Whiskey@Work

We’re a day late on this one (election hangover, more or less), but we crack open a bottle called Madam, from a women-owned DC distillery that crowdfunded its way into existence and put the first female vice president on the label. From there we wander into some genuinely strange whiskey history: George Washington running the country’s biggest distillery while losing (then winning) elections, a punch bowl that saved a presidential inauguration from turning into a riot, and a tax scandal that reached the Oval Office. Pour a glass. It’s a tall tale.

It’s Halloween week, and we’re starting with a real case file. A man runs into a New York hospital on Christmas Eve 1926 convinced Santa Claus is chasing him with a baseball bat. He dies that night. The culprit wasn’t supernatural. It was the government’s own Prohibition-era poisoning program, working through sixty other people across the city that same night. We get into how it happened, who knew, and why nobody ever answered for it. Then we pour something that actually belongs in October: As Above So Below’s Elvira bourbon out of Santa Fe, a high rye with cookie-spice on the nose and a surprising sweetness underneath. We also dig into the woman behind the name, a Kansas girl who built an entire empire out of one character and never let go of it.

Rob and Mark get a cryptic text from Dan Brunner at Timmons Market, a picture of a fireman decanter and a bottle of Old Hoffman bourbon, with the challenge: what do these two things have in common? Turns out it’s a wild ride through Kentucky distilling history, from the Rippy family and Ezra Brooks to Julian Van Winkle renaming a shuttered distillery Old Commonwealth. Dan brings his liquor store expertise and a genuinely mysterious decanter he scored at a garage sale three blocks from his shop, and the guys crack it open on air to find out what’s hiding inside a bottle that might be pushing fifty years old. There’s bourbon market talk, some Weller availability gossip from Colorado, and plenty of Rob being Rob.

This was one of our favorite conversations with master distiller Allisa Henley of AJ Bond. Enjoy!

Rob and Mark crack open Heaven Hill's brand new Double Mash, a nine year bottled in bond that technically shouldn't exist, and spend the next hour proving why that's the best kind of whiskey story. They dig into the 1897 law that created bottled in bond in the first place, the century old loophole that let Heaven Hill's master distiller blend two fully qualifying bourbons into one bottle, and the real story behind the name, which has nothing to do with a hill. Along the way there's a warehouse fire that torched two percent of the world's bourbon supply, a Beam family tree tangled enough to need its own documentary, a Steelers shrine getting bumped for whiskey shelf space, and Rob nursing the day's only meal of a Diet Coke and a Snickers

A busted toilet, a twelve foot ladder, and a Sunday morning that didn't go as planned. We get into that story first, then pour a bottle of Warfield, an Idaho single malt with an organic mashbill that Rob brought back from Boise. Copper stills, dessert like sweetness, and a price tag that makes it an easy buy. This one's got a little bit of everything.

Rob and Mark are back with a fresh batch of Whiskey@Work, and this one starts with Mark getting mistaken for a Texan by a parking attendant in Winnipeg. From there, the guys dig into what's really happening with Canadian liquor shelves after a year and a half of tariff drama... Manitoba pulling every American bottle, Kentucky sitting on a record bourbon glut, and a sandwich board in Canada that still can't help but brag about Jack Daniels. They land on a bottle of Tomatin, a Highland single malt with its own tangled backstory involving a Japanese owner, Kentucky oak barrels, and a name that gets mispronounced everywhere. Grab a glass and settle in, this one wanders in the best way.

Houston and Rob crack open the Benromach 15, a Speyside Scotch from a distillery that spent more of its life shut down than running. They walk through the wild backstory (a Scotch smuggler who named his boats things Coast Guard radios couldn't pronounce, a family that waited decades for a distillery and then sat on the answer without knowing it) and land on a flavor mystery that Scotch Whisky magazine still can't fully explain. Pour something smoky and settle in.

Rob and Mark are back from a long weekend (margaritas may or may not have been involved), and this time they've got company. John Willard, of Willard Water fame, finally shows up after years of empty promises. He brought whiskey from Tel Aviv, four bottles from Milk & Honey Distillery, a kosher, award winning Israeli whiskey that beat out Scotland and Japan on the world stage. The guys taste through the lineup while John tells the wild story of his grandfather, a chemist, a Manhattan Project consultant, and the inventor of Willard Water itself. There's ancient walls in Jerusalem, a sixty year old family business that's now selling on multiple continents, and a serious debate about whether Willard Water might make whiskey hit different. Pour something good and settle in.