Old Fitzgerald Beats Weller in Blind Tasting

This is The Cut Weekend. I'm Franklin. Five days of news are in the books, and Saturday's when we pour one and sort out what actually counted.

This week kept circling back to the same idea, even though nobody planned it that way: the honest bottle keeps winning. Monday, Heaven Hill told retailers their Bottled-in-Bond supply is going to run thinner through August — a fermentation tank delay at Bernheim pushed the restart back, and that's on top of a production cut already planned. The bottles getting squeezed aren't collector trophies. They're Evan Williams and Elijah Craig, the $25 bottles regular people actually buy. Tuesday, New Riff cleared federal approval for its first 8-year Bottled-in-Bond — the first time a craft distillery from that 2014, '15 wave has had the age to sit next to the legacy houses, no lottery required, just a trip to the store in Kentucky or Ohio. Wednesday, the number got harder: Heaven Hill confirmed a wholesale increase on Elijah Craig and Larceny, six to eight percent, landing August 1. Second increase on those two bottles in fourteen months. And by Friday, the week closed the loop in the best possible way. A Louisville bar ran a blind tasting — four wheated bourbons, no labels, forty people voting. Everybody in the room expected Weller to win. It didn't. A twenty-seven dollar Old Fitzgerald Bottled-in-Bond took it by more than double the next bottle's votes, and Weller finished third. Take the whole week together and you've got one story: the category keeps trying to remind you that price and hype don't equal quality, and the $27, hundred-proof, federally-supervised bottle keeps outperforming what it's supposed to lose to.

The feature this week is that Sawyer tasting, because it's the one thing all five days quietly pointed toward. It happened Tuesday night at The Sawyer, a bar in Louisville's Butchertown neighborhood that runs a monthly blind series. Four wheated bourbons on the table — Maker's Mark, Weller Special Reserve, Larceny Barrel Proof, and Old Fitzgerald Bottled-in-Bond — labels off, forty ranked ballots collected at the door. Before the pours started, the room polled itself, and most people picked Weller as their favorite going in, sight unseen. When the ballots came back, Old Fitzgerald took the top spot on seventeen of them. Larceny Barrel Proof came in second with eight. Weller — the bottle half the room walked in rooting for — finished third. The bar's owner put it plainly: people assume Weller wins any wheated lineup because of the name on the label, not what's in the glass. This wasn't a big production. No sommeliers, no scorecards with jargon — just forty regular drinkers, their noses, and their own honest ranking. That's worth sitting with. It's easy to let a name on a shelf tag do your thinking for you. The Sawyer's planning to run this format monthly, high-rye bourbons up next in late August, so if you're anywhere near Louisville, that's one worth putting on the calendar.

Still pourable this weekend — Heaven Hill's Bottled-in-Bond 7-Year is restocked at the Bourbon Heritage Center in Bardstown through Sunday, twenty-eight dollars, no fuss. Buffalo Trace's weekly single-barrel walk-up is running at the distillery gift shop through the end of the week, fifty-five dollars, no purchase limit, first come first served. And if you want to run your own version of Tuesday's experiment, Old Grand-Dad Bottled-in-Bond is sitting on shelves nationally for about twenty-five dollars — grab it, grab something pricier, pull the labels, and see what wins in your own kitchen.

That's the week in the glass. If The Cut Weekend earned a few minutes of your Saturday, do me one favor — follow the show wherever you're listening, so tomorrow's edition finds you on its own. The full American Whiskey Industry Brief is free every morning at chasingtheunicornpodcast.com. I'm Franklin. Pour something you like, share it with somebody worth sharing it with — and remember, your unicorn is out there.