Castle & Cairn

Produced (at the time of this bottling) by Heaven Hill in Bardstown Kentucky, Ezra Brooks is a brand owned by Lux Row which itself is a property of the Indiana overlords at Midwest Grain Products.  There are 99 proof, 99 proof finished, rye, and seven-year versions of Ezra Brooks floating around. They have a robust private barrel  program and also have put out a number of distiller select barrels to large retailers to get rid of excess inventory. Lux Row now produces the juice in house at their own Bardstown Facility.  🛒 Sourced:  $41.99 - 750ml - World of Beverage Smyrna, GA - Discounted as the last few bottles of a store pick, normally $54. I see distiller's selects of this around the $60 mark, though some ABC state picks are around $35. March 2025 update - seeing distiller picks in the low $50s, they're trying to move these and not having much success.  🧪 Proof:  120 proof, 60% ABV  - This is a great example of how "Cask Strength" is not a regulat...

If you've been browsing whiskey Reddit or your other choice of social media, you may have seen people referring to some whiskey as being "sourced". Sourcing simply means that the final brand or producer purchases the initial distillate from another company. There are a growing number of such "Non-Distiller Producers" (NDPs) in the US. Typically these NDPs will blend and bottle different distillates and may age or finish them as well. This is not a new concept as rectifiers (those who bought whiskey from producers and "rectified" it) have been around as long as whiskey has existed in America. Some of the biggest brands we know today started as rectifier companies, including Four Roses. On the other hand, bad actor rectifiers added adulterants and put out shoddy products, spurring the creation of the Bottled-In-Bond Act and other quality regulations. While we have replaced the term "rectifier" with "NDP" in the common parlance, the p...