Three Ultra-Aged Bourbon Releases To Watch For

By Richard Thomas

Blade and Bow 22 Year Old

Blade and Bow 22 Year Old Bourbon
(Credit: Diageo)

Spring 2017 is turning out to be an unusually busy time on the American whiskey release calendar, and of particular note are a trio of ultra-aged whiskeys, either already working their way through distribution to a store shelf near you or soon will be. For those who obsess about high age statements or rare, hard to find whiskeys, this is a good season to get to work on some bottle hunting.

Blade & Bow 22 Year Old
When the initial batch of Blade & Bow 22 Year Old was released in 2015, it was actually something that could be acquired with only a modicum of fuss and very often at or near it’s official $150 price tag. Nowadays what few bottles remain run closer to $550. Cross your fingers that the release of a new batch this spring will bring prices down, because if they do this might be a good chance to acquire an ultra-aged Bourbon.

Opinions on the previous run of Blade & Bow 22 Year Old were admittedly mixed, but part of the reason for that is a certain sector of the whiskey blogosphere committed to panning everything done by Diageo, and Blade & Bow is a Diageo whiskey. Imagine if someone else had put out a blend of two decades old Bernheim and Buffalo Trace Bourbons; the response would not have been nearly as sadly predictable and unfortunately reflexive.

Hochstadter’s 16 Year Old Cask Strength Rye
Very old Ryes are few and far between. Witness the hoopla that surrounded the 13 Year Old Booker’s Rye release last year. Even so, a true Rye diehard may already be familiar with the generalities of the Hochstadter’s 16 Year Old Cask Strength Rye from Cooper Spirits, because it is based on 100% Canadian Rye whisky stock from Alberta Distillers, the same as last year’s Lock, Stock & Barrel 16 Year Old from the same independent bottler.

Old Rip Van Winkle 25 Year Old

Old Rip Van Winkle 25 Year Old
(Credit: Sazerac)

The crucial difference is that this year’s Hochstadter’s is a cask strength version of that Rye. The alcohol strength is about 8% higher, and the price (at $200) is about $50 more. For fans of the Alberta Distillers 100% Rye flavor profile, that is a bargain.

Old Rip Van Winkle 25 Year Old
As we have been noting at The Whiskey Reviewer for a couple of years now, the smart connoisseur should steer away from the Pappy Van Winkle brand as not worth the hassle or inflated prices anymore. While it’s still good whiskey, the wheated Stitzel-Weller Bourbon stock that gave the brand its renown is now widely believed to be absent from its regular line-up.

Or maybe not. For some time observers have speculated as to whether Van Winkle had socked away some of its Stitzel-Weller wheated stock into stainless steel containers, and now we know at least some of it was, because that is where the 710 bottles of Old Rip Van Winkle 25 Year Old comes from.

Priced at $1,800 a bottle, this Bourbon shows the hallmarks of a pricey single malt Scotch release. The bottle is a handmade decanter from Glencairn, and the box is also handcrafted, in this instance by carpenters in North Carolina using the barrel staves that actually held the whiskey. Count on this precious rarity going for far more than the official $1,800 asking price.

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