Having just found myself the owner of the newest release from Blood Oath, Pact Number 9 and at retail to boot, I thought I'd carve out this week's post to discuss this relatively unique brand and why one (or all) of their nine releases may be worth adding to your collection. Intriguingly, this brand seems to be a relatively known but unknown bourbon and has trucked along modestly flying under the radar for many Bourboneurs for the past nearly decade. Given my focus on value, the cherry on top for Blood Oath is that over the nine years now that this bottle has been released, the price point ha ..read more

Did you know that a ball of glass will bounce higher than a ball of rubber (if it doesn't break on impact that is)? It sounds like total bullsh#t but it isn't. That random fact, one hundred percent blew my mind. I really heard it and thought, well, that's malarkey! In today's world of "I saw it on the internet so it must be true" it seems like facts are distorted and diluted and there's just no telling what's legit and even worse, the time it may take to sort it out just feels like it's not worth it. As it relates to mistruths that are floating around on the interwebs, some people still belie ..read more

Heaven Hill puts out some great products, also a few that aren't so great (...like Mellow Corn), but there's some real jewels in their overall lineup like Old Fitzgerald, Parkers Heritage and Elijah Craig to name but a few. A brand that many Bourboneurs may not have heard of within the Heaven Hill family of offerings is William Heavenhill, now getting ready to release its tenth edition with its first original bottling having been released back in 2008. William Heavenhill For having a brand and distillery named after the man, he's not the most notably documented fellow in the annals of history ..read more

I still remember the very first Birthday Bourbon from Old Forester I laid hands on some five or six years ago; I was visiting my hometown and a buddy who managed a small liquor store had told me that he had a friend who had a Birthday Bourbon and that friend was looking to part with it. Better still, the price was dirt cheap, and so it was of course a yes. After the deal was done, that evening another good friend upon learning of my good fortune had asked if he could buy it from me - he was going to be playing in a golf outing with some friends and tradition was that everyone brings a nice bo ..read more

In developing the Bourbon Blue Book, we created not only one of the most updated and extensive lists of secondary values for coveted bottles of brownwater, but an amazing resource to track trends in popularity and the ebbs and flows of interest in particular bottles and brands. Through this proprietary resource, we compiled this list which provides a snapshot in time of what bottles are moving markets and below we also provide some commentary on why these bottles are in demand. Blanton's Single Barrel Bourbon Although it should be no surprise, this bottle is a constant fixture on secondary ma ..read more

It's amazing how popular bourbon has become in such a short period of time, and the trajectory suggests that it's only going to be getting even more popular. IWSR Drinks Market Analysis predicts that the annual growth rate for bourbon will be plus five percent in volume and plus eight percent in value between now and 2026. Supplier sales to meet this demand rose nearly eleven percent last year, just north of five billion dollars! This underlying market demand has driven a premium on rare and allocated bottles of bourbon, and it seems that the sky's the limit on where this premium pricing may ..read more

The art of enjoying your bourbon can take on a lot of nuances. Some Bourboneurs like to enjoy a glass by themselves at the end of the day whilst others amongst friends, some like to drink it in a Glencairn whilst others prefer theirs in a rocks glass, some with a cube and others neat, and some like their bourbon lower proof and tame, whilst others enjoy a full throttle hazmat pour. For all the nuance however, it still all finds itself in the same place, poured into our mouths and enjoyed. The art of enjoying your bourbon can take some effort if you're new to whiskey. You may have to keep at i ..read more

Bourbon prices just keep inching north, and certainly there are a load of spendy bourbons that you can drop your hard-earned cash on. A review of the Bourbon Blue Book suggests that there's no shortage of spendy options in fact, but, there are a handful of rare bourbons out there that you'll need to either have a windfall from a rich uncle, win the lottery or take out a second mortgage on your home to land! In this post we'll cover 20 of the most elusive, expensive, unicorny bourbons that are on the market today. 20. Booker's 10th Anniversary Limited Edition At the bottom of the Bourboneur l ..read more

A growing category in American bourbon is double-oaked bourbons. As most of our readership will likely know all bourbon to be able to be called bourbon must be aged in new charred oak barrels. From those lovely, charred vessels, the wood imparts the color of the bourbon as well as the varied tasting notes, such as vanilla or caramel, and to some extent, all depending, the mouthfeel. The barrel is the centerpiece of and pivotal to the bourbon we all love and enjoy. Just as the name implies, double-oaked bourbon is bourbon that has benefited from time in a second barrel. This second barreling i ..read more

A phrase that we've seen more and more when it comes to bourbon marketing is "limited edition" or "limited release." It sounds sexy, doesn't it? Just like any clever marketing gimmick, it's meant to imply some perceived rarity or scarceness that is then suggestive that by definition it is more valuable or more desirable to have. With the boom in all thing's bourbon, and with so many folks eager to lay hands on rare or allocated bottles of bourbon, the appeal to land a limited-edition bottling has never been greater. The decline in the quality of limited-edition bourbons seems to parallel the ..read more