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Monk's Road Wheated Bourbon and a Bespoke Kentucky Bourbon Trail Experience · 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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  Was that good?
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  I don't know, but I might have popped it before the countdown.
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  So you reckon it might be there? It might be.
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  Like maybe the echo of the noise afterwards?
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  I might have got it. What are we having?
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  I think it's back later. What are we having?
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  H? No, wait, I should be saying- I popped it.
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  You tell us.
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  Well, this is from Log Still to Surrey.
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  This is Monks Road.
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  It's a wheated bourbon, or it's their wheated bourbon, rather.
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  Wheated means mostly the wheat replaces the right, right?
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  Definitely right.
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  The flat's the flavour grain, unless it's a foregrain or could be anything
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  else, I suppose, as long as 50 % corn.
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  It's a 94 proof, this one.
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  And if you look on the back of the bottle, it's got a little squivel on
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  it from- This is a picture. I nearly smudged it, but- KBF 2023.
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  Kbf 2023. Amazing.
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  Monks Road. Cheers.
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  So here's why we're having this one tonight.
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  Why are we having this one tonight, Dave?
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  We're nearly running out of juice, and I wanted to drink it the other night.
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  I was like, Oh, we better do a podcast about that.
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  And it's getting Very, very low.
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  Well, it is, what is it? 2023.
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  We've been drinking it for the last two years.
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  Well, I think this is one of these ones that I got back, and I haven't.
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  We didn't open it for quite some time. No, exactly.
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  I love the…
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  I was just looking at the calligraphy on the front of the bottle there.
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  It's like the old school.
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  Yeah, writing.
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  I don't know if you know this about me, David.
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  When I was in primary school, I used to do calligraphy competitions
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  at the local country show.
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  I used to win awards for my calligraphy competitions, and I used to
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  be able to write like that. Amazing.
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  I know. There you go.
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  I didn't know that. But you didn't know this either, though.
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  I used to do calligraphy, too.
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  In fact, I reckon one of my first Book Club books was a calligraphy,
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  how to do calligraphy book. My goodness.
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  So Bourbon is the only thing we have in Colm.
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  And we only just discovered it right now.
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  Drinking Monks Road with their very beautifully calligraphy.
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  I don't even know what the word is.
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  I reckon on a previous Weeded Bourbon episode, you've said that
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  you get old bookstore.
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  I reckon I'm getting a little bit of old bookstore Yeah.
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  I think we call it Caramel Coated Old Bookstore.
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  I reckon there's a little bit of Caramel Coated Old Bookstore on the nose of this,
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  for me, at least. Yeah, I get a little bit of…
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  It's a weeded bourbon.
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  I often get a bit of the harvest.
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  I open the tractor door when you've been harvesting the wheat.
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  Harvestering?
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  Harvesting. Who went?
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  Sorry, that was low.
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  I'll pick up on that.
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  Okay.
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  What is the best distillery tour that you've ever been on?
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  If you think about it, what's the best one?
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  I don't know.
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  Like, Maker's Mark probably is up there with my favourite of all time.
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  That's still out there as well. A bit hard to tell, isn't it?
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  The thing that fascinates me is they're all doing a very similar
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  thing, making great bourbon.
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  But every single tour is so different.
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  It's so different in the aspects they show you, so different in
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  the way they present it.
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  There's not really any tour that I've gone on and gone, Here we go again.
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  Same old, same old.
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  We're doing this.
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  Obviously, you cover a lot of the same content in that they're
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  making the same stuff. This is one of my points here.
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  Yeah, go on.
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  Everyone seems to have an incredible point of difference
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  and a really unique way of presenting the bourbon they make and sharing
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  it in their experiences, which is...
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  I think this is absolutely true.
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  But wait, can you ask me the same question?
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  What's one of your favourite day?
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  It took you a long time to get around to it, didn't it?
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  So I reckon the same thing, that it's very hard to differentiate them because you
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  get told the same thing over and over.
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  Yeah, but it's that thing of the actual place gives you…
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  I think that's why probably make as Monk is one of my favourites, is that you
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  connect with the place and the stories.
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  It's the memory rather than just the experience.
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  But the rest of my answer is- Monks Road is up there with one of your favourites?
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  The distiller is called Log Still Distillery, and Monks Road is
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  indeed one of my favourites. Do you know why?
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  No.
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  I think I've told you this story before, but maybe not on the podcast.
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  You told me you really wanted to take me there because when we went back to KBF in
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  2024, you were like, We've got to go to Monks Road, and we couldn't fit it in.
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  So I knew then that it was definitely one of your favourites because you had been
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  on a trip without me.
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  Surely not. One of those work trips.
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  Oh, no. It couldn't be true.
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  To Monks Road.
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  Yeah, I knew it must be a favourite because you definitely…
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  We tried to go back there, but it just didn't work in with our trip.
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  Okay. Do you want to know the story here?
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  Tell me the story, Dave. What is it about Monks Road that you like?
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  I could it was a weekday morning in between work appointments,
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  obviously, on this work trip.
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  I rolled in.
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  It must have been a morning one because it was just me and one
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  other couple with their teenage daughter, say.
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  And they're like, Yep, you're here for the what?
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  Let's call it an 11: 30, two or 11: 00, two or something.
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  Meet out at the flag, you're a bit early.
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  Meet out at the flag pole at this time.
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  I had a bit of time.
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  So you can walk around, have a look at the gift shop, and there's an upstairs
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  bit, a little walk around.
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  Came across a cool sign that I really liked, and then took a photo,
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  wandered around. It's a really cool fit out.
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  It's got a live music venue called The Amp as well.
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  It's quite an amazing, and it's quite new.
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  It's really very new.
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  But I go to the flag pole, and it's just a few of us.
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  I was expecting there to be more.
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  He starts talking to It was like we're old friends or something.
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  I'd never met these other people. I'd never met him.
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  He just starts talking to us like we're old friends and starts telling us
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  these very interesting stories.
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  The tour happens in this way where…
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  Can you imagine if you rock up…
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  That story is not going to work well.
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  But basically, he was telling stories about
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  the place and about his childhood and about his experience at Bourbon.
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  He grew up in the area, and his family knew the Dan family who run
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  Log Still and all this stuff.
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  It was just an incredible tour.
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  It turns out that he knew straight away by a couple of things that we said at the
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  very, very beginning, which I didn't even realise that it happened, that this was
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  not our first rodeo, that we all three of us had done quite a lot of Distilleries.
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  So he immediately tailored it to, I'm going to tell you all the stories about
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  this place to make it really cool.
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  And so the- He didn't want to stick to the standard stuff.
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  He's like, these guys are after something else.
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  He didn't spend any time on the, and this is how the process works.
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  You're looking at a column still.
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  This is how this still works.
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  All the stuff they like to cover for people who don't know
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  what they're looking at.
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  He was instead talking about up the hill there, there used to be six
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  distilleries around the corner.
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  And the reason it's called Monks Road is because we're at the end of the road, that
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  up the top there, there used to be an old monastery.
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  And we're in Gethsemani, and this is a really conservative Christian part of
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  Kentucky and all this amazing stuff.
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  And I found it to be so cool because he even spoke about the way the
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  the bourbon boom had changed.
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  He talked about pre-Prohibition and the fact that there used to be this huge
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  concentration of distilleries in that area, and then everything got abandoned,
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  and that you could still see the wrecks of where the old distilleries were.
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  But he said within Maybe a kilometre or something where there would have been six
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  or seven distilleries pre-Prohibition, and this one's the only
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  one that's back up now.
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  That's a classic example of one of the reasons we love bourbon so much
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  is the stories that go with it.
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  It's not just the delicious liquid, it's also the stories and the fact that he's
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  able to share them as part of the tour is… Yeah.
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  So cool.
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  Anyway, I enjoyed the tour so much that I actually-We really do have to go back.
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  Spotted him across the crowd at last year's K Jeff, and I nearly, but I'm a bit
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  shy, nearly run over to him and said, You've given me the best tour
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  I've ever had in a distillery. You should have.
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  If I see him… Because he's- See him this year.
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  I'll run over and go, Hey. You're going to be going again.
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  You did an amazing job.
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  Keep doing awesome tours.
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  Extremely knowledgeable. Great fun.
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  Maybe we should go this time, make sure we have enough time.
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  They do some cool expressions.
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  They do gins as well, and they do some Tennessee whiskey as well called
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  Rattle and Snap Log Still Distil.
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  I'll give you the quick story about why it's called Log Still, is that the guy who
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  first did it, and Dant is a very famous name in distilling.
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  Yeah, it is.
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  But the first time that the first distiller from that,
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  I think family, let's say.
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  I think it's family distilled.
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  He did it from an old log.
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  He literally took a log and was able to distil inside this old hollowed out log.
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  That's why they call it.
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  And so the still there, you can see the guys, I think it's Vendôme, have put the
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  pattern on the outside of the copper still.
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  It looks like a log.
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  So it's quite cool.
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  That is cool.
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  And I was there the first day they were putting a rye through it.
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  They do rye now, but that was the first day.
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  So they'd only ever done weeded?
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  No, weeded in like a normal bourbon.
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  Yeah, with the high rye bourbon.
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  Anyway, so there you go.
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  And then Linda obviously signed this bottle for us.
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  Yeah, we're big fans.
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  Can you get Monks Road anywhere in Australia?
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  I don't think you can get in Australia yet.
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  So keep an eye out for it in your travels.
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  They're making great stuff, and I think their distribution is
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  getting further and further.
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  So I think keep an eye out for it for sure.
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  And if you're in Kentucky, it's a tour you should definitely do, particularly if you
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  can get tickets to one of their live because the Amp is an
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  amazing live music venue. We really have to go.
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  They've got a train track that runs down the bottom of that live music venue.
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  I think they do trains.
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  It's going to be the second time I've been back and I haven't been,
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  so I'm going to have to go. All right, we'll go.
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  You're going to have to take me because I want to go check out Logstil Distillery.
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  That is dusty old Bookshop, Covered in Caramel.
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  It's young, but it's got that dustiness, that barrel character that's lovely.
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  It brings that maturity, that age to it. I love it.
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  The Harry Potter Library. I'm reading Harry Potter, the Kids.
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  Yeah, it's a Harry Potter book. A lot of book.
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  Burberry Harry Potter Library.
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  We should drink Burberry and read Harry Potter more.
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  Yeah. Cheers.
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  Listening.
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