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35 Years of Kentucky Bourbon Festival: The Bourbon & The Myths · 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, not a big pop there, Dave. It's not the worst one I've ever done.
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  This is a special bottle, it's got blue wax on top of it, which looks
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  really cool. What are we drinking, Dave? Well, interestingly,
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  this is a It's kind of a little bit of a mystery, but it's a—
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  it's the Kentucky Bourbon Festival 35th Anniversary Commemorative
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  Release bourbon, and it's distilled and bottled by
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  Heaven Hill. It's the one with the blue wax. It's the one that— it's
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  kind of a bit of a weird sleeper, actually. Why do you say that?
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  Well, here, cheers. Cheers.
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  It's a bit of a weird sleeper because I actually think it's one of the
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  most amazing bourbons from the Kentucky Bourbon Festival that no one
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  really talked about. Oh, because— but is that because
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  everyone talks about like all the different distilleries and this
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  rather than— I know it was made by Heaven Hill, but rather than being like
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  a Heaven Hill bottle, it was more this is the Kentucky Bourbon Festival
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  bourbon. Like it was like their kind of special
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  bottle for the festival. I think this is the way that we need to think
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  about it. And so therefore it didn't have its own hype for being its
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  own special thing in an odd way.
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  It wasn't an existing brand. It's kind of almost become its own brand,
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  but it does include 10, 12,
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  and 13-year-old Heaven Hill bourbons,
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  which is fun because that adds up to 35 to celebrate the 35th
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  year of Kentucky Bourbon Festival. Limited, kind of
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  exceptionally small batch is the way it's described. Yeah.
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  And on— because they can be a bit loose with small batch, but I know
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  that they kind of wanted it just for the festival. Yeah.
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  And for the people going to the festival. Yeah. And online it's going for this
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  crazy amount of money now. I imagine there wouldn't be many bottles left. Well,
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  it was really limited release anyway, but we certainly didn't pay what it's going for
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  online. And it's celebrating the idea that in 1992,
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  when the first Kentucky Bourbon Festival happened, that was just a big dinner with distillers
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  and stuff. Oh, wow. And it kind of grew and grew and grew.
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  And then there was some bit of a change and now it's what it is
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  now. And this is 35 years on. 35 years on.
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  What were you doing 35 years ago, Dave? Wow.
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  Interesting you bring this up. No. Oh, well, I wasn't celebrating a Hawthorn premiership.
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  No. Well, I was in, like, primary school.
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  What? Why are we talking about that? What have you got on the nose?
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  Oh, it's like popcorn or something. Yeah, I was
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  going to say it's really buttery. Buttered caramel popcorn.
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  Buttered caramel popcorn. That's pretty good. Buttered caramel popcorn. Yeah,
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  but buttered caramel, salted caramel. No. Can you get popping candy on the nose?
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  Popping candy is like, is a tech— like a texture, isn't it? Like a— that's
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  more of an experience. Yeah, there's not really a smell to popping candy,
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  is there? I don't know, but there's probably more of like a milky chocolate,
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  but I'm definitely getting that buttery,
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  like creamy almost. That is
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  delicious. That's delicious.
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  That's banging. Dark chocolate,
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  hazelnutty. Oh yeah. Wrapped in kind
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  of silky caramel, like chewy silky caramel goodness.
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  It's very silky, isn't it? Oh,
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  oh, but then it has that nice little afterwards.
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  It's got that like really subtle, like oaky kind
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  of. Yeah,
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  like a sweet oak on it. Yeah. Like it finishes nice. It does
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  finish nice. Yeah, finishes nice. That's great. No, but like, like,
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  as in it doesn't have the oaky taste or nose,
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  but it's kind of like finishes with that really subtle.
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  That's nice. Barrely kind of nice oakiness.
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  This is an interesting thing.
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  I tried to verify if this is the first time that Kentucky Bourbon Festival have
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  released their own whiskey, and kind of the idea is that no, no, of course
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  they release their own whiskeys all the time because they do these barrel picks.
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  Well, they do barrel picks for every brand that's there, so that's kind of fun.
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  Not every brand, but a lot of them. Lots of them. They go around.
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  It must be such a fun job going around and picking a Kentucky Bourbon Festival
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  barrel from all your favorite distilleries. I imagine it's an amazing job. Yep.
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  Yeah, but this one's a little bit different to that. It's not like a— it's
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  not a barrel pick, this is a blend. Yeah, but like it's, it's specifically for
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  this. I suppose that's why they've called it a commemorative release.
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  It's like a special release for this particular celebration, which was
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  a pretty good celebration, Dave. And actually, if you think about it in that way,
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  there must be more bottles of it if— because
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  it's got to have at least 3 barrels in it, doesn't it? If it's got
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  a '13, a '12, and a '10 in it. Yeah. And like, what, 180 to
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  200-something bottles out of a barrel? Depends on the yield of the barrel, I suppose.
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  Like, roughly. Yeah. I can make stuff up too, Dave.
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  You can what? I can make stuff up too. Yeah, yeah. I mean, well,
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  you're not wrong that you can get some— that kind of number of— but
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  it's fun that they've put a 10, 12, and 13-year-old in it. It is.
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  It's also really interesting to me that this was— we bought this at
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  Heaven Hill kind of stand or booth or
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  whatever. But there was such a good lineup. There's a great lineup. Yeah, but we
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  wanted this one and it's kind of weird that it's not a Heaven
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  Hill release. It's, it's kind of its own KBF release. Is that weird? No,
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  it's not weird. It's just different and special and unique. And yeah, it says Heaven
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  Hill right down the bottom in small print on the front, but well, it's just
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  saying where it was made, I think. Yeah, but it doesn't kind of scream Heaven
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  Hill at you. It's— I love the blue, the blue wax, the blue label.
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  And the little state of Kentucky on the front. Gold stars and all that
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  stuff. Yeah. And I suppose that's what gives it that finish, is that because it's
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  the age, like 10, 12, 13, you're going to get that
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  little tiny bit of oakiness. But yeah, that buttery smoothness is
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  good. I wanted to see if you'd be open to the idea, H, of dispelling
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  some Kentucky Bourbon Festival myths for us. Since we got back, we've been
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  talking to a few Aussies who've been asking us some questions or
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  telling us their thoughts of what the Kentucky Bourbon Festival
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  is and things that they're worried about or think it might be challenges
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  for them. Yeah, throw a few at me, Dave, and I'll— All right.
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  What about this one? Aren't tickets really hard to get?
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  They're limited, but if you set your alarm at 2 a.m.,
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  you get a ticket. Yeah. Set your alarm at the time the tickets go on
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  sale. Oh yeah, whatever. But in Australia it's like 1 or 2 a.m.
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  I think if you get in quick, it's, it's not— I
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  don't know. I wouldn't say like we've never had trouble getting one. But even this
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  year, having said that, right before the festival, they were like people who didn't get
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  tickets could volunteer and help out,
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  like filling up the water stations and going around emptying
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  the bins and different things that you like. If you, you know,
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  if you really, really want to go, You could go as a volunteer and get
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  to experience it. Isn't it too far to go for
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  a— just for 3 days of a whiskey festival?
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  No, no, it's, it's, it's amazingly
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  unique and incredibly fun thing to do. Like,
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  to every— like, to go overseas anywhere from Australia is a long way.
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  So I suppose it depends on what your version of too far is.
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  And how, like, how you look at travel. Some people, you know,
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  we were traveling on a plane with people from San
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  Francisco to Nashville that were like, this is the longest flight I've
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  ever been on. And we're like, this is the short leg of our flight.
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  So it's all about perspective. And, and yeah,
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  I think it's definitely worth it because it's a lot of fun. Isn't it really
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  expensive? And then don't you have to pay for all your samples? You do not
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  have to pay for all your samples. You pay for your ticket and then you
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  pay if you buy a bottle. But that ticket covers every sample from every stall
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  there. So you're not paying for any samples anywhere.
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  Yeah, you can sample whichever ones you like. Go on, try out all your favorite
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  bourbons as much as you like. Drink water in between and pace yourself.
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  The onus is more on the individual to make sure that the waters are
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  getting plugged in between. Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. You don't pay for
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  your samples. And then are there any other things to do when
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  you go, or are you just going for the festival and coming home? There's loads
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  of other things. There's like, I know they have lots of parties, but there's—
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  you can go into Louisville and go like down Whiskey Row. You can
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  go out and do distillery visits around like either side,
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  depending if the dates line up. You can go to music
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  festivals, Bourbon Beyond and Louder Than Life.
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  Yeah. Yeah, it's— there's definitely like those 3. You could literally
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  go for those 3 days and turn around and come back, but that
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  would be a bit crazy. Stay for a week and do lots of the
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  fun local Louisville, Bardstown and surrounds.
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  There's just so many cool places to visit and even like,
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  you know, plenty of non-bourbony things if you want
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  to go to a nice— we went to that really nice wine bar.
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  Yeah. So many good— there's so much and cool, cool jazz lounge. There's like lots
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  of fun stuff to do. The other one is the idea that Kentucky
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  is, is in the middle. Like it's, you know, in the West Wing they call
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  it the flyover states or whatever. That's that thing of like it's in the middle.
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  Yeah. Unless you need to go there, you don't go there. Australians aren't
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  usually kind of going to these kind of states, you know, or cities that aren't—
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  well, it's not really a— it's not like you San Francisco, even if you're not
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  going, you'll stop through it, or L.A., or like it's not one of
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  those cities you pass through. You've definitely got to make it a destination.
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  And I suppose for that reason, people often overlook it because they
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  don't realize how amazing it is.
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  I was telling someone today, someone was asking me about how Kentucky was,
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  and I said, it's unreal. And I painted this picture that I often paint.
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  And people who don't know, if you haven't looked at the videos, if you haven't
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  If you don't know much about it, it's a beautiful park.
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  In the fall, the autumn, the weather
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  is sometimes warm, and it was relatively warm when we were there this time,
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  but not crazy, like high 20s, maybe low 30s. And that
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  was the kind of the warmest it's been. Usually it's mid-20s. The park
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  is full of tents with distilleries in it.
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  You get a wristband and you go in for— it's a 3-day thing. As you
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  walk in, they give you a glass and it's on for young and old.
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  And they've got music around, music, like presentations,
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  food, master distillers. Yeah, you can learn stuff. They have guest speakers
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  speaking on the main stage.
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  There's just so many like people to talk to and
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  yeah, lots of people doing like the Pursuit guys always have really great guest speakers.
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  It really is to me. I think you'd agree with this.
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  Super confusing why there's not more Aussies there. I don't understand why there's not more
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  What? There was 2. It was us. We found out about it very
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  accidentally. And when you think about that,
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  like, yeah, we stumbled upon it.
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  Okay. We were over there for other reasons and discovered
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  it. And so not many people would necessarily know about it. I know, not lots
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  of people. But if you're really interested in bourbon, I think you need to put
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  it on your list of things you should try to book a trip around.
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  If you're a bourbon fan, it needs to go on the bucket list.
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  It's, it's like the Super Bowl of— it
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  is the Super Bowl of bourbon. Like, you think of the little,
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  you know, we've been to a few of the really cool whiskey festivals and different
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  things like that, and they're so different and so small and
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  so— what's the
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  word? Like, it's very, you know, it's a couple of hours. It's just not the
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  same stuff. Nothing like it. And the thing that's amazing about this is that you
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  have unbelievable access to the people who are
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  actually making this stuff. If you want to hang out with Dan McKean, Andrew Wilson,
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  you can do it. If you want to meet the guys who are on the
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  Pursuit podcast, you can do it. If you want to— this year, if you wanted
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  to get a photo with Jim Gaffigan, there was absolutely a way to do it.
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  And we did that. And this kind of stuff is like a normal thing that
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  happens at Kentucky Bourbon Festival. That's what it's for. That's what it's about. But the
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  people, like everyone talks to everyone and You'll be tasting with someone
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  and you'll start talking, and, and it's just a really— like, the community
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  vibe is so cool too. Yeah. So here
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  is something to add to your bucket list if you haven't already. Get Kentucky Bourbon
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  Festival on your bucket list because what we're doing— and here's to many more visits.
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  Cheers. Thanks for
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