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Lindsay Ell is a dynamic musician with a bright future ahead of her. Shortly after owning the stage at the Hometown Rising Country Music and Whiskey Festival, she sat down with Fred and opened up about many personal details. What’s it like to be on the road? What does she drink? What are the challenges of being a famous musician? And most importantly, as Lindsay’s eyes gazed upon the sea of bourbon in Fred’s trailer, the whiskey critic started asking a series of questions that made her mouth water and get her excited to taste a bourbon she found quite tasty.

In this first episode, there’s also a little whiskey trivia and more about Fred than he intended to share.

Sponsors: The San Francisco World Spirits Competition and Michter’s American Whiskey

WHISKEY TRIVIA answer below the show notes….

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TRIVIA Answer: President William Howard Taft 

When President William Howard Taft took office in 1909, there was mass confusion as to what whiskey was. The Pure Food & Drug Act had placed some limitations on medicinal marketing and given consumers an added layer of protection, but it really didn’t define whiskey types. So many distillers were adding food coloring to distilled molasses and calling it bourbon. In what became known as the Taft Decision, the president gave whiskey its first federal definitions. In his lengthy writings, he specifically called out the quality, noting:

“Some time during the Civil War it was discovered that if raw whiskey as it came from the still, unrectified and without distillation, and thus containing one-half to one-sixth of 1 percent of fusel oil, was kept in oak barrels, the inside of the staves of which were charred, the tannic acid of the charred oak which found its way from the wood into the distilled spirits would color the raw white whiskey to the conventional color of American whiskey, and after some years would eliminate altogether the raw taste and the bad odor given the liquor by the fusel oil and would leave a smooth, delicate aroma, making the whiskey exceedingly palatable without the use of any additional flavoring or coloring. The whiskey thus made by one distillation and by the aging in charred oak barrels came to be known as “straight whiskey,” and to those who were good judges came to be regarded as the best and purest whiskey…”

For this decision, Taft is in the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame.