Evan Williams Bottled in Bond and a Surprise that we weren't quite ready for.

No cork pop this time — just a screw cap and a big surprise. In this episode of Aussie Bourbon Lovers, we dive into the Evan Williams White Label Bottled in Bond, a bourbon that’s cheap, cheerful, and way better than we expected.

We break down:

• 🥃 The Bottled in Bond rules (or at least most of them)

• 💰 Why this US$15–30 bottle is such a cult classic

• 👃 What we get on the nose and palate (spoiler: caramel, vanilla & nuttiness)

• 🤯 Why it would hold its own in a blind tasting

A great example of why bourbon doesn’t need to be fancy to be fantastic.

🟠 Keywords: Evan Williams, white label, bottled in bond, BiB, 100 proof, budget bourbon, value whiskey, bourbon podcast, Aussie bourbon

 

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Evan Williams Bottled in Bond 01:00 Notes on the Nose 02:10 What its like on the Palette 04:30 Dave's Surprise and the Screwcap 06:06 The History and Significance of Bottled in Bond 10:15 Final Thoughts on Evan Williams and Tasting Experience

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Incredible flavours, even better stories.

(00:05):
One more, 10 minutes.
Aussie bourbon lovers, sharingbourbon with Australia.
I know, it's silent.
You didn't even do it really loudly.
It's a screw cap.I know.
So there's no delightful popto start tonight's podcast.
No, but Dave's going to tellus what we're drinking tonight.

(00:25):
This isn't Evan Williams bottled in bond.
It's the Evan Williams white label,which I was surprised to find in
Australia, but it'seasy to find in the US.
I think I just heard someone say it's themost popular or most sold-
Most sold bottle in Bond.
Anyway.Cheers.
All right, let's begin with H.

(00:49):
Tell me about what doyou know about this one?
Well, I know it's a Bottled in Bond,which, don't quiz me on it,
but it's got a lot of ones.
One distil Distiller, one distillery,and one distilling season.
It has to all meet those rules.
Bottled in Bond has a lot of rules.
I don't know if that's all of them.

(01:09):
It has to be exactly 100 proof.Oh, yes.
Another number one with two zeros.
But it's all one, one, one, one, one.
That's how I remember it.
I know there's more rules, butthey're the ones I remember.
One Distilling Season, one Distiller,one Distillery, and 100 proof.
Okay.
You can fact check us on that.
One Distiller, one Distiller, yousound like the same thing to me.
All right, let's go with it.
So what are you getting on the nose?

(01:31):
Let's go with...Can I start with...
I think this is somewhere between15 and 30 US dollars for a bottle.
So this is not an expensive-No,this is a very affordable...
Get yourself a nice bottle of whiskey.
Well, get yourself a bottleof bottle of whiskey, right?
Yeah.
What are you getting?
I'm getting lots of caramel.Are you?
Yeah.I'm getting like a nuttiness.

(01:53):
Like a vanilla pod.
We said this recently, the nuttinessthing, but like, yeah,
it's a good bit of wood.
Yeah, there's definitely smoke there.Okay.
Have a taste, Dave.
Tell us what you got.
That's delightful.
You sound surprised.

(02:14):
It's so Just effective.
That is so much better than I wasexpecting that to be, actually.
Because I've heard people saythis is such a good go-to.
Everyone should get a bottle of it.
But look how boring the label is.
You know how I bang on that?It's boring labels.
It's It's simple.It's affordable.
I don't even know where to put it.Goodness, that's tasty.
That is delicious.

(02:34):
That has exactly the rightamount of vanilla and caramel-y.
Yeah, it's very desserty.
But for an affordablewhiskey, that's really good.
I'm sorry that I'm so surprised.
I think this is my first time having this.
It's buttery or something.
The mouth feels great.
It's definitely desserty for me.

(02:55):
It's got that like…
When you're delicious.But I would…
Yeah, I'd love to have thisin a blind tasting, I reckon.
Because I reckon it would reallyconfuse you with a more expensive one.
But it'd be interesting to comparethem because that is really delicious.
I think I thought I was going to getsomething pretty rough around the edges

(03:19):
because of how cost-effective it is.
Well, it's the most solid bottlein pond, so it's got to be good.
That speaks for itself, really.
Could be stated with the price tag.
The DSP That's on there is DSP1, DSP KY1.
But that's for Heaven and Hell Distillery.Correct.
Yeah, which I didn'trealise that were DSP1.
Can you remind us what DSP KY1 means?

(03:41):
It's like what distillery number they are.
But then There was Prohibition, and theyhad to go back, and some of them
got their original numbers again.Some of them didn't.
But every distillery is registered,and they have a number.
And so that, obviously, was the first one.
Dsp stands for Distilled Spirits Plant.
Ky is the state, and then thenumber is the national number.

(04:04):
I'm fairly sure that's right.I'm pretty sure.
So DSP-KY1 means it's the first distilspirits plant ever to be given a number.
Yeah.Pretty cool.
I know.
This is the stuff that I love,the history of-The random stuff.
That's a pretty coolone to have, number one.
Yeah.
And it goes with the theme of tonight,one, one, one, one,

(04:30):
What I was like, Oh, it's probablynot going to be much good.
I'm not too worried about it.
But now I think I'll- Youcould pour yourself some more.
We're only four minutes in there.
Pour yourself another.
I'm genuinely taken abackby how good that is.
He had all this stuff planned to say, andnow he's gobsmacked about how good it is.
Part of the thing that really throws meon this, so it's a plastic screw cap.

(04:52):
It's the screw cap youfind at a Coke bottle.
I'm not even being rude.It just is.
No, it doesn't It doesn't saysuper fancy, super delicious.
It's just super affordable andit is really delightful.
Yeah.I mean, there's other bourbons I prefer.
Is this easy to get in Australia or not?

(05:13):
Well, I think I was surprisedthat I could get it, so maybe not.
Although I wonder if it's...
Maybe it's just because I haven't beenlooking for it or when I've
seen it, I've ignored it.
I'd say this is going to be one of theseones where you can get
it online pretty easy.
But I think you wouldn't walk intoa normal-Dance and just pick it up.
I think you wouldn't.I'm happy you're told that I'm wrong.

(05:33):
Why don't we have it out here?
I don't know.
Do you know what theproblem I think it is?
Look how much that lookslike a Jim Beam white label.
Yeah, that is true.
That looks a lot like a-I don't get it into focus.
Just from a distance, it's thesquare bottle with a white label on it.
Yeah, and it's got the neck on it.

(05:54):
It's very similar to the Jim Beam.
Yeah, it does have avery Jim Beam-esque look.
Maybe it's just- I can'tbelieve how good that tastes.
I am so embarrassed thatthat's on our shelf unopened.
It's the first pourwe're having out of it.
It's my suggestion for tonight's podcast,and I'm really glad we opened it.
I have a sneaking suspicion thatis not going to last that long.

(06:16):
I have a sneaking suspicion.
I'm going to be sure I geta few more bottles of it.
The photo for the thumbnailwill be a full bottle, Dave.
Well, depending on how much youdrink in the next five minutes.
You're right.It'll be a full bottle.
Can't we pour some more?
No, this is great.
Why did they do bottle in Bond,Do you know any information about that?
Yeah.Have I spoken about this before or not?
I think we've touched on it briefly,but that was a long time ago.
So here's the thing.

(06:38):
This is really before they wereselling whiskey in the bottles.
This is like we're going way back,probably '80s, '60s,
'60s, '70s in that spell.
And I don't read Fred Minnick's book wherehe talks about this because
there's so many more historianswho will write well about this.
But basically what was happening isyou could make whiskey and sell whiskey

(06:58):
to anyone and do whatever you want to it.
Fill it out with whatever you liked.Exactly.
So you could put somethingthat was distilled.
So maybe imagine a vodkaor something like that.
And then you could put anything in it.
And the go to is tobacco spit is the thingthat makes it the right
colour, which is so gross.
But that's something you could do.
You could put a tea bag init to make it that colour.

(07:20):
And then you could sell it and no onewould necessarily know what was in there
because it's being sold in these barrels.
So you don't know what you're getting.
And so what they did isthey I said a few of them.
Unfortunately, a lot of thosedistilleries are no longer around.
They all went by the wayside, but theywent and said, Let's go and get

(07:41):
a-Official signed piece of paper.
That's what it says.
It's about gettingthe legislation through.
And so Bottled and Bound was the firstof these acts, the Bottled and Bound Act.
I'm going to get the names of the peoplewrong, but there were
people who were involved.I think Colonel E.
H.
Taylor was one of thepeople involved in that.
And he was lobbied the government andsaid, said, Hey, we need to have a way of

(08:04):
saying this is an official way ofsaying this is a real American whiskey.
And so this was the first thing.
So before, there's therules about bourbon.
Before that was instituted,this thing of bottled in wine.
This was before then.This is early on.
This was in 1890 something?Yeah, 1897.
They said that this iswhat they wanted to do.
Yeah, exactly.

(08:24):
And it had to be atleast four years as well.
And then so the rules forbourbon came after that.
Bourbon came, I think,quite a fair bit later.
I think bourbon seemed, I could be wrongabout this, but it might
be like 1940s or something.
I'm going to be wrong.
I probably wasn't currently- I don't knowhow many people check
any of the stuff we say.
Yeah, but there's some dudes.
There were some dudes in America,and they did some good work.

(08:45):
But they made the bourbon taste delicious.
And dear goodness, we love it.So Evan Williams.
So you can go to theEvan Williams experience.
I think it's called on theMain Street in Louisville.
Oh, yeah.And you can go to Heaven Hill as well.
You can.
Yeah, that's out in- Becausethat's where they make it.
Yeah, exactly.
And in fact, I think they've justfinished, or not just, but recently

(09:05):
finished their new versionof their visitor experience.
Not visitor experience, butlike the distillerian stuff.
Because Heaven Hill make lotsof different expressions.
Elijah Craig is one of them.
So that's all in that group.
So they know how to make goodquality, affordable bourbon.
Well, that's why I'm looking at how littleI've got left because of

(09:28):
how small your pour was.
But that's why I was so pleasantlysurprised that this was so good, because
they need to have these tiers of what'sthe good stuff, what's the next best
stuff, and then what do we sellat 15 to 30 dollars a bottle.
And so you can't expectit to be that good.
Is this there a super affordable one.Well, this is one of them.
There's also an Evan Williams black label,which I'm going to guess is 80 proof.

(09:51):
It's there.It's not bottle in bond.
So it's like- So it's less than this?
Less proof, yeah.
No, no, less cost.I imagine.
I don't know.
But it But if you walk into a supermarketin the US, I reckon you'll find both a
black and white label, Evan Williams.
I'm excited about doing a blindtasting and putting that in.
You're going to throw it in there.It's a spanner.
Not in the next one becauseyou're going to be looking for it.

(10:12):
You'll be like, Which one is it?
I'll have to wait a few.I'll have to have a few.
But that's going to...
I'd like to just compare it to some of thereally more high-end ones because it
really is delicious.
But it might just be becauseit's our first bourbon.
Well, colour me surprised.
That was more delightfulthan I was expecting.
If you can find yourself a bottle of that.

(10:33):
In Australia, this is going to be maybe 70bucks or something like that, which
is well worth the spend, in my view.
Yeah, so you can find itbecause- Grab a bottle.
I can I got that at Celebrations.
But one- Yeah, and enjoy somecaramel-vanilla- And he'll have more.
For sure.Deliciousness.
Yeah, real good bourbon-y notesand a really excellent mouthfeel.
Stop laughing at howmuch I'm enjoying this.

(10:54):
Go and get yourself a bottle.And be surprised.
Cheers.
Listening.
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