Seven Springtime American Whiskeys To Look Forward To

By Richard Thomas

St. Patrick’s Day and the Spring Equinox are behind us, so even if the weather is still a bit chilly, springtime has arrived. As a rule, Spring is not a season associated with the much sought after, annualized limited edition releases that are so passionately sought after by enthusiasts. However, there are a few expected bottles to look out for in the season, plus some one-shot offerings that we know are coming down the pipe. Here are seven to look out for in April and May

April

Lost Lantern Spring 2025 Collection
Founded by a whiskey writer and a sales manager for one of New York’s premiere liquor retailers, Lost Lantern has established a stellar reputation as a European style, American negociant. The cornerstone of that reputation has come from their single barrel bottlings of whiskeys from the broad, deep sector of craft distillers in the U.S.

I have my eye focused on two bottlings in this batch:

Santa Fe Spirits Apple Brandy Finished Single Malt (Santa Fe, New Mexico; 110.1 proof; 100 bottles; $100)
Watershed Nocino Finished 8 Year Old Bourbon (Columbus, Ohio; 126.5 proof; 200 bottles; $90)

Michter’s 10 Year Old Single Barrel Bourbon
Many Michter’s expressions are not even annualized limited editions, but come out periodically. The official explanation for that is the company releases these bottlings only once they have a batch that passes muster, their 10 Year Old Bourbon is an example of that in practice. It was not on anyone’s calendar as a Spring 2025 release, but it was only just recently announce as going into distribution for April.

We’re big fans of Michter’s 10 Year Old Bourbon and Rye (both always single barrel releases) at The Whiskey Reviewer, and if you can find a bottle for anything like it’s $195 suggested price tag, we strongly suggest snagging it.

Old Fitzgerald 7 Year Old Bottled in Bond Bourbon
For the last several years, the Old Fitzgerald brand has been a bi-annual, premium release, formally known as the Decanter Series. In fact, the Spring 2025 batch of that expression of Old Fitz is described below. But now Heaven Hill is building on the brand name with a regular release an also bonded, Old Fitzgerald 7 Year Old. It makes for a nice, wheated parallel to the Heaven Hill 7 Year Old Bottled in Bond Bourbon, which is based on their traditional rye mash bill stock. This is currently slated for an April introduction, but that could change.

Old Potrero Hotaling’s 13 Year Old Bottled in Bond Rye
San Francisco’s Old Potrero is part of a class of small distillers that I like to call “craft whiskey before there was craft whiskey.” I say that because craft whiskey distilling started to take off in the mid-2000s, but folks like Old Potrero were making whiskey a decade before that. Having been around since the 1990s means that the distillery had stocks of properly matured and even middle aged whiskey long before even stalwarts like Stranahan’s. They were also pioneers in the sense of a Daniel Boone, staking a claim on malted rye whiskey so far in advance of anyone else that they labeled those whiskeys as single malts, and what was inside the bottle was so novel and unique at the time the Federal authorities were OK with that.

Thus, we’ve come to count on Old Potrero to periodically release some of the oldest whiskey to come from any craft distiller, and 2025 sees them continue that with a 13 year old bonded malted rye. Old Potrero is taking advantage of the change in regulations to allow for 700 ml bottles, but whether they are doing that with an eye on exporting their wares or to stretch out their production runs that little bit extra is unknown. What is known is that this particular item is in a run of just a bit over 400 bottles, going for a suggested price of $200 each. These are currently available for pre-order from the distillery, with a shipping date of April 18.

May

Little Book Chapter 9
I believe the best way to describe the Little Book series is to look past the marketing tales about Freddie Noe, the heir apparent at Jim Beam, being called “Little Book(er)” when he was a boy. Instead, look at it as a premium expression which was created with the idea of being able to play with the broad pallet of whiskeys available to Beam Suntory’s corporate holdings and build up the reputation of Freddie Noe prior to his full succession to his father, Fred Noe (Freddie is currently effectively co-master distiller with Fred, in much the same way that Eddie and Jimmy Russell shared some duties in the first few years after Eddie’s elevation at Wild Turkey).

No details about the new Little Book are available yet, but this should be the ninth installment to come out at this time of year. It has become a fixture of the annualized limited edition picture, and one of the few major releases of that type to come out in the Spring season.

Old Fitzgerald Bottled in Bond Spring 2025
We have already mentioned the Old Fitzgerald Decanter Series: the bi-annual, premium expression of wheated bourbon that is routinely aged more than a decade. These come out on the Autumn and Spring seasons, and while the Autumn release sometimes gets lost amid all the other hot items that come out during that time of year, the Spring release is often sitting there in a class of its own.

As with Little Book, we know this one is coming but have no details as of yet. However, with the regular release brand extension launching in March, I think we can count on these Decanter releases to continue to be at least a decade old going forward. Releasing something younger would put it too close to the regular release expression and undermine the value of the brand.