Whiskey with Witcher

We’re back…sort of. While the official debut of our upcoming season is still a few weeks away, we just couldn’t wait to weigh in on all the latest Witcher news! Season 4 is officially in production! Season 5 has been greenlit—and it’s the show’s final season?!? We debate whether this is a good or bad thing before sharing what we’d like to see in The Witcher’s remaining episodes. We also discuss all the casting news that’s hit since our last episode, engage in some controversial Lady of the Lake commentary and bring back over a half dozen whiskeys from previous seasons…with exactly the results you’d expect.

Take seven different Witcher-themed recipes prepared by four Continent-loving cooks, serve generously and garnish with a bottle of Woodford Reserve BevMo! Barrel Select Double Oaked Bourbon and what do you get? Our 2023 season finale! The highly anticipated Witcher Official Cookbook is now in stores, and we’ve asked our friends (and previous guests) Juliet Bennett Rylah and Christina Newhall to help us give it a test run. The table is set for some colorful culinary conversation, as we discuss the recipes and our experiences making them while sharing our thoughts on the cookbook overall. Which dishes did we love and which did we want to kill with Igni? The answers may surprise you in this savory seasonal sendoff!

The year may be winding down, but Witcher fans have had much to celebrate in 2023, from one of the most thrilling and book-faithful seasons so far, to news of a new Witcher novel in the works, to the announcement of an all-new animated film. So, in that spirit, we’re doing some celebrating ourselves and revealing a few of our personal favorites from The Witcher’s latest season…and ours! What’s our pick for Season 3’s best episode? Who’s our favorite new character? Which actor’s performance this season reigns supreme and which ship has set our hearts aflutter? We also reveal our top podcast moments, what important lessons we’ve learned this year, and which of this season’s whiskeys was our favorite…which we bring back for a second round. In short, it’s a seriously sauced soiree that’s sure to delight you at times and frustrate you at others, and if that’s not a fitting end to this year, we’re not sure what is!

For all its evil mages, freaky monsters, and conquest-minded kings, music has always been an important part of The Witcher. And while Dandelion may love to take credit, we know that it’s really the hard work of some talented composers who have shaped and finessed the sound of this world that we’ve all come to love. In this episode, we’re raising a glass to them as we revisit the music of Netflix’s Witcher, discussing what we feel works and what doesn’t on each of the five released soundtracks, and highlighting a few of our favorite songs from all three seasons of The Witcher, plus Nightmare of the Wolf and Blood Origin. It’s everything you need to put together the perfect monster-slaying (or bottle-killing) playlist!

We’re in the presence of royalty this week as we welcome Queen Denise to the podcast for the first time. If you’re a regular listener, you know who Queen Denise is, but you may not know what she actually does for a living…and how cool it is! Denise joins us to talk about her career as a bourbon steward (yes, it’s a real job!), explaining what it’s like to get paid to drink whiskey. She also discusses attending Moonshiner University (yes, it’s a real place!), dishes about her relationships with whiskey reps and lifts the veil on what it’s like being a woman in a very male-dominated industry. And of course, she shows off some of her knowledge about whiskey by bringing on not one, but two different Green River bourbons for us to try. Let there be no doubt, this Queen is VERY good to her subjects. Long may she reign!

Geeked Week has come and gone and we may have celebrated a bit TOO hard, but that’s not about to stop us from unpacking some of the Witcher-shaped surprises it brought us. We got our first peek at Geralt’s new animated movie with not one, but two different teaser trailers, plus all sorts of juicy details about what we can expect when it hits Netflix in…um…late 2024?!?! While we don’t love that release date, everything else about The Witcher: Sirens of the Deep looks great. We give an overview of what was revealed, speculating on how close they’ll stay to the short story that inspired it (but don’t worry, we stay spoiler free) and whine about how long it’ll be before we see more. We also discuss some of the other Geeked Week events, including how we managed to take first place in their Los Angeles trivia competition. And they say alcohol kills brain cells!

https://press.etc.cmu.edu/books/psychgeist-pop-culture

What’s this? You may be forgiven for thinking you were getting yet another episode of Tim and Valerie reminding you of how excruciatingly long you’ll have to wait for more of your favorite fantasy show as they mask the despair of their existence with alcohol and bad takes. But if you’re into torturing yourself like that, you really should call in an expert on the subject—someone like Wednesday Addams. So, for one week only, your favorite podcast is trading in their swords, potions and magic spells for knives, poisons and evil curses as they discuss the first season of Netflix’s Wednesday. And since whiskey is kind of their Thing, they’ve brought along a special Halloween edition of Smoke Wagon Straight Bourbon. Don’t worry. They’ll try not to make it TOO painful…

We’re returning to the world of word balloons this week as we take on the latest Witcher comic books! Dark Horse’s second omnibus collection features four very different tales starring Geralt of Rivia, each drawn by a different artist. We discuss and unpack all of them, finding much to enjoy in these stories set within the universe of the Witcher games. Tricky moral quandaries! Icky monster fights! Dandelion!! We also find much to enjoy in this episode’s whisky, Kyrö Malt Rye, which we picked up on a recent trip to Finland. What were we doing in Finland? Did we drink any other Finnish whisky while we were there? And how do you say “Kyrö,” anyhow? We do a good job answering at least two of those three questions in this buoyant blend of books, banter and booze.

Five years. Three seasons. Twenty-four episodes. And a whole lot of “Hmms.” It’s hard to overstate the impact Henry Cavill has had on The Witcher and the role of Geralt of Rivia, which makes his departure from the series difficult for so many of its fans. But rather than being sad that he’s leaving, we’re celebrating his time on the Continent with a special tribute episode! Tim and Valerie discuss the role Cavill had in their fandom of the show, share some of our favorite moments featuring his Geralt and read a few tributes written by listeners. And since we can’t rightly toast him without a good whiskey, we uncork a bottle of Aberfeldy 12-Year Single Malt for Cavill…and a bottle of Aberfeldy Napa Valley Red Wine Cask 15-Year Single Malt for Liam Hemsworth, the man who will be replacing him.

With all eight episodes now unpacked, Producer Sean at last weighs in as we bid farewell to The Witcher’s latest season. To borrow from our favorite bard, season three is full of “extraordinary things” and we offer our final thoughts on all of them, from the wonderful found family Geralt builds with Yen and Ciri, to Jaskier’s tantalizing relationship with Radovid, to the breathtaking battle at Aretuza. But the most remarkable thing of all may just be that Producer Sean picks a Canadian whisky to accompany our discussion—Alberta Premium Cask Strength Rye. We doubt even Dijkstra would have been able to see that one coming!

We’ve finally reached the end of The Witcher’s latest season and we’re feeling pretty emotional about it, at least if this week’s discussion is any indication. We have some big laughs. We shed some actual tears (we’re as surprised as you!). We get frustrated with characters, angry at toxic fans and a teensy bit testy with each other before declaring our unbridled love to everything The Witcher has brought to our lives. Or maybe it’s just the super strong Man o’ Sword Single Malt Scotch we decided to pair this climactic episode up with. We do drink a lot of it. Whatever the cause, we hope you’ll join us in lifting a glass as we say so long to Henry Cavill, Tissaia de Vries, Ciri’s innocence and The Witcher’s sensational season three!

When we ordered a Blood and Sand, this really wasn’t what we had in mind. Season three’s penultimate episode features a small bit of Brokilon, a handful of teary reunions and a whole lot of Ciri wandering through the desert while hallucinating and hanging out with a unicorn. It’s not the most action-packed hour of Witcher, which may be why we paired it with one of our stronger whiskeys this season—Maker’s Mark Private Selection Toasted Marshmallow. We’re mixed on whether we can taste the marshmallow, but all of us get plenty toasted talking about Ciri’s surprisingly strong singing voice, Geralt’s inarguably impressive wheezing and Little Horse’s monstrously massive… You know, you should probably just listen.

Mix two parts sorcery and one part elven revenge. Add a dash of political intrigue with a light splash of Nilfgaardian conquest. Shake violently and you have the recipe for Vol. 2’s first episode, “Everybody Has a Plan ‘til They Get Punched in the Face.” Considering the game-changing nature of the episode, we thought it was only fitting that our discussion of it raises the stakes for us as well. So, inspired by Geralt’s climactic head-to-head duel with Vilgefortz, we open up two different whiskeys from Woodinville Whiskey Co.—their award-winning bourbon and their rye. Will double-fisting our way through our discussion leave us wheezing and immobile like a certain monster-slayer? Or will it give us the liquid courage to revisit hard-to-watch scenes like the explosion of one major character, the utter heartbreak of another and the weirdly stilted acting of a third? Listen and learn, lovelies!

It’s amazing what you can discover when you’re passed out on the cutting room floor. It’s our first side quest of the season, and we’re bringing you a treasure trove of past moments that were never lost and always found…but that we still had to cut for time. Why is there a woman in Arizona who thinks Tim has blue eyes? What would it take for Valerie to wear a hair hat? And can we actually prove Yarskier is real? (Tim seems to think so!) This is Whiskey with Witcher at its most unhinged and proof that yes, we did in fact go there.

It’s a party onscreen and in the Whiskey with Witcher recording studio! We uncork a bottle of Johnny Smoking Gun Whiskey to accompany Geralt and Yen’s search for proof and dance our way through season three’s mélange of a fifth episode. And you know what? It turns out all is indeed not as it seems when it comes to the hour’s mix of repeating timelines, juicy acting, questionable couture and oddly chaste sex scenes. (Everything except for Istredd. He is every bit as stupidly hot this season as he appears.) Plus, we recount a few of our recent adventures of Comic-Con while Producer Sean finds he’s no match for Geralt…but not at all in the way that you think.

Jaskier might not be a fan of the flamboyantly-mannered songsmith introduced in season three’s fourth episode, but we sure are! Actually, there’s quite a bit we’re fond of in this one. From its shipside monster fight, to Fringilla living her best barfly life, to the line that made Radskier shippers squeal the world over, “The Invitation” is easily one of the season’s standouts. But with Valdo making so much noise, why would we pair this one with a whiskey called The Quiet Man? Well, that would be for Geralt, a man of few words. But there’s another, even more powerful reason for the pairing……which you’ll discover if you stop reading this and just hit play already!

Yennefer reconnects with Tissaia. Geralt reacquaints himself with a friend. Jaskier reconciles with Vespula! There are reunions a-plenty in season three’s third episode, so it’s only fitting that our whiskey pairing is one as well. We first discovered Milam & Greene back in our second season, but this time, we’re sampling their Port Cask Finished Rye, a sweeter-than-expected spirit that still has plenty of spice. And what do you know, the same can be said about this episode, which touches on parental sacrifice and love, but still manages to feature season three’s steamiest sex scene (you go, Philippa!) and likely would have had at least one more if Geralt wasn’t such a buzzkill. (Boo!)

There are “Extraordinary Things” to be found within season 3’s stellar second episode, as well as some real nightmares, and we have a blast discussing both. Keira Metz makes her debut! Jaskier drops an eye-opening new song! Philippa whips Dijkstra into shape (literally)! Fringilla gets drunker than we do! And as for the episode’s monster, well let’s just say we much prefer it when it’s our whiskey that has all the legs. That said, the terrifying creature did inspire this episode’s pairing, High West Whiskey’s American Prairie Bourbon. Cheers?

It’s time to celebrate, Witcher fans, because season 3 is here! In “Shaerrawedd,” Geralt, Yen and Ciri are finally together...but sadly, the same isn’t true for us. Valerie’s out of town, so we’re recording our discussion of the season’s first episode virtually, but on the bright side, that means more delicious Clyde May’s Alabama Style Whiskey for Tim and Producer Sean! And that leads to a lively chat that touches on everything from Geralt’s big daddy energy, Jaskier’s “meet lute” with Prince Radovid, why Shaelmaars are suddenly called Jackapaces and the one big place where The Witcher is still dropping the ball (*cough* costumes *cough*). Oh, and we also create a new ship. Can you say “Yarskier”?