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Purple Wax & Pinhook: Bourbon, Wine & Kentucky Racehorses · Aussie Bourbon Lovers

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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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  Oh, got a little pop there, Dave. I'm okay with it. What are we drinking
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  tonight, Edge? We're drinking a Pinhook Single Barrel Bourbon.
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  It's a cask strength, and This particular
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  single barrel was picked by the Whiskey Hunt Australia guys.
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  Yeah, I know, see, you can't get the— Very hard to get focus with this
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  clever thing, isn't it? Yeah, I know. He's trying to get the cool picture in
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  focus. It's got a beautiful sketch of a horse on the front.
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  And can I just say, when you bought this bottle, I was very excited.
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  And this sounds very shallow, but— Come on, how shallow could it be?
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  It's dipped in purple wax, and I thought that was really pretty.
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  Whoa, quick straw poll. Is that pink or purple?
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  Fuchsia? Well, I would say violet. I'd say purple.
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  But I just, you know, it's like going to the races and picking a horse
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  based on the color of, you know, it's what the jockey's wearing.
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  Well, this one I was very happy because the wax was purple.
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  Cheers. But I have to be honest,
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  Dave, I don't know much about Pinhook Kentucky Straight
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  Bourbon Whiskey. Okay. I do know that you know a couple of facts, so I'm
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  going to I, I, I know a little bit. I knew
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  a little bit already. It's, it's quite a cool— it's a super distinctive,
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  um, looking bottle, and the bottles are super distinctive looking.
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  They're very wine bottle looking. Looks like a, like a white wine. What a fun
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  way to start this off. They all— the thing I
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  love a lot about Pinhook as a brand—
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  can I just do brand stuff first? Wait, what are we getting on the nose?
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  No, no, do brand stuff. Okay, I want to hear the story. Is that on
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  a shelf, I've had this deep desire. This is the first bottle of Pinhook we've
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  owned. I've had a deep desire to buy heaps of them. The wax colour's different.
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  They all look roughly the same. They've all got different pictures of horses. They're pretty
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  cool bottles, and I've wanted to have heaps. I've nearly flown some back from the
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  US because they're really easy to get over there, but I haven't done it.
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  Where'd you get this bottle? This one was a Whiskey
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  Hunt Australia pick. So actually, I just bought it in Australia.
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  King Hooker, really cool. They've got quite a good reputation. It's 3
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  mates and one of them is
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  a sommelier. Oh cool. That's not an easy thing
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  to be. Sure. No,
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  I think it's not easy to be and it's quite a specialized thing to be.
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  But the wine thing is actually a theme that runs through
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  a lot of what they do. So the wine bottle is just the start of
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  it. It's deliberately made to look like a wine bottle that isn't just like Yeah,
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  you didn't just get lucky there. Yeah, no, I was like, oh, it looks like
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  a— but it really does. It looks like a white
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  wine bottle you'd pull off the shelf with the bottle opener. 100%.
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  Yep. What are you getting on the nose? Any— I'm getting like green apples.
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  Oh yeah, it's very fruity. Really fruity. In fact,
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  oh, that's nice. Like lovely. I would describe it as
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  fresh. Yeah, yeah. Fresh caramel. Like a really Like
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  orchard, like a fresh, fresh, like— Don't say no.
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  My tasting notes are my tasting notes. You have your own tasting notes. I don't
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  mind. That is true. You can have an orchard. I'm having apples with caramel.
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  That is true. Everybody's tasting notes are correct. There's no such thing as
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  the wrong, wrong nose or wrong flavors when it comes to bourbon.
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  There's an interesting something else there. What else is this? Almost like gummy bears.
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  Is that weird? Oh, that's, that's unusual. But Okay.
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  It's correct, Dave, if that's what you're getting.
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  Maybe that's where you discredit me. No, no. Gummy bears you'd go with.
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  Oh yeah. And then right in there, that's that really like caramelly
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  vanilla. I could nose it all day. It's like very, it's like refreshing.
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  It's a lovely, it's a
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  lovely warmth to it as well. Good structure, like a really
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  good structured. It goes straight around my whole mouth. Yeah. Sometimes it
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  sits in different places on your tongue or goes straight to the back of your
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  mouth. That's kind of like almost like a, like a light
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  explosion in your mouth. A light explosion? Well, like, that's— they wouldn't
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  have talked about that in World War II, would they? No, but like, it's like
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  it just went to my whole mouth. It's like, I don't even know how
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  to describe it. But sure, I love it. Like,
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  like when you're eating fairy floss, it's like the sugar all melts and goes everywhere.
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  That kind of a light explosion, like eating fairy floss.
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  This is amazing. I actually— I'm probably going to lean into the idea
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  that it could potentially be a little bit like a fairy
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  floss experience because of the lightness of it. Well, it's giving me like,
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  like show, you know, or in America they call them
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  fairs, like the toffee apples and, and fairy
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  floss and funnel cake. Funnel cake. Yeah.
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  Righto, mate. Nah, good on you. Excellent. Good. So there's a few things wrong.
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  What's that? You just told me there's no such thing as a wrong answer.
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  There's no such thing as a wrong answer. So there's a few things here that
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  they, that these 3 mates did. So tell me, there's a few things.
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  So obviously one of the mates is a restaurateur, sommelier.
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  One of the mates is a TV producer. And they basically in 2010, they go,
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  righto, we've got 20 barrels of whisky. What are we going to do with it?
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  And so they go, well, let's, let's make whisky. They've got this interest
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  in horses, these 3 guys. Yeah. And they go,
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  righto, let's go. What a good time. What a really good time, I think,
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  to be— you need to find yourself with 20 barrels,
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  restaurateur and a sommelier. Dave, you can be the TV producer. And missed my
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  window on that. But so they do a few things. The first one is that
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  they're— it's sourced, non-distilling producer
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  is the way we describe this. Yeah, I think very openly had
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  been MGP, then went to Castle Key. So there's like a clear
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  shift between when they were at one and the other. When I say clear,
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  I mean I think they disclose it all anyway, but that's part of it.
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  Yeah. The wine
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  thing carries through here because they're not trying to release this consistent product.
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  If you think about like a Maker's Mark or Wild Turkey or even Michter's,
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  every brand's got a very distinct flavor. Every year they want it to always taste
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  the same. Buffalo Trace, is it the master blender
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  from Buffalo Trace said that he's tasting the original
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  bottle of Buffalo Trace from whatever it is, 1999 or
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  whatever it is, and trying to make Buffalo Trace in 2026 taste like that still.
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  He's trying trying to get that same flavour profile.
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  I'm sure they're all trying to do a version of that, but that's a really
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  interesting idea. But these guys are mixing up the flavour profile. They're not trying to
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  do that. They're not trying to do that. Every year's a new release and it's
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  a new flavour profile. So that's fun. So that's the way that wines treat vintages.
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  This vintage is this thing. And so they're really kind of leaning into that.
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  That's fun. That is fun. 2 of them have
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  this real kind of rich history of horse racing.
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  So that's where these horse things come from. So what you often see is these
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  pictures of horses on the label. And I think I could be wrong about this.
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  Be ready to fact-check me. That, that oftentimes
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  they name the expressions after winners of big
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  horse races, potentially Kentucky Derby and stuff like that. But like, they name after real
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  horses. But the name Pinhook actually has a place in like
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  thoroughbred lore, which is A pinhook is
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  a horse that's been bought very young. Yeah. And then
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  raised for a few years and then sold for a profit.
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  Yeah. So you buy a very young horse, look after it and
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  get it a few years old and then sell it either to race or to
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  be a sire or whatever. The right— I don't know. I'm not a horse racing
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  guy, but like that idea. Yeah. And so they're doing the same thing, but with
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  whisky, they're buying brand new distillate freshly
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  in a barrel. They take that from the distillery and they'll age themselves and then
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  they blend as well, of course. And then they sell it. That's cool.
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  This one's a single barrel though, so I don't think this is— oh, this one
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  must be blended. No. Yeah, that's fun. And they obviously,
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  you said they use lots of different color waxes. Well, and I don't know if
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  there's like a rule about what the color waxes mean, but there's
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  definitely lots of color waxes. This is the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I like that.
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  Yeah. And isn't that funny? Like that I was like, It looks like a wine
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  bottle and I had no idea that that was a very deliberate
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  choice. This is a real— they're really doing a thing here. I love the detail
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  that goes into everything. So it's not just the liquid inside,
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  it's like the design of the bottle and the name of it and the history
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  of it. Like, I just love the stories behind bourbon. I think,
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  you know, I obviously enjoy drinking it, but I think my favorite thing is the
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  people and the stories. It's like so good. It's pretty cool and it's hard to
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  think about this kind of like process of being a
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  source product, they kind of classically non-chill
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  filtered. That's like, I think they do. Yeah. Source product with
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  a really strong brand. And I think Pinhook is one of these great ones.
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  I think everyone talks about Penelope a lot. Yeah. Penelope is this great story of
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  being an MGP product. Yeah. That then was so good that the MGP guys bought
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  it back. But yeah, I feel like Pinhook is also in this classic, you know,
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  in this category. Well, like obviously your marketing and your
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  story when you're sourced play a huge part
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  in how you connect with people because like you're obviously going to
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  be making good stuff. Like, but yeah,
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  I just think it's really cool.
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  Yeah, I really like it. This particular bottle was aged 5 years.
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  Yeah, it's not an old one. No. And they would do a single barrel selection.
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  I don't know how this all particularly goes. Very easy drinking.
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  Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I just like how refreshing it is.
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  If you're playing along in Australia, this is, you can probably still get a bottle
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  of this. 115 proof, 57.5%. It was a 2025.
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  Oh, it's fun. Really? It's got the barrel number 3174. There you go. And it's
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  a single barrel. But this is this great thing. I think I say this over
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  and over again. If you're an Aussie and you have access to buy one of
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  these single barrels, we really think you should get amongst it because the more
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  single barrel, like barrel picks that Aussie groups like Whiskey Hunt do or
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  any of these guys do. Yeah. When anyone's doing a barrel pick, if it—
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  if you're able to support them, it means that they can do more and we
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  can get more stuff that isn't readily available in Australia out here.
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  Exactly. Which we like. Horses are such an important part of
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  Kentucky culture and it kind of sits so neatly alongside bourbon.
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  And, you know, Woodford do a bit of it. A few of the brands do
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  a bit of it. You know, with the Kentucky Mule and stuff around the Kentucky
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  Derby and stuff, there's a fair bit that bounces around. But yeah, there's not many
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  bourbon labels that put the horse on the, on the bottle. Yeah, well, Blanton has
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  it on there, on the stopper. The stopper, that's true. But yeah,
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  they kind of, they go hand in hand really,
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  the bourbon and Kentuckian horses. That's it. Well, what a pleasure
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  it is to be drinking some Pinhook with you, H. Yeah, with purple wax.
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  Here's to finding some more different colored waxes and getting
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  some more fancy colors in our collection. Yeah, actually getting some more
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  Pinhook. Cheers.
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  Cheers. Thanks for listening.
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