Latest / Aussie Bourbon Lovers / Larrikin's Cigar Lounge Bourbon Explained in Dry July Replay

Transcript

Larrikin's Cigar Lounge Bourbon Explained in Dry July Replay · Aussie Bourbon Lovers

• 0:02
  Incredible flavors, even better stories. One Pour,
• 0:06
  10 Minutes. Aussie bourbon lovers sharing bourbon with Australia.
• 0:13
  Pop. Well, tonight on the podcast we're drinking water,
• 0:18
  but if you aren't doing Dry July with us,
• 0:22
  we're going to take you back to an episode at Larrikin. That's right. Sitting down
• 0:25
  in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, with Greg Keeley, the founder and master
• 0:29
  distiller at Larrikin. And we're gonna talk to him,
• 0:32
  or we're playing the episode about cigar blend, which he reveals
• 0:36
  is mostly just all about marketing and how he's not a massive fan of Amburana
• 0:40
  but created a blend that does have some Amburana in it,
• 0:45
  and kind of what that all means and, and why cigars are important
• 0:49
  to, to the bourbon culture. Yeah. And while you listen to that, we're gonna drink
• 0:53
  some water. So, uh, enjoy. Here's to Greg and some Larrakin, and hopefully
• 0:58
  you don't end up on his Wanker Wednesdays, Dave, drinking water at a bourbon podcast.
• 1:01
  Oh, careful. Cheers. Well, we've made
• 1:05
  the big trip back to Kentucky. We're here today
• 1:08
  again with Greg from Larrakin. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:11
  we're always glad to have you darken our doors. We like
• 1:15
  to find another Aussie. We like darkening your doors. Yeah, find another Aussie in Kentucky.
• 1:18
  Yeah. Welcome to Larrikin Bourbon Company in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.
• 1:21
  Thanks for having us. Of course. What are we having? This is a new one.
• 1:24
  So this we just released at the
• 1:29
  Bourbon Festival this past week. This is Larrikin
• 1:32
  Cigar Lounge. It's a cigar blend, as the name
• 1:36
  would suggest. It's a 9-year-old bourbon. It's a
• 1:40
  higher rye, so it's 36% rye, 4% barley.
• 1:45
  The unique thing with, you know, people putting out cigar blends
• 1:48
  all over the place now. Unique thing with our cigar blend, with this guy,
• 1:52
  with our Cigar Lounge, is that it's made from 5
• 1:55
  finished barrels. Most of them are sort of like an Ambarana
• 1:59
  and maybe something else. And I really don't like Ambarana
• 2:03
  very much. Yeah, definitely. Like, I really don't like Ambarana.
• 2:08
  I'm glad that's going away. It was a big thing, right? Crazy.
• 2:11
  It was crazy. Yeah. And people would like—
• 2:16
  it overpowered— looking up, looking like people would come in here, do you
• 2:20
  have an Amaranth? We're like, no, get out. Yeah. So,
• 2:23
  uh, that's a bourbon. Yeah, I got some bourbon. Yeah.
• 2:27
  So this guy is 5 barrels and it's, uh,
• 2:30
  French 115-gallon French cognac barrels,
• 2:34
  uh, Spanish Madeira barrels, uh, our maple
• 2:38
  syrup barrels. So we We send our, we dump our whiskey or bourbon,
• 2:41
  send it up to Wisconsin. They make a barrel-aged maple
• 2:46
  syrup and then send the barrels back to us when they empty them out.
• 2:48
  That's cool. Maple. Then our 2,
• 2:52
  well, then it has Brazilian jaca fruit, which is like
• 2:56
  a jackfruit kind of thing, but really, really, really hardwood.
• 3:00
  And it's very tropical. And then, so I made it with those 4 to start
• 3:04
  with. And it was still missing something. Just wasn't quite right.
• 3:09
  Uh-oh. So what was missing was a touch of
• 3:13
  Ambarana. And I hate Ambarana. He's gone round. He's gone
• 3:17
  round. You had to, you had to go. It's like a whisper. Yeah. So,
• 3:21
  you know, Ambarana, as you guys know, is stupid strong.
• 3:25
  So we had this Ambarana barrel that someone gave us and we put bourbon into
• 3:28
  it and I was like, I'm never going to use this. 'Cause it was awful.
• 3:35
  So what we did, we just literally were
• 3:38
  trying little tiny bits just to see how it would blend with the rest of
• 3:41
  it. And once we got it, there's very little of it
• 3:46
  in, but when it hit, it hit. And we were just like, this now works.
• 3:50
  And it's quite, you'll notice when you try it,
• 3:54
  you'll get the ambarana on the nose, but it's not on the palate. Yep.
• 3:59
  Which is what we want. So this is Cigar Lounge,
• 4:03
  109 proof. This was just released, what,
• 4:07
  4 days ago? Awesome.
• 4:10
  And can I ask a stupid question, Greg, which is,
• 4:13
  what technically is a cigar blend? What is
• 4:17
  that? Marketing bullshit. So does
• 4:21
  it taste nice with a cigar? That's the plan. That's the plan. Yeah, it's meant
• 4:24
  to taste— it's meant to pair with a cigar. Yeah, but as someone
• 4:29
  who doesn't smoke cigars or cigarettes, is this going to taste like
• 4:33
  smoky and cigarety? No. So,
• 4:36
  and this is the thing, there's no defined definition
• 4:41
  of a cigar blend. Cigar lounge for us,
• 4:45
  you know, we have our own walk-in cigar— walk-in humidor and a cigar lounge
• 4:49
  here. So it was really a bourbon. I wanted to
• 4:52
  create an oldest aged, like a 9-year-old bourbon that
• 4:56
  have a bit of spice in it. That's why it's got the higher rye,
• 4:58
  the 36% rye, and then blend
• 5:01
  some really cool barrels together with
• 5:05
  it. So you're sitting there and you think to yourself, this would
• 5:09
  be good with a cigar. Yeah. Do you have to have it with a cigar?
• 5:11
  Absolutely not. But this to me is a real after
• 5:16
  dinner, or you're just sitting out on the porch. Yeah.
• 5:20
  And you're done for the day and you're just having one or two. Yeah.
• 5:22
  Yeah. It's a sign-off drink for the evening. It's a bit of cinnamon sponge on
• 5:27
  the nose. And that's that ambarana on the, on the front end. Yeah.
• 5:30
  Yeah. You get a lot of different— it's not— you're right
• 5:34
  though, because you're— I'm thinking of what this one bottle I got at home of
• 5:38
  ambarana is like, just a bit too much. Pictures from just down the road,
• 5:40
  not far. There was one I
• 5:44
  had at Urban Festival and I was just like, I was with the guy
• 5:48
  that made it, so I couldn't go, could you? But it was too much.
• 5:52
  Yeah. So yeah, sometimes they're too much. I couldn't even smell it really. Yeah.
• 5:56
  All right. But that's got like lots of
• 5:59
  nice flavors on the nose.
• 6:05
  What's the verdict? Right. Oh.
• 6:10
  Yeah, there's a lot going on. It's rich. Yeah,
• 6:14
  it's kind of like a— it's kind of like a complex dessert. I feel like
• 6:18
  I'm having a dessert, like the layers, tiramisu. Yeah,
• 6:21
  exactly. Yeah, like, just for the first time that I've had a number
• 6:26
  of these when we're making it, the first time I just got a bit of
• 6:28
  burnt sort of sugar. Yeah, which I hadn't gotten out of it before.
• 6:33
  Yeah, like a— like, like almost like a like a cookie or like a biscuit
• 6:37
  base of a cheesecake or something like that. Yeah, that's my favorite thing. Yeah,
• 6:41
  I can do away with the rest of the cheesecake. Yeah, that buttery crunchy,
• 6:45
  almost like a chocolate biscuit base though. I'm getting the dark chocolatey. I do too.
• 6:49
  Like, they're almost like the cocoa nibs. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep,
• 6:53
  it's like definitely got that. That would go really nicely with a dark piece of
• 6:57
  chocolate. And it's funny as well, like, if you— because some people, a bit like
• 7:00
  you and I, they've got the aversion thing of the Ambarana. It's not really
• 7:05
  present here. No, but it's funny, before we put it
• 7:09
  in, it was a bit— it wasn't quite right. No. Yep. It was a bit
• 7:12
  like— it wasn't wishy-washy, it was still really good.
• 7:16
  It would have been a good bourbon. Yep. But it
• 7:20
  wasn't a cigar blend bourbon. Yeah. You know, nothing that you would immediately think,
• 7:22
  because a lot of people associate Ambarana with a cigar
• 7:26
  blend. Yeah. So, you know, we couldn't just make up our own thing.
• 7:29
  Well, we could have, we've done it before, but in this occasion we wanted to
• 7:33
  make sure it, you know, kept the, you know, a little bit of the DNA
• 7:36
  of what people expect a cigar blend to be. Yeah,
• 7:40
  yeah. So, you know, this is 109, or was 110 by
• 7:43
  the time it went in the bottle, it was 109.1.
• 7:47
  9 years old,
• 7:51
  36.4 mash bill, and this
• 7:54
  was the hit of the a huge hit at the festival. Yeah, amazing.
• 7:58
  We sold out of it twice. Wow. And so this is your latest release.
• 8:02
  What's on the cards for the next experiments? And so next,
• 8:05
  the next thing we're bringing out is an American light whiskey.
• 8:08
  And if folks at home aren't familiar with that, that's bourbon or whiskey
• 8:13
  that— it's whiskey, it's not bourbon.
• 8:16
  It's, but it's the same White Dog, but it goes into a
• 8:20
  second-use barrel. So it's a barrel that's already had our bourbon in it,
• 8:24
  and we made that as a blending because you
• 8:29
  can make it at a much higher proof because it's not bourbon, right? So we
• 8:32
  made this at like 100 and, well, it's coming out at about 145 proof.
• 8:37
  And as I say, it was just going to be a blender, but we cracked
• 8:40
  the first one and it was so stinking good. I was like, hang on a
• 8:43
  sec. Cracked another 2 or 3, and I don't like light whiskey, American whiskey.
• 8:48
  They were amazing. And it's a 7 and 8-year-old,
• 8:51
  depending on when we put them up, and we're going to release them as single
• 8:55
  barrels. They've been so good. So can I just, because I'm not
• 8:58
  super familiar with it, so it's the first next fill, it's a second
• 9:02
  fill of a bourbon barrel. So it's one of your bourbon barrels and you've just
• 9:05
  put this higher through barrel fill. Yeah, it's basically
• 9:09
  the same liquid we put in here, but we were
• 9:12
  able to, we don't have to proof it down, so it pretty much goes in
• 9:16
  As it comes off. Yeah. So, and it's white dog, it's just clear. It's like
• 9:20
  vodka or whatever. When it goes— not vodka, but you know what
• 9:24
  I mean? It just, it looks like vodka. And then you just put in the
• 9:27
  barrels. And I think because, you know, maybe it's because of the French
• 9:31
  oak, maybe it's because the whiskey in them originally was good, but there's a lot
• 9:34
  of good whiskey out there that hasn't produced, to my mind, good light
• 9:39
  whiskey. Good light whiskey. And this just did. And I was shocked.
• 9:43
  Yeah, like we were all shown, we're like, okay. And the great thing is,
• 9:47
  you know, there's a lot of people that hunt higher proof whiskey. Yeah, I'm not
• 9:50
  one of them, but people love it. Yeah, so this will
• 9:54
  really— they'll really like it. Yeah, I've been meaning to
• 9:58
  ask, since we first discovered that you as an Aussie distilling
• 10:02
  in Kentucky and we fell in love with the people around
• 10:05
  the bourbon culture and Kentucky and all that stuff, What do you think about—
• 10:10
  I've got this strange hypothesis, Greg, that there's a lot
• 10:14
  of— look, strap in, mate. Hang on.
• 10:17
  All right. That there's like, there's a
• 10:21
  great consistency between bourbon culture and Australian culture and the mateship and
• 10:25
  the camaraderie and stuff. Yeah, but I feel like there's a lot of Aussies who
• 10:29
  kind of miss this thing. There's not a lot of Australians around the bourbon history.
• 10:32
  No, there's a guy I can't life of me remember his name. He's a
• 10:36
  distiller or taster or something up at Castle Key.
• 10:40
  He's the only other one I know of. I'm sure there's probably another couple
• 10:44
  floating around. I mean, there's not even any Brits or anything, very few that
• 10:48
  I know of. But yeah, it is, you're right,
• 10:51
  it has that, you know, the greatest thing about the bourbon industry
• 10:55
  here in Kentucky at least is that, you know, when we were setting
• 10:58
  up, you know, had no idea what we're doing. I mean, you You
• 11:02
  know, it goes without saying. But when the still would stop working
• 11:05
  or anything, I'd call one of the guys I know at Wild Turkey or Four
• 11:09
  Roses or Woodford, and they're all huge companies, but one
• 11:13
  of them would come by after work. Yeah. And generally it was like something they'd
• 11:17
  just go, yeah, and you're like, oh. The worst one was, this is no
• 11:20
  bullshit, we had this little 50-gallon still
• 11:24
  which we make our gin and stuff on, and I couldn't get it to bloody
• 11:27
  work. So I call up to John at
• 11:31
  Wild Turkey and I was like, hey mate, do you have anyone that would know
• 11:33
  how to work this still? He's like, yeah, yeah, we've got a few of those
• 11:36
  here. One of the boys will come up. So one of the guys comes up
• 11:40
  after— oh, and he said, have you flicked the whatever switch on the, you know,
• 11:44
  back of the— I didn't even know what he was talking about. I was like,
• 11:46
  well, of course I have. Yeah, you can see where this is going.
• 11:50
  So the guy comes up who I didn't know and he
• 11:53
  literally— I say hey and he's like, hey. He walks past because the doors are
• 11:56
  up there and it's just open. Walks past, literally leans down,
• 12:02
  flicks the switch. Should be good. And then he literally, he did
• 12:06
  it. He was awesome. And he just said, should be good. And just walked off.
• 12:10
  That's so good. That's so good. And he's a great guy. He comes in here
• 12:13
  all the time now. Yeah. But yeah, but that's what the industry is like.
• 12:17
  Everyone helps each other because I don't compete with Wild Turkey.
• 12:21
  You know, there seems to be this, like, it's like a camaraderie thing rather
• 12:25
  than it really is competition. Everyone, like, lifts each other up. And right, I mean,
• 12:29
  Jimmy Russell is the godfather of the bourbon industry, right?
• 12:33
  He lives a mile from here. Yeah.
• 12:37
  And he's up at, you know, he's pretty old, he's probably in his early 90s
• 12:41
  now, but he and his wife, you know, sit up there 2 or 3 days
• 12:44
  a week and they sign bottles and take people. Like, he's the godfather of the
• 12:48
  industry. He sends people down here every single day. It's amazing.
• 12:51
  Whenever he's up there, people come in, oh, Jimmy Russell sent us. We're like,
• 12:55
  of course, Jimmy, you know, just my man Jimmy.
• 12:58
  Okay, quick funny Jimmy Russell story. So there's a
• 13:02
  little restaurant up here on Main Street, you know, a mile from here, and Mr.
• 13:06
  Russell goes there all the time, and he still drives like a 1995
• 13:11
  RAV4. I love this. Actually, I don't know if he drives it now, but he
• 13:14
  used to. Yeah, anyhow, So I would
• 13:18
  go, you know, I would see him and say, hey, Mr. Russell. He'd be,
• 13:21
  hi, Greg. You know, but if ever I walked in with someone he didn't know,
• 13:25
  I'd be, hi, Mr. Russell. And he'd go like this, he'd lean over and go,
• 13:29
  do I know you? Who are you? Who are you? Just to embarrass
• 13:33
  me in front of these guys. And I'd walk past and the person would walk
• 13:36
  past and be like, he's just a great guy.
• 13:41
  Now you get what he's like. Yeah. So, you know. Yeah. So good. It's such
• 13:44
  a great community. But yeah, I mean, Jimmy Russell sends people to Larrikin.
• 13:48
  Yeah. That— I mean, give me a break. That's incredible.
• 13:51
  That must be a bit of a weird kind of pinch-me kind of moment.
• 13:54
  It's crazy. The first time anyone did that, there was a woman from— I think
• 13:57
  she must have been from Texas because she had the big hair. And she's walked
• 14:01
  in and we were slammed. And she's gone, oh,
• 14:04
  Jimmy sent us. I'm like, who are you? And who's Jimmy?
• 14:09
  Anyhow, I looked at her for a while. I was like, that's good. Yeah,
• 14:12
  yeah. And she could tell I had no idea what she's talking about. And she's
• 14:15
  like, Jimmy Russell? I was like, oh, that's nice.
• 14:19
  Welcome. She was offended.
• 14:23
  I didn't think she was on first name terms with Jimmy Russell. Jimmy Russell.
• 14:28
  New best friends. New besties. But that's the industry, you know, it's just
• 14:32
  great. Yeah. And so many great stories. Oh geez,
• 14:36
  yeah, give me a couple of drinks. Yeah, yeah, we'll have to come back.
• 14:39
  Yeah, we should do a late night, uh, yeah, yeah, up late.
• 14:43
  That sounds good, mate. Um, thanks so much.
• 14:47
  If Aussies want to come and check it out, yeah, come to Lawrenceburg because we
• 14:50
  can't get Lark in Australia just yet. We'll work to remedy that. If anyone is
• 14:54
  a distributor watching, let us know. Yes, we want to get this stuff in.
• 14:57
  I've already worked out the tagline. Go on then. Australian Aussie-owned Kentucky
• 15:02
  Distilled. Perfect. All right, look at that. The marketing's already made for it.
• 15:06
  It's already done. Jim Beam what? Yeah, tap in.
• 15:09
  Yeah, so if there's any distributors out there, give us a call.
• 15:13
  Yes, we'll, we'll make the connection happen. So, so good. Thanks for having us.
• 15:17
  Oh yeah, and if you can't find us because we're little, literally go to Wild
• 15:20
  Turkey and we're right there. They'll send you down the road. Jimmy, Jimmy, just ask
• 15:23
  Jimmy where we are. Yeah, cheers, Greg. Cheers, guys.
• 15:27
  Up your bum. Up your bum.
• 15:31
  Thanks for listening. Make sure you're connected with us on TikTok, Instagram,
• 15:35
  and YouTube, and stay connected with us by clicking subscribe on your favorite podcast