled, not just a barrel pick.
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  So congratulations on the project.
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  Thanks for coming on to join us and tell us the super cool story
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  of Fernhill Station.
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  For everyone who can get their hands on it, good luck to you
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  because it's a cracker. Might be the first of many.
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  Indeed. Absolutely.
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  Tell us about the next project. We want to hear about that one, too.
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  Thanks, guys. Thanks, James.
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  Cheers. Thanks.
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  Cheers..
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  Thanks for listening.
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