Whiskey@Work

It's Cinco de Mayo, so Rob and Mark are skipping the bourbon and drinking tequila their boss brought back from Mexico while admittedly day drunk. He wanted them to find out if he got taken. He probably did.The Campo Segrado añejo smells amazing and tastes like a mint julep, which sends them down a rabbit hole on the four additives that can legally go into a tequila bottle without showing up on the label. Then there's the couple in Guadalajara who built a website to expose it all and got their house raided for it.After that, El Padrino mezcal. It's smoky, a little weird, and honestly worth your time, especially if bourbon is your thing and you've never given it a real shot.

You're standing in a liquor store, staring at a wall of bottles. You have no idea what to grab. That feeling? That's exactly why pourmore.com exists.This week we sat down with Greg Cohen, the marketing guy at Pourmore, a subscription spirits club that ships hand-selected bottles straight to your door. We're talking tequila-finished bourbon, American single malt, and a cask strength rye that Greg swears doesn't drink at 121 proof. He's not wrong.We dig into how Pourmore actually works, how they navigate the nightmare of shipping laws across 45 states, and what it's like to build a community around whiskey discovery rather than bottle hunting. Greg also walks us through the three bottles he sent us, and yeah... we're believers.Oh, and after we wrapped up recording, we got some news worth mentioning. Pourmore.com is now available in South Dakota! So no more shipping to your brother in North Dakota and driving it back. Go sign up.

George Dickel isn't a name you hear as often as his neighbor Jack, but maybe it should be. The guy was a German immigrant, a cobbler turned whiskey salesman, who landed in Nashville in the 1840s and decided limestone water was his whole personality. He never distilled a drop himself, but he staked everything on the quality of what came out of Cascade Hollow. His wife Augusta kept the whole thing running after he died, which is a chapter of the story that almost nobody tells.Rob and Mark taste through the George Dickel 9 Year, dig into the cold mellowing process that separates Dickel from Jack, and somehow end up debating naps, ice houses, and who's going to buy Brown-Forman.

Rob and Houston crack open a bottle that's been sitting on the shelf way too long. Highland Park 12 Viking Honour. From Orkney, a tiny island ten miles off the northern tip of Scotland where the wind blows so hard you can tell what religion a guy is by his travel pants.The whole thing was started by a guy named Magnus, a church officer who hid barrels under the pulpit and faked a smallpox outbreak to keep customs away. A man of God doing the Lord's work.Here's the thing about this whisky though. The peat is unlike anything else out there, and it comes down to one simple fact about the island itself. Something most people never think about. Tune in to find out why it matters.

Rob and Mark crack open a bottle that's been sitting in the dark for a couple years in Houston's basement. This week they're pouring Driftless Glen Single Barrel Bourbon from Baraboo, Wisconsin. A double gold winner from the San Francisco Spirits Competition that most of the whiskey world still hasn't found yet.There's a geography lesson (Rob holds his own), a story about glaciers that somehow makes a bourbon taste better, and the slow realization that Wisconsin has been quietly making something special.Ninety-six proof, five years old, warm all the way through.

Rob and Mark sit down with Ray and Patrick from Johnson Brothers and Jason Dvorak from Mr. Liquor in Rapid City for something genuinely special. They're barrel picking a Two XO Gem of Kentucky, and if you know what that means, you already know why this episode matters. If you don't, they'll catch you up.Six barrels. One pick. And a unanimous decision that honestly surprised nobody by the end.Along the way they dig into the wild origin story of Two XO, what it actually means to be a blender at that level, why the Gem of Kentucky is now barrel-program-only, and what separates a good bourbon from one that makes you stop talking mid-sentence. Plus tasting notes ranging from "breakfast pastry" to "hot tamale" to "what's in grandpa's pocket."It's whiskey education wrapped in a really good hang.

This one starts with a near heart attack… a very expensive bottle of Wild Turkey Master’s Keep almost takes a dive off the table, and somehow that sets the tone perfectly.From there, it turns into a laid-back deep dive into Wild Turkey’s surprisingly scrappy origin story, why the everyday stuff gets misunderstood, and what makes Master’s Keep feel like something a little different. There’s some real talk about proof, sweetness, and that lingering finish that hangs around longer than expected.Then things shift into a full-on recap of the Mountain West Whiskey Festival, what worked, what surprised everyone, and why the whole thing felt less like a tasting and more like an experience you didn’t want to leave. Good whiskey, great food, a few behind-the-scenes moments, and the kind of conversation that only happens when nobody’s trying too hard.

In this special bonus episode of Whiskey@Work, Mark Houston takes you inside the Mountain West Whiskey Festival at the historic Hotel Alex Johnson in Rapid City. Instead of the usual studio conversation, this episode walks through the festival itself, featuring conversations with whiskey enthusiasts, industry insiders, and newcomers discovering the spirit for the first time.Upstairs in the Presidential Suite, Jed Lirette leads a private tasting for raffle winners featuring Jack Daniel’s 10, 12, and 14 Year expressions along with Tanyard Hill and the Toasted Heritage Barrel.From rare pours to the camaraderie of the whiskey community, this episode captures what makes a night like this unforgettable. Pour yourself something good and join us for a behind-the-scenes look at one of the region’s most unique whiskey events.