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šŸ„ƒReview #78: 1792 Full Proof Bourbon - Costco Single Barrel Select 2026

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Barton 1792 out of Bardstown, KY is part of the Sazerac family of businesses which also includes Buffalo Trace. 1792 is their current flagship brand which also comes in Full Proof, Cask Finish, and Sweet wheat iterations. Full Proof has been almost impossible to find since Jim Murray named it his 2020 World Whiskey of the year, but I have started to see it somewhat regularly and demand seems to have fallen enough that big players like Costco are able to get in on the action, moving some single barrels at lower than SRP. Costco has a very strong relationship with Barton as the latter bottles the white label Kirkland Small Batch , Bottled-in-Bond , and very elusive Single Barrel. As opposed to store picks, a single barrel program of this magnitude likely required Costco to rely on the distiller to pick the barrels against a target profile, potentially sending a tasting team to workshop that target and then letting Barton replicate to similar casks in their barrel management system. ...
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šŸ„ƒReview #77: Old Fitzgerald 7-Year Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon

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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...
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šŸ„ƒReview #76: Chattanooga Whiskey 91 - Tennessee High Malt

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Chattanooga Whiskey 91 is the signature offering of its namesake distillery and showcases their signature "high malt" style, requiring at least 25% of the mash bill to be specialty malted grains. Chattanooga Whiskey is the first producer within city limits since before prohibition and its founders were heavily involved in getting Tennessee State and local laws changed to allow for distillation outside of the traditional three distilling counties, "Vote Whiskey". While they originally sourced whiskey from MGP, they have been producing whiskey at their downtown location since 2016 and the larger riverfront facility since 2017. The Tennessee High Malt style is a bread baker's approach to whiskey, showcasing the character of the grains, often from bespoke varieties and sources. This results in less of a focus on wood flavors with the upshot that Chattanooga bottlings tend to be younger, dumped before the barrel character can drown out the mash.  It is basically imp...
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šŸ„ƒReview #75: Early Times Bottled-in-Bond Bourbon

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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...
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šŸ„ƒWhiskey Frankenstein: Kirkland Bottled-in-Bond (2024) + Wolcott Rickhouse Reserve = Barton White Label

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I've been meaning to kill off my oldest bottle Costco's  Kirkland BiB  Bourbon for a bit now. The 2024 iteration was a good bit better than the 2025 for whatever reason, but this bottle had gotten pushed to the back of the cabinet. Unfortunately a good amount of headspace in that 1L bottle has resulted in a bit of over oxidation; most of the interested fruited notes are gone. With a few sips of a prior pour left in the glass, I absentmindedly tossed in a few glugs of Total Wine's Wolcott Rickhouse Reserve , also a Barton-1792 product, hoping that a little bit of fresh juice would liven up the Kirkland. The Wolcott impressed me for being relatively easy drinking at 120 proof and around $35, especially given how hard to find 1792 Full Proof had been over the past few years. Results of this impromptu mix were favorable, so I have set out to better document the ratios involved and recreate my accidental success. VĆ”monos! For the uninitiated, Whiskey Frankenstein is the practi...
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