You know what time it is! The NCAA basketball and hockey tournaments are getting started here soon, which means everyone is in bracket mode. It really is a wonderful time of year. Up here in the northernmost state in the contiguous U.S., the snow is still trying to fall—we got over a foot at my house this weekend. Though, thankfully, the end is in sight. Gardeners have started their seeds, there are days when the windows can be opened, and, of course, there are brackets to be filled out—and busted.
No, not those silly basketball or hockey brackets. We’re talking bourbon brackets. And let me tell you, this really is my favorite time of year. In fact, I enjoy it so much that next year, when I may decide to hang up the ol’ keyboard, I already know what my last series of posts will be: brackets. But don’t worry—that’ll be 2027 at the earliest, since I want to make it to 15 years of publishing before I make a decision.
I’m calling this round the “The Inflation Is Weird” edition. Mostly because I had to raise the price requirements yet again. As I mentioned last year, it was getting really hard to find enough entrants that haven’t been here over and over for under $25. Well, this year, I decided to take actual inflation numbers into account.
As an aside, inflation is super weird to me. Based on things that I don’t even want to try to understand, things just cost more than they used to. And if it’s a little bit, that’s somehow a good thing, but if it’s a lot (or, oddly, if it goes down), then that’s really bad. And it doesn’t hit everything the same, which my pattern-seeking mind finds overwhelming. And then the president always gets blamed for it, which is also weird since the last president to try directly setting price controls was Nixon. And while it had a bit of short-term success, Smart People™ seem to agree that it was a seriously bad idea. Probably why no one has tried it since. It’s just all-around weird, and I am glad that (under normal circumstances) people much smarter than I am are in charge of handling it.
So, like I said before I got sidetracked, I started this site in 2012. So I went to my favorite inflation calculator—the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator—to look at what the original bracket upper limit of $20 would be in 2026 money. I was a bit shocked to find out that it was almost $29. So I rounded up and made the upper limit $30 just to keep things nice and easy.
One thing I noticed while doing the research is that while it feels like the bourbon market has gotten more expensive, and in many ways it has, the reality is a bit more nuanced. I went back through every whiskey featured in this series over the last 13 years, and most of the true bottom-shelf brands have disappeared from shelves, at least near me. And the ones that remain haven’t increased in price as quickly as inflation. In terms of purchasing power, many have effectively gotten cheaper. That’s how bottles like Maker’s 46, Four Roses Small Batch, and Woodford Reserve ended up in this year’s competition when they were far out of range for those original Bottom-Shelf Brackets. Of course with newer, higher-priced labels hitting the shelves, the category as a whole feels more expensive when you’re standing in the bourbon aisle, even though individual bourbons are effectively cheaper now. Like I said— inflation is weird.
Let’s get into the actual contest, though.
The Selection Rules
This year’s selection process was simple:
It had to be bourbon.
The bottle size had to be at least 750 mL.
It had to cost under $30.
That’s it!
For seeding, I usually start by sorting by proof first, followed by stated age (if applicable), and then use price as the final tiebreaker. But this year, every entrant had a different proof, so we just went down the line, with the highest proof being the number one seed and the lowest proof being the lowest seed. The idea being that, often with inexpensive bourbons, proof will beat age in a head-to-head competition—or so it has played out over the previous 12 editions. To avoid stacking the deck against the second division, I alternated which division received the higher seed. So Division 1 got the overall number one, but Division 2 got the higher-proof of the number two seeds. Here’s what that got us:
Division 1
Seed 1: Early Times Bottled-in-Bond
The only 100 proof bottle in this competition. It is also the least expensive per 50 mL pour. The brand is currently owned by Sazerac, though the distillery of distillation on the label is still the old Brown-Forman DSP-KY-354. Barton 1792 (DSP-KY-12) is also listed as a production site, likely for bottling.
Purchased at Viking Liquor Barrel (Prior Lake, MN) for $23.99 for a one-liter bottle.
Nonsense name: Velvet Turnip
Seed 2: 1792
Flagship product of Sazerac’s Barton 1792 distillery in Bardstown, KY, bottled at 93.7 proof.
Purchased at Total Wine (Burnsville, MN) for $25.99 for a 750 mL bottle.
Nonsense name: Marble Iguana
Seed 3: Yellowstone Select
The base entry for the historic Yellowstone bourbon brand, bottled at 93 proof.
Purchased at Total Wine (Burnsville, MN) for $29.99 for a 750 mL bottle.
Nonsense name: Feral Teacup
Seed 4: Redemption Bourbon
Sourced MGP bourbon bottled at 88 proof and age-stated at 2 years old. This was the lowest proof and, as such, the lowest seed in the contest.
Purchased at Total Wine (Burnsville, MN) for $21.99 for a 750 mL bottle.
Nonsense name: Gilded Thunder
Division 2
Seed 1: Benchmark Single Barrel
A product of the Buffalo Trace Distillery, bottled at 95 proof.
Purchased at Viking Liquor Barrel (Prior Lake, MN) for $23.99 for a 750 mL bottle.
Nonsense name: Wobbly Parachute
Seed 2: Maker’s Mark 46
The only wheated bourbon, bottled at 94 proof.
Purchased at Viking Liquor Barrel (Prior Lake, MN) for $29.97 for a 750 mL bottle.
Nonsense name: Crooked Meteor
Seed 3: Woodford Reserve
A product of Brown-Forman, bottled at 90.4 proof.
Purchased at Total Wine (Burnsville, MN) for $29.99 for a 750 mL bottle.
Nonsense name: Jittery Compass
Seed 4: Four Roses Small Batch
One of four core products in the Four Roses lineup. It was long my favorite of the bunch before its lower proof made their single barrel offering my go-to from them. It is bottled at 90 proof.
Purchased at Total Wine (Burnsville, MN) for $26.99 for a 750 mL bottle.
Nonsense name: Drowsy Lantern
Keeping It Blind: The Setup
Of course, that list doesn’t eliminate inherent bias, does it? So, as usual, we took a few extra steps to keep the tasting blind—while still keeping track of what advanced.
Here’s how we set it up (it’s an oh-so-simple process):
I seeded the whiskey in the bracket as listed above.
I poured 200 mL bottles of each bourbon and labeled them with their nonsense names.
I made a separate bracket using only the nonsense names and handed it, along with the bottles, to my wife.
From there, she takes over.
She doesn’t know what’s in each bottle (thanks to the nonsense names).
She pours and keeps track of the winners.
All I have to do is taste, write, and pick my favorite. It’s a pretty slick system.
The empty bracket is below, and as usual, there were plenty of surprises along the way. But that’s for the future. In the meantime, who you got? Let us know down in the comments!
Fun fact, using that same BLS Inflation Calculator, I checked on the state of the Federal Excise Tax on distilled spirits. If you want to make a bourbon producer mad, mention that if the excise tax, which was last adjusted in 1991 to $13.50 per proof gallon, had kept up with inflation, it would currently be at $32.78. In fact the opposite happened and we are currently in a tiered system where the first so many proof gallons are severely discounted. This was what funded much of the Federal Government prior to the income tax so it is fun to look at. Though I am seriously not advocating for higher bourbon prices…
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