Smokeye Hill with Founder Blake Johns Show Notes

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Sep 22

Notes and Reviews for Whiskey Ring Podcast Episode 204: Smokeye Hill with Founder Blake Johns

This was an interesting episode, one I wasn’t sure if I would do at first but ended up enjoying quite a bit.

Smokeye Hill is a brand contract distilled in Indiana to a recipe inspired by the family’s Arizona land and aged in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Confused yet?

I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Smokeye Hill had, in 2024, won Best Small Batch Bourbon at the ASCOTs, dubbed that year’s “Stagg killer”. This was in the first year of their release, too. As Blake tells it, when Fred Minnick called him to ask about the brand, it was mostly to check if it was real - after all, the website was barely set up and they were as new as could be.

Did it really “beat” Stagg? I invite you to read my friend Mike Frey’s writeup on the ASCOT award procedure. Frankly, I think it takes nothing away from Smokeye Hill as a brand but rather invites us to examine our “award winners” a little more closely.

Anyway, as you can tell by the fact that an episode is coming out, I did decide to go for it. I don’t usually do NDPs, but in this case that’s not quite what they are. Yes, their distilling partner (MGP) is a common source, but they’re not “sourcing” from MGP. It’s contract distilled using heritage blue corn, which comprises more than 50% of a ryed bourbon mashbill. I was intrigued by the three-state question of whether this is an Indiana, Arizona, or Colorado whiskey. Was this just a story, or could more be teased out? After all, brands just looking to flip some barrels (or the whole company) don’t set barrels down for nearly six years, and according to Blake they’re still laying liquid down for the future. Why put that investment in if this isn’t going somewhere?

By the end of the episode, I felt that the answer lay somewhere in between. For now, they’re able to lean rightly on their ASCOT notoriety and the overwhelmingly positive reviews of their bourbon (seriously - if you remove the idea of it being compared to Stagg, the reviews are almost all positive). Blake is fully aware that their story needs time to get people to understand how Smokeye Hill isn’t really of any of those three states and thus shouldn’t be defined by them.

Smokeye Hill is, even after seven years, at the start of their journey. They’ve got a rye in the works, and batches of their Barrel Proof Bourbon continue to come out on a regular, if limited, schedule. This piqued my interest - I hope it does the same for you.

Thank you to Blake for entering the whiskey ring!

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Smokeye Hill Whiskey

Thank you to Smokeye Hill Whiskey for providing samples at no charge for the purposes of this interview. All opinions are my own.