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Mark and Rob crack open a bottle of VAT 69 for Veterans Day, and it turns into way more than a whiskey review. There’s some family military history, a deep dive into what “blended malt” actually means, and the wild true story behind the bottle itself... turns out it’s the exact scotch Captain Lewis Nixon carried through all of Band of Brothers. Real guy, real drink, real demotion from one too many hangovers. They get into Nixon and Dick Winters raiding Hitler’s liquor stash at Eagle’s Nest, a decades-long friendship, and somehow also a TSA story about Call of Duty voice chat gone wrong.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This was one of our favorite conversations with master distiller Allisa Henley of AJ Bond. Enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode three hundred calls for something worth the milestone, so we crack open Jim Gaffigan's Father Time bourbon at its highest proof yet. We get into celebrity whiskey, the term collectors use when fame outshines what's actually in the bottle, and the one autographed bottle in the office nobody can bring themselves to open. Rob and Houston, still arguing about turkeys by the end. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whiskey@Work heads out to the Central States Fair and Rodeo for a ten a.m. pour with Ron Jefferies, straight from the Ford Tailgate Party tent. They crack open Pendleton, the fair's longtime whiskey partner, and get into why cowboys stay so loyal to their sponsors, why the fair always lands the week after Sturgis, and how school schedules keep messing with everybody's calendar. Ron drops some real gems on fair history too, the old Alfalfa Palace, the flood that reshaped the grounds, and how the name Central States Fair actually came to be. Add in a Tilt-a-Whirl turning one hundred fifty, a wild Caribou Crossing story from a Canada road trip, and plenty of laughs, and you've got a morning well spent. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rob and Mark try something new after almost three hundred episodes: a live blind tasting where they never say what's in the glass. No brand, no history, no mash bill, nothing but proof and a state of origin. They dig into the 1976 wine tasting that flipped the industry on its head, a college study that fooled sommeliers with food coloring, and the running theory that most drinkers can't actually tell a thirty dollar bottle from a three hundred dollar one. Somewhere in there: a whiskey made to spray on your glass to keep the bugs off, and the real, wild story of how one of bourbon's most respected names started as a $245 trademark purchase and ended in court. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We record this one out of a shipping crate at Sturgis, which tells you everything about the week we've had. This is close to twenty years into the Jack Daniel's tasting on the hill, and the guys in Lynchburg still know us by name. We get into the Squire program, why one of our regulars has the coin tattooed on his arm, and a Tennessee rye that clears 140 proof but drinks like hot summer afternoon in Sturgis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rob and Mark crack open a bottle of Old Grandad Bonded, the road trip whiskey that rode along with John Steinbeck across the country and earned a reputation as a natural biker's bourbon, strong enough to still taste like something and cheap enough not to sweat losing it. They dig into the Basil Hayden family history, that surprisingly high rye mash bill, what bottled in bond actually means, and the great label mystery: is that really Basil Hayden's face staring back at you from the bottle? They compare notes with its pricier cousin, swap stories about the Paper Plane cocktail, and count down to the Loud American Tasting up on the hill. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.