Whiskey@Work

We're drinking a whiskey out of Spokane with a name we can't quite say on the air. Brown Family Spirits calls it Do Epic [redacted], and yes, the naughty word is right there on the bottle. Turns out the name comes from a grandfather whose life story might be true, might be embellished, and either way earns the label.Before we get into the pour, there's an AC/DC show at Mile High that has us convinced Angus Brown can still knock the crap out of rock music at seventy-one. Then we go down a rabbit hole of people who've done genuinely unhinged things and lived to tell about it. Falling out of the sky. Getting stuck in a canyon with a pocketknife and a bad idea. Walking on air over Lower Manhattan with no net and no permission.

A hockey player from New Hampshire grows corn on Kauai and decides to make bourbon. Simple enough, right? Then the birds show up. Then the neighbors. Then the liquor commission. This week we're drinking Kapahi, a Hawaiian whisky (no e, we checked) tied to a fully built distillery on the island that has never made a single drop. We dig into the whole strange story, the spice that snuck up on both of us, and why this bottle logs more travel miles than it has any right to. Pour a glass and come figure this one out with us.

A friend of ours went to Hawaii and, since he doesn't drink, we gave him a mission: hit a liquor store and grab whatever's local. He came back with Old Pali Road, which gets called the original Hawaiian whiskey. That claim sent Mark digging, and he surfaced with a story about an escaped Australian convict and a still built from two whale blubber pots. Two Marine vets are behind this bottle, the mash bill leans hard on corn, and the water is filtered through volcanic rock for generations, or so the label says. Rob and Mark pour batch twenty-eight and figure out what's really Hawaiian about it.

A bakery, a bucket of paint, and a horse cart. Those three things somehow explain the Irish whiskey in our glasses this week. We got into Green Spot Château Montelena, and the story behind it wanders a lot further than the pour. There's a family shop that's kept one whiskey alive for seven generations, a handshake deal that saved it from disappearing for good, and a crew of Irish exiles who wound up embarrassing France at its own game. We're not going to tell you how a Napa winery loops all the way back to a shop in Dublin. That's the part you'll want to hear for yourself. Grab something good and listen up!

We've mentioned Eagle Rare on the show plenty, but we'd never sat down and asked the obvious question. Why does this bourbon even exist? Turns out it wasn't some heartfelt heritage project. It was built on purpose, with a target in mind, and the strategy behind it is honestly kind of genius.Then there's what it grew into. A ten year bourbon people actually hunt for, sitting around forty-five bucks, that neither of us can find a single bad word for.Pour a glass and hang out with Rob and Mark. The reason it was made is the best part.

Allisa Henley and John Lunn talked every single day for twenty years. Two stills, two personalities, one whiskey that fit together the way the two of them did. Then John was gone before he ever got to taste the finished blend.This week we're sitting down with Allisa, master distiller behind Sazerac's first Tennessee whiskey. She didn't take the usual road in, no chemistry degree, a business background, and years of learning the craft with her hands instead of a textbook. We get into what it means to carry something across the line that was supposed to be a two-person job, how that bond ended up baked into the bottle itself, and why she's convinced she can change what people expect when they hear "Tennessee whiskey."There's a name story , a quiet little tribute hiding on the label, and a phrase Allisa really ought to trademark before somebody else does.Pour something and settle in.