Top Bourbon Mistakes You're Making - Expert's Advice I Fred Minnick DSH #482

My first sip of whiskey was wild turkey in the back of a pickup truck when I was like 14 years old.

Just took a pool of wild turkey 101.

It was like fire going in my

esophagus.

Fireball.

By the way, no one under the age of 21 ever touched alcohol.

But I'd say as a drinker, I was not a taster.

Even though I

was enjoying it more, I still wasn't tasting.

Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe.

It helps a lot with the algorithm.

It helps us get bigger and better guests, and it helps us grow the team.

Truly means a lot.

Thank you guys for supporting, and here's the episode.

All right, Fred Manek here coming off the hangover from your party, right?

Well, yeah, so I had my event, Big Game Bourbon, last night, which is at Mandalay Bay.

It was a fundraiser for

the veteran charity, Forgotten Not Gone.

And,

you know, the whole night, my entire job is sipping bourbon for a living.

That's what I do.

People want to drink bourbon with me.

That's what I do for my living.

And I'm on stage.

I'm going through blind bourbon.

I'm drinking with people in the crowd.

I have people on the stage and I'm drinking bourbon with them.

Before I know it, it's like three o'clock in the morning.

And I'm like, I think it's time to go to bed.

Wow, it ran that late.

Yeah, well, the party didn't, but my party kept going.

You know, actually, what's crazy is like

an old friend from high school actually got into

the bourbon business, and we were catching up about our own, our hometown, and I grew up in Jones, Oklahoma, and

there was a battery plant there that they buried the batteries in

the dirt for a long time.

And we were talking about like, I wonder if we're radioactive, you know, from all the batteries that they were burying.

That's a possibility, right?

Yeah.

And like, does that make us like superheroes?

Yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm actually looking into these EMF radiation things right now, and it's interesting.

Yeah, because

there's so many, there's so few regulations, like, say, in the 50s and 60s, and then when a regulation started coming on, a lot of those companies in small-town America did not follow it.

And so they would be putting

something as basic as pouring out your oil from an oil change into the river.

I mean, that just is incredibly common.

Yeah.

And I could believe it.

When I got, so I went to Ruckers, New Jersey,

and my building was built in the 50s.

So when I get to my door, I walk in, there's a letter on the desk.

I'm like, oh, it's a welcome letter.

The letter said, you might have asbestos in this room.

Oh.

And I was like, wow, that's interesting.

Is that there?

Is that by

putting that letter out there, does that take them away from liability?

Exactly.

So it prevents the lawsuits because I'm on the top floor.

So who knows?

I might have been breathing that in all year.

Wow.

Yeah.

I got to to tell you, man, asbestos, I was around asbestos in the Middle East, and you don't think about it until

you're kind of away from it.

You're like, I don't know if it's psychosomatic, but I do remember having some little bit of wheezing here and there, you know.

But what gets me, it's, is, uh, it's concrete.

Concrete.

When concrete is getting poured near me, like, I, I, I don't, I, I cannot stop the wheezing, the kind of allergy kind of feelings.

It's, It's crazy.

And there's some materials and concrete that really mess you up.

Damn, I used to look for tar when I was a kid.

So I'd probably mess my body up just like that.

Like you look for tar, like, to huff it?

No, not to huff it, just to touch it and like play with it, put my nails in it.

I was a weird kid, man.

Yeah, no, I see that, though.

I can see like playing, like, like a silly putty kind of feel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I do that.

Like, I know what you mean by that.

I like, it's the, it's kind of caressing something.

It's a, it's a texture thing.

Yeah.

Like you're kind of pushing your senses to the limit a little bit.

Yeah,

I was all over the place outdoors.

I would have leaf battles.

I would pick leaves from different trees and have them battle.

That's a good, that's a good game, actually.

I like it.

I dig that.

Yeah.

It's like, who needs Pokemon?

You got oak versus ash over here.

Yeah.

It was like,

what were you like going up, though?

Growing up,

we

were, I was kind of crazy.

Yeah.

My neighbor neighbor and I, we used to have actual BB gun wars with kids across the creek.

Those hurt, man.

Yeah.

And we would literally shoot at each other with BB guns.

And we'd go around and ride our bikes all around

Jones, Oklahoma, Choctaw, Luther.

We would go all around Oklahoma County.

And one time,

there was a lot of hunters and poachers out there.

And people, like I was saying, they don't, a lot of people just don't follow rules.

Well, this one guy had, I don't know, I don't remember if they were, you know, beavers or if they were like

some kind of groundhog or something, but this guy had,

you know, basically

killed about six, you know, chubby

animal things and he had them lined up on a

he had them lined up on a bridge.

And me and my buddy saw that and were like, let's push him off.

And so we pushed them all off of the bridge while this guy was going to

get his truck to load him up.

That's his dinner.

And he,

let's just say that he was hunting for us after that.

We were like trying to hide from this guy.

And it's a fat piece of shit, hillbilly guy.

Yeah.

He's real little troublemaker back in the day.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I did,

I think it was the fourth grade.

I went up to my teacher and I had everybody looking at me.

And I was like, I just ripped the biggest, nastiest fart right in her face.

No way.

In the sixth grade, I had

my art teacher.

I put

Skittles.

I would put Skittles in her hair and she would take them off and eat them, which looking back, that's kind of...

Kind of weird.

Yeah, that's weirder on her side than yours.

Yeah, but then I started putting him, like, like eating them and putting him on top of her.

And she would, and she, uh, I got in trouble for that, uh, big time.

I got SWATs for that.

SWAT team came for that?

Oh, I got, I was, at one point, I had the record for the most of the time, most paddlings at our school.

And the one thing that got me the most was none of that.

It was having an EZ E tape.

What's that?

So Easy E.

Easy E was like my favorite rapper.

Yeah.

And I had, I had an Easy E tape.

And my principal, his name was Mr.

Stevens.

He was a Vietnam veteran.

This

was six foot four, had a barrel chest, four arms, the freaking size of a...

They were huge.

He was a big dude.

And

he was fierce.

He was so mean.

And he called up my mom while he brought me in.

And he's like, Mrs.

Minnick,

your son has an easy E-tape.

And she's like, what?

No.

No.

End of the world.

Because, you know, there's a lot of cussing in that.

And that was the time.

People don't.

It's hard to appreciate it today, but hip-hop and rap in the late 80s and early 90s, I mean, that was being painted as the devil by, you know, by my community in a lot of ways.

And so that was considered, I mean, that'd have been as bad as having a hustler on you at that time.

Brilliant.

Yeah, it was bad.

Wow.

so she was like she's like whip his spank his

and uh your mom told the principal my school my mom told the told the principal he had free rein to bust my and i think i got and he pulled he had like two paddles he had one that was a standard paddle you know then he had one that he drilled holes in damn and that way he would have you know

less wind resistance when he was swinging back.

Oh my gosh.

He busted my, I think, six times for an easy E-tape.

But the worst part was when he was done whipping me, he took the end of the paddle and he crushed a tape right in front of me.

Oh, so you had to buy it every time.

Well, no, I couldn't buy it again.

I think I ended up trading at that time, I think I traded like

a Kevin Mitchell baseball card for

a run DMC or something like that, but I never got another easy E-tape.

Damn.

Yeah, that was the end of my easy E tape.

So they were allowed to beat you back in the day, huh?

Oh, yeah.

They beat us.

Which state was this in?

Oklahoma.

Okay, that makes sense.

Yeah, I mean, they drag us by the ear, swat us.

I mean, I will say that I deserved 99% of it, but the easy E-tape, I will still

say I didn't deserve that.

I feel that.

Wow, so you have some strict parents, man.

Yeah.

And at home, I got a few whoopins.

I I got a lot of whoopings.

I got some whoopings from my dad.

I got some.

Never from my dad, luckily.

That would have hurt probably more.

But yeah, I got some face spanks.

Yeah, and you know, the thing about like having your mama spank you, it's like it's an emotional mind,

you know, because it's like, mommy, why are you hitting me?

No.

It's like even worse.

Yeah, it's more mama.

With the dad, you're, yeah.

With dad, it's like, you know,

you bring on that like anger.

It's like, you dad.

And then, bam.

Yeah.

So is this when you got into drinking whiskey back in the high school days actually

yeah my first my first uh sip of whiskey was wild turkey in a back of a pickup truck when i was like 14 years old we were out in the deer woods and um

just took a just took a pool of wild turkey 101 and it was like it was like uh fire going in my

in my esophagus fireball yeah it was it was it was it was hard back then but you didn't didn't like it at first.

Well,

definitely not.

And by the way, no one under the age of 21 ever touch alcohol.

You got to wait till you're 21.

It's brain development, all that sort of thing.

But man,

I was a fan of bourbon and all types of whiskeys when I was in college.

But I'd say as a drinker, I was not a taster.

And I wasn't really until I joined the military that I started, you know, enjoying

spirits.

And

even though I was enjoying it more, I still wasn't tasting.

But when I was in Iraq, I would have people send me bottles of Jack Daniels and Jim Beam

in Listerine bottles because it was illegal to have alcohol there.

And

when I came home from Iraq, so that had been in 2005, and,

you know,

this is kind of where the journey of becoming a professional taster began.

And that was when I was,

I mean,

I was one of those people that

I don't know if I would have made it if not for my then girlfriend and now wife and mother of our two beautiful children.

Love you, Jacqueline.

Shout out to Jaclyn.

I don't think I would have made it.

I was either going to commit

or I was going to kill somebody and rage.

Like, I had

a lot of problems when I came back.

When I would walk

in a downtown setting, I would look up at the

I would look up at the buildings and think there might be a sniper there.

Whenever I saw trash on the side of the road, I would think there would be an IED there.

If I, you you know, there were so many things that would remind me of war and would send me into a depression or a rage.

I also couldn't sleep.

I had nightmares all the time.

I had flashbacks if I saw a helicopter.

You know, I mean, there's a lot of things that were happening to me that I just was like, this sucks.

I don't want to deal with this anymore.

But

I decided to get in therapy

and the VA saved my life.

Wow.

And so, like, those those

sessions of exposure therapy where

my therapist would make me

write out and read aloud the most traumatic event that would happen to me.

And that was a moment where I was almost killed by an RPG.

Reading it and saying it over and over and over again helps you

no longer be dependent upon that story and not let it have, let that trauma have ownership of you.

You expose yourself to it so many times, you can become

where you can deal with it.

And then I went through cognitive behavioral therapy.

And that's essentially the best way I can put

CBT

is if something happens to you, you begin to feel a certain way.

And there's a belief that is tied to you being happy or angry

or whatever.

And for me, a lot of it was angry or sad or something like that.

And so,

it was specific work on focusing on what is the belief there that's causing you to feel that way.

And is it based in fact or is it based in fiction?

And what can I tell myself next time?

So, an example of that would be:

I'm walking,

I see someone wearing a shirt I don't like, I feel like they are attacking me, and then I analyze that, well, what's that based in?

That's based in,

in part, it's based in fear, in part, it's based in anger.

And then I would talk about, you know, write out like, does that person actually have anything against me?

And the answer is no.

So this is based, that this is all entirely based on fiction.

What can I tell myself next time?

Well, next time I see that person wearing that shirt that bothers me, I tell myself automatically,

that person is their own individual and they can make their own choices and it has nothing to do with me.

I see that in what I did there going through that process, I completely stopped the irrational belief.

of anger toward that person.

And so that process

would

would basically would be how I would deal with all the from war.

And once I got myself where

I could live and I could survive and be in society as a productive human being, I was like, okay, I can do this.

Now I want to live.

Like, I really want to live.

And therapies went to a different turn.

It went toward a technique called taste mindfulness and aromatherapy.

And this is basically, you know, you're talking about touching the tar.

You know, you're, you're, in a way, as a kid, you were experiencing mindfulness because you were trying to connect your brain to what your senses were feeling on your touch.

And it's the same with taste mindfulness.

I was given a barbecue potato chip,

and I was asked to think about how the salts and sugar separate, to think about how the potato crunched on my tongue and how it moved all over my tongue.

and it completely changed how I thought about tasting something and the whole point was to get my mind to focus on my tongue versus all the other surroundings it was it was meant to like have you in in a moment and what that does is is it reprograms your brain to really be there

in that moment instead of thinking about that potential sniper on the rooftop, which isn't there.

So that completely altered how I thought and how I processed.

But I did not know that I had a talent for tasting.

And I started, at the time I was a wine and spirits journalist, and this is like 2009.

I was covering wine and spirits from like a trade level, like

how things were grown and made and who was buying what.

And I would do some consumery kind of publications, but it was mostly business stuff.

And even though I was around all the wine and spirits and tasting and trying to do tasting notes here and there, I wasn't at the level of, say, like a master's somalier or anything like that.

But I was trying to learn.

And it wasn't until I went through that taste mindfulness exercise that it completely shifted everything.

I could begin to taste things that I didn't see before.

Wow.

Just because of that exercise of connecting my brain to my palate.

That's fascinating.

That's kind of when it, that's kind of how it all started.

I wonder if it would work for me because

there's this test where you can determine how strong your taste buds are or whatever.

And I scored a, like the low, whatever the lowest is.

So I don't know if I have that potential.

Here's the beautiful thing about this.

And I hate

those

tests are important for a lot of reasons.

Are you interested in coming on the Digital Social Hour podcast as a guest?

Well, click the application link below in the description of this video.

We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life.

Click the application link below, and here's the episode, guys.

But

people

just kind of give up and say, Oh, well, I can't taste.

I can't taste that.

And so I would counter that as like, there's just like anything, there's ability that you're born with, that you have, and then you can train yourself.

And so,

the way I do things, and this is especially true with liquids, probably less so than with solids, is like focusing on your tongue.

What part of the tongue do you feel something?

And

focusing on that.

And once you feel it prominent on a part of your tongue, taste it again and really just think about things you feel on that part of your tongue and flavors will again begin to surface.

Got it.

So, you know, so don't give up yet.

I won't give up.

Don't give up yet.

Yeah, I did for a while, but you've reignited that fire in me, man.

Thank you.

Awesome, man.

I love it.

Appreciate it.

How did you transition from wine to whiskey?

Because that's what you're known for now, right?

Yeah, so I actually,

in 2012, I was up for the best wine writer in the world,

the Louis Roeder Awards.

And I was in London, and all these

iconic wine writers and somaliers were there.

And this is a point in my career where

I had made it as a wine writer.

I was at the highest levels.

I wouldn't say I would not agree that I was a top in the world at that point, but

I'd say I was formidable.

I could write for anybody about wine.

In fact, I was writing for everyone from wine spectator to decanter.

tasting panel, so I had Somali Journal.

I mean, I had a very nice portfolio of like magazines I was writing for

and I'm in this room and I just like

We're drinking wine or talking wine I found myself I just want to be around my whiskey friends

and it was it was a interesting moment because here I was at the top of my game in the wine world probably

definitely could could be the envy of many people wanting to come up and wine.

And I was like, I just want to be around whiskey people.

And it's like, I love the people in whiskey.

And I love the people in wine too, but there's just something about,

you know, hanging out with the master distiller of wild turkey, Jimmy Russell, or listening to the master distillery Jim Beam, Fred No,

tell a story.

And by the way, even though

there's whiskey that's thousands and thousands of dollars, you can spend $25, $45 on a bottle of bourbon that is fantastic.

Yeah, I was looking through your top hunter list and some of them weren't actually that expensive.

Yeah.

I mean, you do not have to spend a lot of money to get great bourbon.

And that's exciting because most people can't afford those $1,000 bottles or $100 bottles.

Yeah, that is true, but they still want them.

That's the funny thing about

doing anything in a luxury market is if you don't have it, you know, someone else has it yeah you know you want it um and that's that's what a lot of uh of spirits is really based on it's like it's it has a fomo thing and it's a status thing but for those who are really into it they know that you don't have to spend a lot of money for good bourbon there's a hidden market with uh high-end alcohol man because i stocked up on 1942s years back and yeah those just keep going up man yeah is it like that with bourbon and whiskey too uh some

some yes um and you actually here in las vegas you have what i think is is one of the hottest brands and and all of uh spirits and smoke wagon um that that brand has has had bottles sell for ten thousand dollars damn what's so special about him um the way he blends and the fact that he ages out here for a little bit and the the nevada temperatures I think are really good for aging whiskey.

It's awful out here to distill, and there's certain laws out here in Las Vegas, especially that prevent people from having a full-on major distillery because of water.

All the water needs to go to the hotels, right?

So they don't want, there's a lot of water used to make whiskey.

So they don't want to want that happening.

You don't have enough, to be honest.

Yeah.

And so

they can't spare the water for a whiskey distillery.

So what he does is he actually gets stuff contract distilled.

in a distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana,

and he will age a lot of it here.

And so it'll age some there and he'll age it a little bit here.

But last night at my event, Big Game Bourbon, we tasted what he considered to be his best releases ever.

And I kid you not, they were like, the crowd was like, oh, this is so good.

I mean, there was like, you know, goosebumps, people's back of their neck hair standing up.

And it was.

It was a pretty special, pretty special night.

Where would it rank on your top honor list?

I mean, it probably would have won it.

A couple of.

Yeah.

I mean,

there was one,

what did he call it?

He comes up with these really clever names.

It was called

Black Butterscotch.

Okay.

I think that probably I think in a blind tasting with me, his Black Butter Scotch release of his Rare and Limited,

I think that could win.

for my palate.

Damn.

And you've had thousands of whiskeys.

So

that is crazy.

Yeah.

It was incredible.

The aging process, I'm curious, how long does that take normally?

Well, you know, every category is different.

And bourbon has to go into new chart oak barrels, whereas Irish whiskey, Canadian whiskey,

Scotch, those are going into used barrels and usually used bourbon barrels.

So that's something that's unique to bourbon and American styles

is that that the new chart oak barrel means that you're going to get a lot of flavor from the barrel barrel in a short amount of time.

Whereas if you were to release a four-year-old scotch, that would fall flat.

But you can get away with a really good four-year-old bourbon because the barrel can yield a lot of flavors in four years.

Now, most people want to wait till

at least six years old before they release something.

But you can start getting decent flavors at four years old.

You don't have to actually have there's not an age minimum for bourbon, but

there are a few people out there who have done something like put it in a barrel for like five minutes and call it bourbon.

Wow.

Because the laws just states that it has to go into a new charto container.

Yeah.

It doesn't state for how long.

Interesting.

What's the oldest you've drank personally?

So I've had a 50-year-old bourbon that

tasted like an old, soggy wood stump thrown in a pond and a bunch of like frogs defecated on it.

Oh, so that was too old.

It was disgusting.

So it's something special about the wood that gives it the flavor basically.

So yeah, you know, when you when you break down the chemical composition of

a oak tree,

there are there's there's like hemicellulose, there's lactones, there's tannins, and all these things,

when you add a little heat to it, like like a toast, like a little bit of of flame, like a char, you are pulling out what they consider wood sugars.

And those wood sugars, everyone who's had barbecue, you know, you've tasted how different woods taste on the barbecue.

If you've had,

you know, wood is used in a lot of cooking, so you can taste the flavor of wood,

and especially in meats.

But

the

barrel, depending on who you talk to, to, makes up for about 50 to 75% of the flavor profile.

Wow.

Some people think it's more 50%.

They think that the grains and yeast and the fermentation techniques

and the distillation techniques are more important than the barrel.

And others who are really invested in their warehouses, they will say that it's all about the barrel.

Some people will say it's as much as 80, 90% of the flavor profile.

That is crazy.

But it is, to me,

there's no right answer there because

there's a lot of ways to make whiskey, and everybody makes it just enough differently that 50 to 75% is

I think is more of a target than

an exact number.

In your opinion, which country makes the best whiskey?

Ooh.

Gonna get some heat on this one.

Man.

You'll get some hate.

Yeah.

Well, I got to tell you,

I don't think anyone's ever actually asked me that question.

Really?

Wow.

I'm honored.

Yeah.

No one, and here's the thing.

I think everyone just assumes I would say America because I'm so known for bourbon.

But,

boy.

Well,

I think 10, 15 years ago, I would have said Scotland, but I think I do think that

you know, Scotch is still supreme in the quality perspective.

Japan kind of came out of nowhere for a lot of people.

Japan makes incredible whiskey.

Wow, I didn't know that.

I'd even throw a bone at Taiwan.

Taiwan makes...

They have a brand there called Cavalon that, I mean, I would put that whiskey up against anything in the world.

I definitely will not be saying Canada.

Too cold there, right?

Well, no,

they make good whiskey.

The problem is, is

they blend it.

They blend it out.

So

their top brands have incredible whiskey, but they will parcel it out instead of like bottling it up as a straight whiskey.

And then they can also add more than 9% of flavoring.

A lot of spirits.

I like natural.

And the thing is,

the Canadians are probably the best distillers in the world, but the way they blend, in my opinion, to meet the masses,

I think hurts them from a quality perspective.

Like, here's an example.

When Whistlepig started bottling...

Canadian rye whiskey, they were winning all these awards.

Everybody was falling in love with Whistlepig.

No one even cared that they were from Vermont bottling Canadian rye.

Everyone just loved it.

And all of us whiskey writers were like, see Canada, we told you, just bottle your whiskey straight, and no one would

say anything.

Yeah.

Canada, step it up, guys.

Yeah, but

they're a blending country.

That's just their, that's their DNA, and they're not going to get away from it.

But they've incredible whiskey makers.

Ireland is a country

that unfortunately is

known for one day, and that's St.

Patty's Day.

You know, they drink

so much whiskey, get Irish whiskey gets consumed on St.

Patty's Day.

It's like, like some brands, that's like half of their revenues.

Wow, that day.

One day, it's so insane.

And I do think that the most consistent and best whiskey in the world is usually red breast for me.

And that's an Irish whiskey.

So that's a 15, it comes at 12, 15, 21 years old.

But to me, red breast is the, I would put red breast up against anything.

Nice.

I'm half Irish, so I'm Irish.

Oh, right on.

I actually went there, and they eat breakfast in the bars.

It's different out there, man.

Yeah, they drink a lot.

Yeah.

A lot.

Like the amount that the Irish drink is insane.

Well, it rains there, so they're probably just depressed and, you know, indoors drinking, you know?

But I want to come back to the states real quick.

I think the range of whiskey making here now

gives the United States the edge for that question.

Okay.

And because because I've been talking this through, well, I've been talking about it.

I've been trying to come up with my answer,

which is who makes the best whiskey from a country perspective.

And by the way,

you can't dismiss Australia.

They're growing.

They're getting there.

Stuff in South America.

Mexico actually has some pretty decent whiskey distillers right now.

So there's a lot of growth in a lot of areas.

But the United States.

has so much diversity.

Right now we have American single malts going strong.

We have a new category of whiskey makers out there called, they're doing what they're called blend of straits, which is different than how the Canadians do it, but it's still a blend nonetheless.

We have these craft distillers out there like Frey Ranch here in Nevada that have created new flavor profiles that have not been tasted since probably the 1800s

using things like oats and doing stuff like malting corn.

That's cool.

Things, just wacky stuff that can yield some different kinds of flavors.

Of course, you've got your iconic bourbon distillers, but now you're seeing a growth in rye as well.

And you got brands like Dad's Hat and Pennsylvania that are kind of pushing the envelope for rye whiskey.

So because of the sheer amount of diversity right now in American whiskey, I'm going to say that the best country in the world for making whiskey

the United States.

But in terms of the best single drop in the world, it would be Scotland.

So I would say the best drop of whiskey in the world that's in a barrel right now is probably a 45-year-old

in a cask somewhere in there.

So I would say Scotland or Japan would have that single best drop.

That makes sense.

USA, baby, let's go.

Yeah.

Love it.

Fred, it's been fun where can people find you and find out more about your next event.

Yeah, so you can just go to Fredminick.com or, you know, find me on social media.

I'm Fred Minick.

I used to say I'm the one with the blue check mark because there's a few other Fred Minicks, but now everyone has it.

Now everyone has it.

I'm not going to pay for one.

Oh, so you don't have it anymore?

Well, I have it on Instagram and I have it on Facebook, but I don't have it on Twitter.

I'm not going to pay for it.

Can we still say Twitter?

It's X now, but I still like Twitter.

It's $11 a month.

I pay for it and I don't even use it.

Is it worth it?

I mean, I don't use it, but the guy on before you uses it and makes a lot.

So he makes money off of it?

Yeah.

He just got 2 million views on his interview with Vivek.

Oh,

maybe I should invest $11 a month.

Might be worth it.

Teach their own, though.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Absolutely.

Cheers.

Yeah, thanks for watching, guys.

Cheers.

See you next time.