Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, guys. Brad Nickham tasting tequila with Brad. We brought the whole Guayakula selection home with us. So we are going to taste through six of these tonight.
[00:00:21] All right, guys. It's fantastic. We back home from Hawaii. Not that we didn't have a fantastic time, because we did. It's beautiful there. I'll probably talk about this for a while. I did participate in and complete the Honolulu Marathon, my first marathon that I've ever ran. My wife did the same marathon 30 years ago with her sister and wanted to do it again. And I said, okay, I'll give it a try. But we got to do one thing. We got to go over to Maui and try out this fantastic agave spirit. So again, they're not allowed to call it tequila, but we witnessed the whole process and they are making it the same way you make tequila. And one of the things that's really cool is the agave plants. They're growing. They're growing them on this beautiful farm. They have 10 acres of planted agave in multiple stages. So they have up front a bunch of really big agaves that are pretty close to being ripe enough to harvest. And then they got new plants that they just planted recently. They got a section that's been in the ground a while. They're growing these things all to a mature level six, seven years. And one of the things that is amazing there is their soil is volcanic soil. Much like the valleys. It's reddish colored dirt like in the Arandes. But the weather is perfect year round and they just get more consistent rain. So that's why they think their agaves grow a little bit bigger. They have had their record penis size is 630 pounds. So that is huge, like just massive. And their averages is above 100. So these were really cool big agaves. And you know, they're doing, doing it very organically. They're really working their soil. They're. They're treating the earth right. You know, they have the right ideas behind this. So then from them harvesting that, you know, ripe, fresh agave, they have built their own little mini stone oven. They have a boiler that heats the stone oven and then from there they pull out their agaves. It's a little oven, nothing like what we see in Mexico. This is holding a very small amount, maybe four or five or six of their big agaves chopped into pieces. Then they have built this incredible mechanical tahuna. It has a little wheel and it's stationary and a tray moves around it. And the tray is exactly the size of the tahuna so it keeps putting the agave right back in front of this little tahuna. So they're. They're crushing it tahuna style. And they're going into their tanks where they're collecting the honey from the oven and then also the crushed agave into their fermentation tanks. And then for yeast, they kind of did the old school method of propagating a local yeast. They scraped the pinkas and they got all of the bacteria and things right off of those, grew their own yeast and then ferment. And it's not really an open air fermentation. The building's open, but they'd have little covers on it. And these tanks were maybe 4 foot in diameter and 4 or 5ft tall. So we're talking two tanks like that. So, you know, really, really small process. And then there they built their own still. It is a stainless steel on the outside with copper coils. And then the top has a copper run to the condenser. And they even do a triple distilled on one of these, which a little different process. But this one would be their first, just their standard blanco. So I poured that here. This is their 40 ABV.
[00:03:47] So let's give it a nose. It does, it does smell like that great cooked agave.
[00:03:55] It has a little bit of a mineral nose to it, but really more of a. An orange or a citrus nose.
[00:04:04] But it's very nice.
[00:04:06] It's first drink of the day here, so we'll warm up with it.
[00:04:10] Great legs on the glass. Has a really nice mouthfeel. You get that agave, you almost get like a real clean.
[00:04:20] Almost like a raw agave. Like that raw agave smells. And then you get the sweetness and that cooked agave behind it. It's a little bit warm. So you do get a nice pepper. And then that orange comes back again with just a hint of cinnamon. And the finish is pretty long. It's got a nice lingering. You know, you can feel it on the back of your tongue there.
[00:04:42] That's. That's a pretty good blanco. I remember tasting it there, you know, but we did our tasting so fast and I didn't. I was so kind of enamored with the beauty of the place and how amazing it was that I, I didn't really take my time to taste them. That's a pretty good blanco. You know, you can't rate these on Tequila Matchmaker because they're not tequila. You know that, that's a pretty high nose. It's got a great taste. It's got a pretty good finish. I would definitely drink it again. I would recommend it. But when it comes to value, the shipping is expensive because you have to fly to Hawaii to get it. They sell it on the island, they sell it at restaurants and bars, a couple of liquor stores on the island. And I found one bar in Honolulu that actually had it. They also had Fort Dela and their house brand was Sea Empress. So that was a pretty awesome bar. So this is really something that he's not planning to build this into a big company. He's making this small batch, just fun agave spirits and, and making it for an experience for somebody to come check it out. So let's check out their next one. Now this one Here is their 43.6% ABV. And what they did here is they wanted this one to kind of stand out in a cocktail and they wanted this one to be a little bit more of a, an easy to drink, higher proof. And I do remember this one when we were in the store. So on the nose, very much like this one. Less agave smell. And that's because they triple distilled this one to make it to where it was a little bit easier to drink. And I think that third distillation really muted that. The agave nose. It's there, you can smell it, but you. It's not as strong as it was. Now again, there's, there's no alcohol smell and you do get a little more of the minerals and that's, I'm going to say celery. So very vegetal. And honestly, I can smell a little bit of baking spice or you know, it could be like a pepper. So if you drink this one and you drink this one, the word that is going to be used in a bar is this one. Smoother. This one has a higher abv, does have less of a burn to it or less of a pepper, but it also has less agave flavor. It's still good, it's still there. You can tell it's. All of these are additive free. He's not adding anything to it. It's a very small batch process. But this one, you know, I would drink this one over this one because I am a blanco drinker. I do like the fact that it's high proof, but they've taken a little bit of what that high proof is all about by just distilling it that third time. But this one is definitely more agave forward. It's a lot more minerally I think because the agave is muted a little Bit you get several other, like mineral and vegetal like flavors. You know, the orange is gone, but the cinnamon is still there. So you get that, that cinnamon a little bit in that one. It's pretty good though, you know, for the experience and checking it out and getting to meet Paul Turner, the. The mastermind behind this. It was really cool. So this one is going to be six month in a barrel. And they used a couple of different types of barrels. They had a white American oak barrels and then they also had an Australian oak barrel. And they did a light toasting, so not a real heavy char, you know. And this rested for a full six months. And if you, you know, look at it in the glass, it. It's not super dark, you know, and they are using brand new barrels, so they're using a first run. Everything is single barrel. So one of the questions I ask him is, you know, if they're blending barrels for consistency. And he said, no, A barrel comes out, it gets bottled. So, you know, this one was aged for six months and then that barrel was bottled into bottles. There was no mixing of the barrels. Now you, you get a whole lot of wood, more wood than what I'm used to on a repo. They are using that triple distilled process for this one because they wanted to make it easier to drink. So a little bit less of the agave on the front, it's still there. It's not like the star of the show as it is in some other brands, but you do have a really nice barrel barrel spice, a nice caramel and a little bit of vanilla. A lot of barrel taste. So that, that's got a, a lot more barrel than what I remember in the store. Again, we drank through them really fast. You, you still have agave, you still have that cinnamon on the finish, a little bit of pepper, but a whole lot of barrel flavor. And I, I don't want to point to that. The barrel flavor is just all caramel or all vanilla. Yes, you get those. But there are some other spices there that are in this that you taste along with that. That cinnamon's there. And I think it's maybe anise a little bit. And then, you know, I said in this one that there was like a celery taste. This, this has a clean like that same celery type taste in the finish. Definitely a sipper. It would probably go good in like if you're going to make a Manhattan or an old Fashioned, that probably work great in it because it does have a nice, a nice barrel age flavor to it. Now this one is their 43.6. You know what, I may have said that wrong. I did. I'm sorry. This one is this product in the barrel. So this one is just double distilled, not triple distilled. So I was incorrect. I knew they did. On one of them. I did. I read the bottle wrong. So this one is a 12 month aged and it is aged with the higher proof but the triple distillation. So this one, they're calling this their super premium reserve.
[00:10:04] So let's see how this one does. I'm surprised that now going back and thinking this one through, I'm surprised it's not as agave forward as this one is. So that just showed how much that new barrel, those, those new barrels have taken from it. Again though, like I said, it's a, it's a great zipper. This one, it's a little, it's a little lighter than what this one is on, on the entire nose. You get a little bit of the barrel spice, a little bit of the earthiness, and then a little bit of that, you know, baked cooked agave. Very similar to this one. You do have a lot of those same barrel notes. A little more subdued actually here than here. That makes me wonder if one of these was one barrel type and the other was a different barrel type. He explained them as using both barrels, but I. There's such a difference just in these two. And this one is aged longer. It kind of tell me maybe it's a different barrel type. But again, they are all single barrels so you know, they're not blending them. So this one, you know, may just come out different each time, you know, like, like they each do good. It's got a great flavor though. It'd go great in any of your like aged cocktails. But this is one, I actually sipped this last night. This is one to, you know, when you're watching the season finale of Yellowstone, this is a good one to sip. That'd be a really good one also for bringing in that bourbon drinker that says, oh, that tequila, I got sick on it in high school or I don't like that tequila flavor. This is one that's going to give them a tequila flavor. But also the barrel flavors are so present that it's probably a pretty good one to bring a bourbon drinker over. Now this one does have something in it. This one's kind of a cool thing. It's called their smoked peppa and they used some chipotle peppers, jalapeno peppers that were Dried and then infused into the tequila. This is this tequila and it has not been aged. It's just the color is the influencing of the peppers that they use. So this is just a blanco with no aging. Other than infusing the jalapenos and chipotle. I found this one to be really kind of cool. It has a little bit of a spice to it. So it's pretty interesting in the spiciness and it would be great in any spicy drink. Like if you're making a really good spicy margarita, this would be fantastic for it because it has like that really jalapeno spice. And you get the agave and you get like a pepper smell, almost like a green pepper, I guess it's kind of like jalapeno as well. And then oddly enough, you get a little bit of a barrel smell. And I believe that's just because they baked, you know, they, they cooked those and dried those peppers before they put them in. They look all dried up and nasty. You know, they put them in there and let them soak and it's a pretty, it's a neat idea. That's like a spicy blanco. It has a. On the finish. It burns on the tongue like, not like a pepper burn or like your alcohol burn. It burns like a spicy pepper burn. So it's, it leaves that jalapeno hotness. You get a little bit of that pepper taste in it and you still have those agave flavors that you have from the others. It's just kind of muted and added this smoky, peppery taste. And you do get like a, almost like a smoky, like a mezcal. Even though it's not, it's just the influence of the peppers. That's pretty good. That's, that's one I would like to have that. I do a winter paloma and that little spiciness in that winter paloma would really kind of shine through the sweetness of it. That's kind of cool. And then the last one I got here, I, I had it in the store. It was very good. I'm going to probably save it for something special. But this one is their 18 month aged and it's 50.5 ABV. So they did a special, a whole special batch for this and this, this is how small batch these people are. Like when we talk about some of these other brands and it's a small batch and there's only 5,000 bottles available. This is number 40 out of 58 bottles. So it's one batch. 58 bottles is all that it made And I find that really impressive that they're really creating true, real small batch agave spirits. Almost said tequila. I wore my agave social shirt since we're talking about agave spirits, but this one's pretty cool. I picked one up from my buddy Tequila Cop. I can't wait to hear his review of it. We just shipped it out to him today. It has a more barrel hit than this one, but it still had, you know, a lot of agave in it. I think because it was a higher proof, it pulled more of that agave flavor into it than what the 12 month actually had. A sweet. Made a great sipper with a little more agave flavor. So there you go. If you're in Hawaii and you want to see something really cool and you want to go drink some great agave spirits and quite honestly, meet some amazing people. Omar did our tour. He was absolutely awesome. He was very knowledgeable, explained everything to us. And then we went out and as we're walking through the agave fields, they did have one of their guys. They got two guys that are their humidoras, and they use a coa, just like you would expect. Cut the pinkas off to get the big, you know, big giant needles out of the way. And then he just went to town on it and chopped it into a nice sized pina. And then from there they take it up. And the same guy that. The same two hemodores are the guys that come up there and they chop it and put it into that steam oven, and then they load it into that tahuna. And so those guys kind of work that whole process. And then Paul, the master distiller, is working fermentation and distillation. And they had a very small, you know, just four bottle or five bottle a bottler. They're in their cuts, they're cutting all of the heads, and they're leaving the tails for second distillation. And they're cutting tails in the second distillation. So a little bit different process there, but it has a great flavor to it. So they're doing a great job. They're. They're still kind of different than anyone I've seen before. But he did design it himself, so it's pretty neat. He's got a really cool condenser. And then. Then if they're bottling up one and going to barrel age it, they had a little barrel aging room that you know that all their barrels full, and it was probably 10 to 12 barrels. So this is a small batch process, and it's really cool. To visit. So if you get a chance to check them out on Maui island, it's really awesome. I'll put some information in the notes of the video. So if you want to get information, I'll put their website in there. Again, you can't buy it anywhere but Maui, so make sure you take a bag that you can pack some bottles in and make sure you split them up over a couple so you don't go over the weight limit. And definitely an awesome place to go and a great, a great agave spirit. And I want to say thanks to Paul Turner for spending some time with us that day and getting to shoot the video about them. So hope you enjoyed this. I hope you get to try them sometime. See you. Thanks.
