Weller Weekend Slide Nears Forty Percent Off Peak

This is The Cut Weekend. I'm Franklin. Pour something you're in no hurry to finish, because Saturday's for looking back at the week behind us. Let's walk through it together.

This was a week where the cheap seats kept winning. Monday, Redemption rolled out its first bottled-in-bond bourbon — six years old, full 100 proof, forty-nine ninety-nine, two years past what the law requires and still priced under most of the category. It's sourced from MGP, and Redemption says so right on the label, which is worth noticing on its own. Tuesday, a forty-dollar bottle of Maker's Mark 46 pulled a 99-point Double Gold at one of the biggest spirits competitions in the world — the kind of score you usually only see chasing a lottery win, not standing on a regular shelf. And all week, the allocated side of the market kept telling a different story. William Larue Weller, one of the most chased bottles in bourbon, has been sliding on the secondary market — down closer to forty percent off its 2023 peak by Friday's numbers. Blue-chip names are still fetching four figures, but that gap between the sticker and the resale price keeps closing. Wednesday, Bardstown Bourbon Company put two genuinely different bourbons — one finished thirty-two months in Scotch casks, the other just four months in Pacific oak — at the exact same $139.99, so you could choose the story instead of the price. And Thursday brought a Kentucky raffle putting Pappy Van Winkle and Buffalo Trace Antique Collection bottles within reach of a hundred-dollar ticket, with the field still wide open. Put it together and you get a week where the everyday bottle kept earning its price, and the trophy bottles kept getting a little more honest about theirs.

Now, the thing I want to sit with a minute. There's a whiskey out of Kentucky called Very Olde St. Nick Immaculata, and it's the kind of release that reminds you what a blender actually does for a living. This is a thirteen-barrel batch, built after somebody sat down and worked through three hundred casks to find the ones worth using — three different whiskeys, ranging from eight years old up to nineteen, brought together into one cask-strength blend and bottled unfiltered at 118.2 proof. Nobody rushed that. Somebody tasted three hundred barrels so you'd only ever taste the thirteen that earned it. It's out now at Kentucky distillery events and select national accounts, around $260, while the batch lasts — and once it's gone, that exact blend doesn't come back, because next year's three hundred barrels won't taste the same. That's the difference between a limited run somebody dreamed up in a meeting and scarcity that actually happened in the warehouse.

If you're looking to pour something this weekend without chasing anything, a couple of things are sitting right there for the taking. Woodinville's Single Barrel Rye is out nationwide now — a hundred percent rye mash bill at cask strength, 117.54 proof, which is a real departure from the fifty-one percent rye most bottles lean on. And if you're near a store in Southwest Ohio, Weller Special Reserve has been turning up as a walk-in restock — no lottery, no entry required, just the wheated Weller style at under forty dollars.

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.