For the nearly 436,000 of you who’ve joined us in some way, shape or form in the past year, thanks for drinking with us! Cheers to you, and to the exciting news we have to share for the year ahead; more on that at the end of the post.
Last year at about this time, we set our sights on a handful of bourbons which were on our bucket list to try. With so much great bourbon and so little time, it’s good to be specific when setting goals and expanding one’s bourbon horizons. Below, and in no particular order, are the top bottles on this year’s Bourboneur Bucket List. My resolution for 2025…get hands on these bottles!
This past year marked the 7th year in which Uncle Nearest had been in business, and with a release of this 7-year whiskey, and a run of 7,000 bottles, you’ll quickly understand where the “777” naming convention came from. Some may think this is a slightly overpriced bourbon for the age statement, but for the Uncle Nearest fan base, there probably won’t be a flinch of the eye on the price. The barrels for this bottling were selected by Victoria Eady Butler who is a fifth-generation descendant of Nearest Green, and just so happens to also be a four-time Master Blender of the Year award recipient.
Interesting side note – Nathan “Nearest” Green was born into slavery in 1820 and emancipated following the Civil War. During an 1880 census his name was captured as “Nearis” incorrectly. Nearest taught Jack Daniel, founder of THE Jack Daniels Distillery his distilling techniques and is the first African American master distiller on record in the United States.
This bottling has been noted by some to be “the pinnacle of Tennessee whiskey artistry.” Super excited to add this to the bar shelves. The current Bourbon Blue Book® average value is $179 as of writing.
One thing that there’s less and less of in this world these days is older age stated bourbon. I must admit that I’m a sucker for some brownwater that’s been waiting around 13-16 years waiting for me to drink it. It’s kind of like taking my kids for ice cream, insofar as it feels like a treat. Purportedly the bottle count on this one is only 133, so I may be “sorry out of luck”…(my dad had a different word he used to use instead of sorry that started with an s). Like a number of other distilleries here lately, this bottle is supposedly a “BuffTurkey” barrel. These bottles originate from a period over 15 years ago when Wild Turkey was upgrading their equipment. During this downtime, they contracted Buffalo Trace to distill for them using their proprietary yeast strains, mash bill, etc. Campari took over ownership of Wild Turkey about this time and elected to sell off those barrels to other suppliers. These barrels have now made their way to out into the world and are being released under various brands like River Roots, OKI, and Seelbach's to name a few. According to the Bourbon Blue Book® I’m going to need to shell out about $325 if I reallllly want to get serious about this bottle.
K. Luke is a brand that’s flown under the radar for many years, but one in which I’m super interested in getting to know a bit better in the year ahead. Started by a husband wife team (much like Old Carter, but without the messy divorce), and named after their children Kaitlyn and Lucas. The husband wife team Jonathan and Jennifer Maisano owns Maisano's Fine Wine and Spirits and after picking over three hundred barrels for their store, and Jonathan’s achieving the status of first level certified Sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers, felt it was time to hang up their own shingle starting K. Luke. Batch 10 is rumored to be a complex blend that could go toe-to-toe with many of Kentucky’s finest. It’s also barrel proof, and a touch of heat wouldn’t be terrible to pair with these cool days of the year! There’s not been many of these floating around the secondary as of yet given the recentness of the release, but on average according to the Bourbon Blue Book® you can expect to shell out around $150 for this one.
So, it’s 2025…but why not reach back a couple years to 2022. After watching the price on this bottle go up, and up, and up, while the rest of the market this past year went down, and down, and down, there has to be something to that right? For those coming to us with fresh palates, the Parker’s Heritage lineup is a high-end line from Heaven Hill. This past year marked the 18th release in the lineup to-date and every release tends to be something you probably want to have. The Double-Barreled Blend is in some way’s Heaven Hills George T. Stagg from what I can gather in reading various reviewers tasting notes. It’s big, bold, and delivers in a lot of great ways. According to the Bourbon Blue Book® the current average for this bottle is $670…do I want to pay that…no…so maybe I can finagle my way into one of these on trade!
Following Buckner’s 13 being named World’s Best Bourbon in the San Francisco World Spirits competition a few years back, this release as well as their Buckner’s 17 release have enjoyed a buoy of interest. Much like the Bluegrass bottling on the list, it’s got some age to it clocking in at 15 years and most reviews I’ve waded through suggest it’s a rich pour with a lot of bourbony goodness. I’ve not one time seen any of these expressions either on the shelf or at a bar in my area, so I bit the bullet and finally ordered one off Seelbach’s when it became available a couple weeks back…its presently “en route” according to tracking information I received from UPS. I didn’t pay secondary, but these are still pretty spendy – if you’re going to go the secondary route according to the Bourbon Blue Book® the going rate on average is $420 via Venmo or whatever cash app you have.
Since launching our app in August, we have continued to build out and enhance the features available to our subscribers. In a forthcoming release scheduled for the months ahead, we’ll be releasing an expanded tasting section of our app where users can rate and keep track of bourbons, adding tasting notes and more!
Data matters and having up-to-date and reliable information to make informed decisions about buying, selling or trading coveted bottles of brownwater is critical. The secondary market doesn’t stand still and neither do we in cataloguing and providing the web’s most accurate, reliable and up-to-date pricing around. As new bottles hit the market, their pricing changes daily…finding a ceiling, and eventually a floor. The market shifts up and down, commensurate with the economy – with the bourbon secondary market down some eleven percent last year alone. If you’re looking for a resource that’s based on real data grounded in actual sales on the secondary market, is updated regularly, and has values for nearly 6,000 bottles and growing at your fingertips, you need to look no further than the Bourboneur App for iOS and Android. Better still you can add your collection to the “My Bottles” section and keep tabs on your collections value daily with an updated graph showing how your bottles fare compared to the market overall. The app does require a paid subscription, only $3 per month or $25 a year, which easily pays for itself!
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