The World's Most Expensive Bourbons

[Ken Gargett]

The World's Most Expensive Bourbons

© Sazerac | Once again, the Buffalo Trace Distillery provides the lion's share of the top 10.

Prepare to dig deep into your wallet as we check out Bourbon's most expensive bottles.

By Don Kavanagh | Posted Friday, 17-Jul-2020

 

 

If there's one thing that people like better than sex and corruption, it's Bourbon.

That might sound like an extraordinary statement, but our readership figures suggest that the one subject that attracts more attention than even financial shenanigans and intimate impropriety is Bourbon.

Related stories:

Bourbon Leads the Whiskey Boom

The World's Most Wanted Bourbons

The Year Bourbon Went Ballistic

That is a reflection of the Bourbon boom that is currently sweeping the world generally, but the US in particular. The fact that we get more readers for a Bourbon article on what is essentially a wine website tells you that the level of interest in Bourbon has moved far beyond a simple taste for a shot of Jim Beam after a hard day.

It has been a tough year for wine and for spirits generally, but Bourbon has emerged ahead of the pack, especially in the US. While some top-end wines have struggled slightly to increase their average prices in the tough trading conditions of the past year, whiskey generally has done well (especially at the top end).

Bourbon has managed a more-than-respectable return of 5.22 percent year-on-year for its most expensive bottlings, but that result has been far from evenly distributed, as we'll discuss in a moment.

But first let's take a look at the most expensive Bourbons listed on our database. As ever with these stories, the whiskeys are ranked in order of their global average retail price across thousands of merchants. The prices are correct at the time of writing, but be aware that the average price changes daily.

The Most Expensive Bourbons on Wine-Searcher:

	Wine Name	Average Price
	Old Rip Van Winkle 25 Year Old	$21,531
	Eagle Rare Double Eagle Very Rare	$18,309
	Old Rip Van Winkle Handmade Family Reserve 16 Year Old	$7279
	Buffalo Trace Distillery OFC	$7069
	Michter's Celebration Sour Mash	$6750
	Michter's 25 Year Old Single Barrel	$5610
	AH Hirsch Finest Reserve 20 Year Old	$5143
	WL Weller 19 Year Old	$4702
	Colonel EH Taylor Warehouse C Tornado Survivor	$4480
	Black Maple Hill 16 Year Old Premium Small Batch	$4344

The first thing to talk about is how much this list has changed since last year. AH Hirsch 16 Year Old, Old Fitzgerald and Parker's Heritage have all disappeared, replaced by the Michter Celebration, the Weller 19 and the EH Taylor Warehouse C. Also the top two have changed place, with the Van Winkle surging past the Eagle Rare.

Buffalo Trace Distillery is still the source of most of these – six of the top 10 come from the distillery – showing the incredible consistency the producer has across all our Bourbon lists.

Looking at the price differential between this year and last is educational, too. The biggest fall came for the Buffalo Trace OFC, which saw a dramatic drop in average price from $10,723 to its current level, some 35 percent lower. Even the Michter Celebration's average price has dropped by 27.7 percent since last year. That said, the Michter is still about 40 percent ahead of where it was two years ago and 82 percent up over five years, so the past 12 months aren't necessarily a fair reflection.

The only other substantial fall for the 12-month period was the Eagle Very Rare, which dropped 10 percent.

At the other end of the scale, the Weller 19 had a fantastic year, with its average price soaring by 48.4 percent to give it a 128 percent rise across the past two-and-a-half years since it was released onto the market. The EH Taylor Warehouse C also did well, registering a 28.6 percent rise over the year, for a two-year rise of 147 percent.

Oddly enough, if you look back a little further with some of these whiskeys, there is a tendency for the newer expressions to stumble once released. By this I mean that a "new" old bottling that is released at a high price tends to settle and fall in price within a couple of years of release.

The Eagle Very Rare, for example, hit the market in April last year at an average retail price of $30,091, before steadily falling to its current level. Similarly, the Buffalo Trace OFC was released in August 2018 with an average price tag of $16,746; today, it's almost $10,000 a bottle lower.

That speaks to the general honesty of Bourbon as a category – products find their own level rather than being artificially propped up by packaging or scarcity.

No corruption to see here, but Bourbon is still as sexy as hell.

[SirVantes]

50 minutes ago, Ken Gargett said:

That speaks to the general honesty of Bourbon as a category – products find their own level rather than being artificially propped up by packaging or scarcity.

Erm, NPDs...

[garbandz]

" the whiskeys are ranked in order of their global average retail price across thousands of merchants. "

which means these are not top prices,that these bottles are selling for more than the listed prices.

 

I would like to know by whom, and where, are people paying these absurd prices for these bourbons.

It would make a very good documentary program,I would certainly watch it.