Castle & Cairn

Produced by Cascade Hollow Distilling Company in Tullahoma, Tennessee, George Dickel is a Diageo property and this 12-year-old bottled-in-bond has consistently challenged expectations for what 10+ year whisky should cost. This offering as well as a number of high-age single barrels were the brainchild of one Nicole Austin who became the general manager and lead distiller of Cascade Hollow in March 2018, having previously worked in Ireland and in New York as a master blender. Dickel first introduced this offering in 2019 and it quickly amassed some reasonable hardware across multiple spirits competitions. George A. Dickel, a German immigrant, was an successful Nashville merchant when he entered the whisky wholesale business, garnering a reputation for selling some of the smoothest, most mellow spirits in the region. Dickel always spelled whisky without the "e" believing that American brands should strive to the excellence of producers in Scotland. of  When the Cascade Hollow ...

Hailing from Missouri, the Holladay distillery is the oldest west of the Mississippi still operating on its original site, having been founded by Ben Holladay himself in 1856. Then called the "Blue Springs Distillery", the burgeoning company stored its barrels in a nearby cave to age, a favorite spot for visitors to this day. The distillery only changed hands four times, residing with the current ownership group since 1993. Ben Holladay has become a darling of enthusiasts and those "in-the-know" due to both their quality and transparency, providing both highly detailed labeling on the side of the bottle as well as a distiller's journal  with notes from the production team. This bottle of Ben Holladay Soft Red Wheat is from the March/April 2024 batch  (bottled across month end - one single batch), pulled entirely from floor 3 of Rickhouse C. They created this batch with the intent of allowing it to be compared to the August 2023 batch, also from a single floor of...

Introduced in 2026, Old Fitzgerald 7-Year Bottled-in-Bond is an attempt by Heaven Hill to make use of expanded Larceny/Wheated stocks and get consumers access to the Old Fitzgerald brand at a lower price point and wider distribution. The Old Fitzgerald Decanter series is a bi-annual premium release featuring higher age stated bourbon in a beautiful bottle. They retail for more than $100 and are quite hard to find. On the other hand, this 7-year edition is intended to be a year-round, permanent flagship for the brand. With the tagline "Your Key to Hospitality", Old Fitzgerald 7-Year features a quite lovely bottle that harkens back to the decanter styling albeit at 700mls and a more slender footprint for behind-the-bar or sidebar use in cocktails. The Old Fitzgerald brand was previously the flagship offering of the legendary Stitzel-Weller distillery before it's closure in 1992 and purchase of the offering by Heaven Hill in 1999. Fitzgerald himself was actually a Treasury A...

Produced by Sazerac's Barton 1792 distillery, Early Times Bottled-in-Bond (commonly referred to as "ET") is an enthusiast cult favorite that has morphed substantially over the last decade. A brand originally created in 1860 by John Henry "Jack Beam" (yes the uncle of Jim Beam), Early Times was acquired by Born-Foreman during Prohibition when it was sold as "medicinal whiskey", surviving the drought to become the best selling bourbon in the U.S. by 1953. Under pressure from the Vodka Boom, Brown-Foreman shifted to using refill cooperage in the 1980s to save cost, resulting in the brand losing its regulatory status as bourbon. BF re-introduced the bottled-in-bond edition in 2017 as a 75th-anniversary tribute to its peak, hoping to capitalize on the burgeoning bourbon boom. In 2020, Sazerac purchased the brand and production moved from DSP-KY-354 (Shively/Brown-Forman) to DSP-KY-12 (Barton 1792 in Bardstown Kentucky). You may see Early Times split betwe...

Introduced in 1945 by the Medley Distilling Company in Owensboro, Kentucky. Mellow Corn was created to utilize excess corn stocks while catering to a palate that preferred a lighter, less tannic, spirit than popular bourbons of the the time. Heaven Hill acquired rights to the brand in its 1993 transaction with United Distiller's (now part of Diageo), also picking up a few other historic brands like Old Fitzgerald. Since then, Heaven Hill has done little to change the brand, keeping the original label design. Somewhat unexpectedly, this retro chic aesthetic has found a happy home in the internet subculture, eliciting a cult following. The popularity of "Mellow F-ing Corn" (MFC) really took off during the lockdowns of 2020 and seemed to be a reaction to the scarcity and hyper-premiumization of the whiskey and bourbon market around the same time.  Though most of the initial hype has subsided, you can still find some fair activity on  r/MellowCorn  and similar whiskey forums....

The sole survivor of a distiller from 1885, this bottle named for   J.T.S. Brown  is currently produced by Heaven Hill and is part of its large stable of bottled-in-bond products, targeted at the low end of the price spectrum. John Thompson Street Brown, Jr and George Garvin Brown, his half brother, continued the family liquor business started by J.T.S Brown Sr. - expanding it into into company that would eventually become legendary whiskey giant Brown-Foreman. Their flagship brand was the now defunct Old Prentice label though they also distributed whiskey under the J.T.S. Brown, Old Lebanon Club, and Vine Spring Malt labels. The brothers were some of the first to pioneer sealed glass bottles, and George was known for being one of the early champions of quality bourbon.  Eventually the old McBrayer Distillery that they used would change ownership a few times until Austin Nichols & Company purchased the facility (to this day the home of Wild Turkey).  The bot...

Named for old timey distiller Joseph Washington Dant and first introduced in 1836, this bottle has been produced by Heaven Hill since 1993. Allegedly, Dant didn't have the money for a copper still and instead used one made out of a wooden log instead. While both possible and fairly common at the time, this would have been highly inefficient owing to wood's porosity and poor thermal conductivity. I would hazard that only the main "barrel" of the still would have been wood with the boiler and condenser still being metal. Dant made whiskey using grains grown by himself and barrels made in his own cooperage. In 1872, Taylor and Williams began distributing Dant Distillery whiskey under the Yellowstone label, a brand which eventually passed to Heaven Hill and then was sold to Luxco. Interestingly, some Dant decedents tried to revive the Dant story by establishing  Log Still distillery though their marketing pushes provoked a successful lawsuit from Heaven Hill which held t...

Named for Colonel E.H. Taylor JR  (Kentucky Colonel - not a military man), this entry level offering honor's Taylor's commitment to quality as an early promoter of the bottled-in-bond act and designation. Relatively new to Buffalo Trace's portfolio, the brand was launched in 2011. Born in Kentucky, Taylor initially worked in banking, financing distilleries before acquiring the Old Fire Copper (O.F.C.) Distillery in 1869, named for expansive copper piping which Taylor believed would assist in eliminating impurities (stills are made of copper because it removes sulfur compounds and is naturally antimicrobial, though the time spent in transition lines is usually pretty minimal). After facing financial ruin on a number of occasions, he eventually sold a fairly successful operation to George T. Stagg in 1879 which would go on to be known as the Buffalo Trace of today. The E.H. Taylor lineup features this Small Batch, Single Barrel, Barrel Proof, Straight Rye, Barrel Proof Rye, a...

Not to be confused with the sub-$20 and now discontinued 6-year old iteration of Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond, the current 7-year-old bottling , introduced in 2019, is a mid-market offering known to many as a reliably good pour. In 1939, four years after its opening, Heaven Hill put out their first namesake Bottled-in-Bond which at the time quickly became the best selling bourbon in the state of Kentucky. The distillery has one of the largest portfolios of Bottled-in-Bond whiskeys in the world, joined by brands like Mellow Corn, Rittenhouse, Henry Mckenna, and Evan Williams in offering a bonded version. Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond is well awarded, having won Double Gold (ISC 2024), Double Platinum (ASCOT 2024), and World Whisky of the year (Bartender Spirits Awards), and is routinely offered up by some whiskey influencers as a recurring favorite. 🛒 Sourced:  $45.99 - 750ml - Costco Perimeter, GA - I sometimes see it for a few dollars cheaper. The 6-year version was perhaps too...

Distilled by Barton 1792 on behalf of Total Wine, Wolcott Bottled-in-Bond is a cousin of Costco's Kirkland Bottled-in-Bond and the bonded version of 1792. Barton does a huge number of other private bottlings while at the same time many of the 1792 branded iterations have become difficult to find. It is worth noting that the Wolcott brand has changed producers over the years. The version that won double gold in the San Francisco World Spirits Competition in 2022 was produced by Buffalo Trace. There are still a few of those floating around, so it's definitely worth checking the label for collectability (thankfully these Barton bottles have it emblazoned in big letters on the front). Both distilleries are owned by Sazerac, so it is unlikely that the mash bill has changed though the equipment itself can impact the flavor. 🛒 Sourced:  $36.99 on sale, normally $39.99 - Total Wine, GA 750ml - Note that this is roughly 2x the price of Kirkland Bottled-in-Bond (1L bottle) and about $1...

Both produced by Sazerac's Barton 1792 distillery, Costco's Kirkland Bottled-in-Bond is a value darling of the wider internet and Total Wine's Wolcott Bottled-in-Bond has placed well at international spirits competitions, though most of its metal finishes were while it was still made at Sazerac's Buffalo Trace distillery. As both are private label bottles contracted distilled by Barton, we are left to ask the question: which one is better? The Contestants - Kirkland and Wolcott You can find our full bottle write-ups on both whiskies here: Kirkland Bottled-in-Bond Review Wolcott Bottled-in-Bond Review The broad summary is that the Kirkland bottle is significantly cheaper though both the Costco and Total Wine brands here cost less than the equivalent 1792 Bottled-in-Bond, a hard to find iteration that is only now starting to show up reliably on shelves again. Per the Bottled-in-Bond act , both drams will be 100 proof, aged a minimum of four years, and made in batches of b...

Though Bardstown is known for contract distilling , their Origin and Discovery series have both collected quite the metal count at spirits awards shows. Bardstown Origin  Wheated Bottled-in-Bond  formed part of the Origin lineup with high-rye, double barreled-rye, and a 39% high wheated bourbon iterations. The high wheat is the only one of the four not to win gold or double-gold though it very likely will next season, it was just released  for the Holidays in 2024. I'm very fond of the sweetness that comes with wheated bourbons and enjoy the character building that comes with the bonded standard. Seasonal batches for bonded whiskies mean that they can differ somewhat year-to-year without being as variable as single barrels. Speaking of single barrels, at the same time as the Origin series launch in 2023, Bardstown Bourbon Co. also announced a barrel pick program or select on and off-premise retailers. 🛒 Sourced:  $44.99 - 750ml - Tower Package, GA. Typically around ...

This is a leak pre-release analysis, for our review of Old Fitzgerald 7-year look here . In a TTB filing , Heaven Hill soft announces a new Old Fitzgerald edition whiskey: Old Fitzgerald Bottled-in-Bond 7-Year Bourbon. The Old Fitzgerald decanter line has long been a coveted edition, but low supply and high demand means that it is terribly hard to find, particularly for anything close to suggested retail price. Official press from the distiller has not yet occurred, but we have put together the following details.  About Old Fitzgerald From Heaven Hill's wheated mash bill (68% Corn, 20% Wheat, 12% Barley), the Old Fitzgerald decanter series is a Bottled-in-Bond offering released twice annually. This mash bill is also likely shared by the Larceny series of products, all aged in #3 char barrels.  Old Fitzgerald Decanter Series Old Fitzgerald 7-Year Bottled-in-Bond credit @Bourbonconky posted on X.com by  Bourb Your Enthusiasm The new product will have a seven year age state...