Based on Google searches, one of the most popular Halloween costumes this year is Sabrina Carpenter. In particular, the “Please Please Please” singer’s heart corset, likely with a cup of espresso. As for Carpenter herself, she hasn’t revealed what she’s dressing up as (she was previously “the love of ur life”), but maybe she got inspired during a trip to Universal Studios.
Carpenter recently attended Halloween Horror Nights at the Universal Orlando resort, where she and Short N’ Sweet Tour opener Griff took a photo outside of the Major Sweets Candy Factory haunted house. So much spooky sweetness.
You can see the photo below.
universal orlando
Uproxx recently spoke to the creative team behind Halloween Horror Nights. When asked how the music gets picked for the haunted houses, assistant director Lora Sauls replied, “The show direction team does a beautiful job of telling the story through sound effects, the audioscape, the score that they play in the haunted houses… When we’re working with the franchises, we lean into the score that accompanies those films and franchises to make sure that we’re telling their stories. When it comes to original content, our show direction team thinks outside the box on how to tell that story with the score.”
The Weeknd has an HHN house. Sabrina Carpenter should be next. It could look like the bloody “Taste” video.
Halloween Horror Nights 2024 runs on select nights through November 3. You can find out more information here. In other exciting news, Epic Universe opens on May 22, 2025.
Olivia Rodrigo has a clean criminal record, but that’s not what a Border Patrol officer thought recently.
Rodrigo was a guest on The Tonight Show yesterday, and she told Jimmy Fallon the story of the time she was interrogated at the US-Canada border for a long while.
Here’s the tale in Rodrigo’s words:
“We were going from Canada to Portland or something. We were at Border [Patrol]. I give them my passport, and they’re like, ‘OK, whatever.’ And they knock on the door and they’re like, ‘We need Olivia.’ And I’m like, ‘I just played a few shows. Maybe their daughter wants an autograph.’
I come out, it’s 3 a.m., and I’m delirious, and they take me to a room, and it’s an interrogation room, and there’s a big cop with a gun. He’s like, ‘Have you ever been arrested?’ I’m like, ‘No, I haven’t been arrested.’ He’s like, ‘Are you sure?’ I’m, like, gaslighting myself. I’m like, ‘Oh, my God. Maybe I was arrested and I didn’t know it.’ […]
He’s like, ‘You know, you could go to jail for lying to a federal officer like this.’ Like, ‘This is really bad.’ I’m freaking out. I’m like, ‘I’m not gonna be let in to America!’ I’m so scared. I’m, like, having a panic attack.
After 30 minutes of interrogation, he looks at me. He goes, ‘What’s your name?’ And I go, ‘Olivia Rodrigo, R-O-D-R-I-G-O.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh, there’s a girl who looks just like you that’s your same age that’s been arrested multiple times, and her name is Olivia Rodriguez.’
Jimmy, I was pissed. I’m like, ‘You didn’t look at the name on the thing?’”
Watch the video above. Rodrigo also played a round of “What’s Behind Me?” with Fallon, so check that out below.
Megan The Stallion has a stronghold on two special times of the year. Thanks to her beloved catchphrase, “Hot Girl Summer,” the warm weeks belong to the “Bigger In Texas” rapper. But her passion for Halloween comes in a close second.
This Hottieween season is a rather special one for Meg for several reasons. Atop the list is a rather significant co-sign the Grammy Award winner just earned. Today (October 29), Megan Thee Stallion’s Starfire (of Teen Titans) Halloween costume received a thumbs up from thee James Gunn, which is an honor for any self-proclaimed nerd like Meg.
In a post on Thread, Gunn reshared Megan Thee Stallion’s costume reveal images. “Whoa,” he wrote. “Cool.”
Gunn’s followers joined in to praise Meg’s depiction. “Biblically accurate Starfire, as George intended,” wrote one user referring to the get-up being pulled directly from 1980s illustrations cooked up by Marv Wolfman and George Perez.
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This is surely just the tipping point for Meg as last year she sported three major looks (a flower from Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland, Death The Kid from anime Soul Eater, and the lady gremlin from Gremlins 2: The New Batch). But on Halloween Day (October 31), Megan tends to dial things up a notch for her annual Hottieween party. Or she could go the flirty route having expressed interest seeing her “Spin” collaborator Victoria Monét dress up like her. Maybe Megan will return the honor.
Weeks apart, rap’s dynamic duo Megan Thee Stallion and GloRilla dropped new albums. For Megan Thee Stallion that body of work was Megan: Act II. While GloRilla released her long-awaited debut album, Glorious. Along the way the two emcees have racked up quite the busy with notable collaborations, from the tracks “How I Look,” “Wanna Be” and “Accent,” to a successful performance run on the Hot Girl Summer Tour.
Their musical chemistry (a far cry from their first impression of each other) has sparked demands for the rappers to drop more music together. Now, fans are demanding a full-out collaborative album. But will Megan Thee Stallion and GloRilla actually give into supporters’ request? Today (October 29), GloRilla sat down with Ebro Darden on Apple Music 1 and further fanned the flames of its possibility.
“Is there truth to the rumor of you and Megan Thee Stallion having a joint project,” asked Ebro. “Y’all got some heat, y’all recorded some things.”
GloRilla followed up, saying: “Yep.”
But that wasn’t the confirmation Ebro needed so he followed up with: “But you can’t confirm nor deny.”
Evasively, GloRilla answered: “Right.”
Well, in a Stationhead broadcast (captured by Inside The Industry podcast) Megan Thee Stallion shed light on what’s holding the potential project up. “We’re both so busy,” she said. “We said we were going to sit down in December and start working on it. So, y’all really need to spam Glo for real because we’re both bullsh*ters.”
Watch GloRilla’s full appearance on Apple Music 1 hosted by Ebro Darden above.
Lady Gaga’s latest song, “Disease,” carries forward that spooky pop sound. Today (October 29), she shared the official music video for the suspected LG7 album’s lead single. Just as expected from the teaser clip, the video Lady Gaga battle several fierce (and nearly lethal) battles for her own heart.
From a high speed car chase to multiple hand-to-hand combat scenes, nothing will hold Lady Gaga back from her pursuit of love. Every element of Lady Gaga’s pop star theatrics are on full display in the haunting visual, which makes passionate lyrics in the track that must more believable.
Quick camera pans, character shifts, full body acting and extravagant wardrobe changes make it nearly impossible for viewers to take their eyes off of the screen.
Ahead of the video’s release, Lady Gaga took to her Instagram Stories to share a statement (viewable here) about the song’s meaning.
“I think a lot out the relationship I have with my own inner demons,” she wrote. “‘Disease’ is about facing that fear, facing myself, my inner darkness, and realizing that sometimes I can’t win or escape the parts of myself that scare me.”
Watch Lady Gaga’s official video for “Disease” above.
Fan interference is nothing new at baseball games, as there is a rich history of fans and players battling for the same fly balls. However, usually any interference is done on the catch, whether that’s a fan reaching over the wall (like we saw earlier this World Series) or a fan getting in the way of a catch in the stands (hello, Steve Bartman).
On Tuesday night in the Bronx, a Yankees fan took it to a new level when he literally grabbed Mookie Betts’ glove after the Dodgers left fielder made a catch along the wall in foul territory and ripped the ball away.
“Well, A for effort.”
Fan interference was called on this play where a Yankee fan tried to take the ball out of Mookie Betts’ glove after an out. pic.twitter.com/iZ6taImncd
As John Smoltz noted on the broadcast, that’s one of the fastest ways to get kicked out of a World Series game, and despite the effort, the Dodgers still got the out by virtue of the interference. At the same time, this fan has now impacted a 2024 World Series game about as much as Aaron Judge has, so I guess he has that going for him. When you’re down 3-0 in the series and 2-0 after the top of the first inning (because Freddie Freeman homered, again) desperation sets in, but this was not the best way to handle it.
Back in October 2022, the sporting company split business ties with Ye following antisemitic remarks made by the “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” rapper. Today (October 29), the two have wrapped up their legal fight. According to Bloomberg, Ye and Adidas reached an out-of-court settlement.
During a conference call, Adidas’ CEO Bjørn Gulden shared a statement regarding their mutual resolve. “There isn’t any more open issues,” he said. “No one owes anybody anything anymore. So whatever was is history.”
Gulden’s comments about financial payout raised questions among patrons. But Page Six claims Gulden clarified that by saying: “There isn’t any more open issues, and there is no money going [out] either way, and we both move on.”
Gulden closed by saying: “There were tensions on many issues, and… when you put the claims on the right side, and you put the claims on the left side, both parties said we don’t need to fight anymore and withdrew all the claims.”
The Miami Heat’s unveiling of their statue for Dwyane Wade over the weekend did not go as they’d hoped, as all of the talk about Wade’s new bronze presence outside the Kaseya Center was about how it didn’t look much like Wade at all. Fans on Twitter naturally piled on with jokes about all the people it looked like that weren’t Wade, but they weren’t alone, as Paul Pierce thought it looked more like Tony Allen than Dwyane and even Tim Walz got in on the fun during an appearance with Dan Le Batard.
Unsurprisingly, the jokes did not stop Tuesday night when the ‘Inside the NBA’ crew made their first appearance on TV since Wade’s statue was revealed and had plenty to say about the depiction of their former TNT colleague. While Kenny Smith tried his best to defend the statue, Charles Barkley wasn’t letting it slide, saying the Heat have to take it down, while Ernie Johnson even got in some jokes — which is how you know the statue is bad.
“It’s a great honor. But they gotta take that thing down.”
Shaq wasn’t willing to chime in with jokes of his own, as he’s got too many ties to Wade and the Heat organization for that, but the fact that he was just chuckling off to the side and didn’t join Kenny in defense of the statue said plenty. It must be said that sculpting a bronze statue seems extremely difficult, but at the same time, the whole point is for it to look like the person its immortalizing and as Ernie notes, the face on the Wade statue doesn’t make you immediately go “yeah, that’s D-Wade.”
Liam Payne fans have had a rug pulled from under them. Earlier today (October 29), supporters of the late “Stack It Up” singer learned that a posthumous single (“Do No Wrong”) from Liam was slated to be shared on November 1.
However, the track’s producer, Sam Pounds, has decided to postpone its release indefinitely. Over on X (formerly Twitter), the Grammy Award-winning shared a statement explaining the gut-wrenching decision. “Today I’m deciding to hold ‘Do No Wrong’ and leave those liberties up to all family members,” he wrote. “Even though we all love the song it’s not the time yet. We are all still mourning the passing of Liam and I want the family to morn [sic] in peace and in prayer. We will all wait.”
Initially, Pounds intended to donate the record’s proceeds to a charity of the family’s choosing or “however they desire” to divide it up. But it appears thanks to the pleas from users online, given Liam’s untimely and tragic death, Pounds changed his mind.
Liam’s family haven’t addressed the post track or any plans for its future release. Following Liam’s passing they issued a heartbreaking statement to the public, writing: “We are heartbroken. Liam will forever live in our hearts, and we’ll remember him for his kind, funny and brave soul. We are supporting each other the best we can as a family and ask for privacy and space at this awful time.”
That, of course, depends on how you determine import. Merriam-Webster defines it as such: “marked by or indicative of significant worth or consequence.” Armed with that definition, we can say that “worth” doesn’t strictly boil down to cost. Indeed, some of the most important bourbons of all time are/were bottom-shelf offerings, some of which can still be purchased today for less than $30.
This list will focus strictly on bottles of historical importance, expressions that helped transform the industry, establish new standards, and alter the course of the industry as we know it. Some of those are extremely rare or even possibly extinct, while others are sitting on your local liquor store’s shelf right now, but no matter the availability or price, these all have one thing in common: they changed the bourbon world as we know it.
Let’s dive into it and rank the 21 most important bourbons ever made!
Michter’s Master of Maturation, Andrea Wilson, deserves more credit than anyone in the industry for creating and then popularizing “toasted barrel bourbon.” The process, which involves a barrel being held over a flame but, crucially, not being charred, unlocks a different degree of wood sugars that imparts a wholly unique flavor profile on the end product. That end result brings forth flavors like marshmallow, honey, campfire smoke, and coconut shavings and has caught on like wildfire throughout the industry, with innumerable brands joining the trend that Michter’s began with this 2014 release.
Angel’s Envy Bourbon is historically significant, not for inventing finished bourbon, but for being the first brand to offer an evergreen expression of finished bourbon as part of its core lineup. That bold decision was initially met with intrigue but has since blossomed into a practice that countless other brands have adopted, culminating in an industry-wide trend to push the boundaries of finishing we’ve seen over the past few years.
The Gold Foil version of A.H. Hirsch’s 16-Year Bourbon is best known today by the moniker bestowed upon it by whiskey writer Chuck Cowdery, who wrote an entire book extolling its virtues titled “The Best Bourbon You’ll Never Taste.” The story of A.H. Hirsch 16-Year begins with…Ultimately what makes this bourbon so historically important, impressive quality aside, is that it’s one of the most prominent bourbons to develop a cult following on the internet.
Denizens of StraightBourbon.com (including Chuck Cowdery) helped to drive consumer interest in this hidden gem, a process that we’ve since seen repeated time and again with the rise of more internet-based bourbon clubs, Facebook groups, and influencer-approved limited editions. Again, it’s a trend that some may frown upon, but all the same, this release is one of historical import for that reason and others.
18. Four Roses Single Barrel Bourbon “Goykh Smash”
Four Roses
ABV: 60.3% Average Price: ??
What Makes It Important:
This expression is so under-the-radar that we weren’t even able to find pictures of it online, and everything is online. Shout out to our connect for the image above. The Goykh Smash Four Roses Single-Barrel Selection is historically significant because it’s the bottle most widely credited with introducing private label stickers (erstwhile known as “tater stickers”) to the bourbon industry. The story goes a little something like this: Steven Goykhberg was a prominent member of the early aughts bourbon collector scene, and he selected this barrel of Four Roses and then put one of the early examples of a tater sticker on the bottles. It features a photo of Hulk “smashing” the ground with the words “Goykh Smash” above it with “I Don’t Fool Around” below.
While pretty much all photos of this pick have seemingly been scrubbed from the net, you’ll still hear early collectors speak in reverent tones about the bottle that many people credit with transforming the marketing of single-barrel selections. As a final note, Four Roses has since instigated a “non-mutilation” policy, kicking anyone who adds a sticker or other adornments to their single-barrel selections out of their single-barrel program. That development makes early Four Roses bottles with tater stickers all the more attractive to after-market collectors.
These days, it’s quite common to see bourbon and charitable causes linked, but while people have long been using rare bottles to raise money for good causes, Parker’s Heritage is one of the key releases that brought the idea to the mainstream. In 2010, Parker Beam, Master Distiller at Heaven Hill Distillery, was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Shortly after that, this expression was created and launched in 2007 as a way to both honor Parker’s contributions to the industry (he was part of 2001’s inaugural class of the Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame) and to donate money to the research and eradication of ALS. Those charitable efforts continue today with each release of Parker’s Heritage, though sadly, Parker passed away in 2017, his legacy is alive and well.
Wild Turkey 101, perhaps more than any other offering, helped maintain the bourbon industry’s viability in the global market through the lean years of the 70’s and 80’s. While domestic sales of bourbon were in the toilet during those decades, it was the inventiveness of distilleries and the explosion of the foreign market, primarily Japan, that kept many of bourbon’s most storied producers in business.
For Wild Turkey, that meant offering their 101-proof bourbon in stylish decanters, which did little to abate the public’s waning interest but have persisted as a cool historical idiosyncrasy, and exporting a large volume of its flagship liquid overseas. The success of bourbon’s sales in Japan helped keep them and other companies afloat and produced some now-legendary expressions that might not otherwise exist if it weren’t for Wild Turkey spearheading the movement. One of the most revered expressions to come out of this era, nicknamed “Cheesy Gold Foil,” has remained one of Wild Turkey’s most sought-after expressions to this day.
15. Willett Family Estate 28-Year-Old Bourbon Barrel #1056
Willett Family Estate is now known as a legendary name in the bourbon industry, and they built that mythical status thanks to their incredibly well-regarded vault of hyper-aged sourced whiskey. Bottles like Doug’s Green Ink and LeNell’s Red Hook Rye put the brand on the map and now regularly sell for 5-figures at prestigious auction houses, but Willett’s cache of 20+ year bourbons also garner plenty of acclaim.
Case in point: when this expression was released, it was Kentucky’s oldest single-barrel bourbon ever bottled. Selected by Pacific Edge and distilled in 1980 from an undisclosed source before being bottled in 2008, if there’s one bottle of bourbon most emblematic of Willett Family Estate’s early grasp on the single-barrel market, gobbling up excellent, old bourbon from far-flung sources and driving the demand for such increasingly rare liquid, it’s this bottle right here.
We can keep this one short and simple by saying Weller is typically cited as the earliest example of “wheated bourbon” to grace the market. As it goes with pretty much every claim to a “first” in the bourbon world, there are some who would dispute that claim, but at the very least, Weller has done the most to popularize the style since its inception in 1849. We have William Larue Weller to thank for this expression, and as you may know the current-day version of Weller Special Reserve is produced by Buffalo Trace who has furthered the reputation of wheated bourbon thanks to the success of both its Weller and Van Winkle lineup of whiskeys.
What makes Evan Williams Bourbon so significant is that it was produced by Kentucky’s first legally registered commercial distillery by the Welsh immigrant whose name adorns every bottle. Not only was Evan Williams the first man on the scene for what would become the epicenter of bourbon for generations to come, but Evan Williams Bourbon remains to this day one of the world’s best-selling bourbons, seldom leaving the top three in global sales annually.
Jim Beam’s Distiller’s Masterpiece was one of American whiskey’s biggest game-changers. The expression, launched in 1999, marked a number of significant milestones as one of the first super-premium bourbons to be released with a price point of $200+ and the first prominent example of a super-premium finished bourbon. This offering was so ahead of its time that it sat on shelves for months, despite being an artful collaboration between Jim Beam Master Distiller Booker Noe and Cognac pioneer Alain Royer that has since gained contemporary acclaim for its prescience as well its superlative quality.
While not everyone will see this release in a positive light, given the fact that it spawned a proliferation of high-priced progenitors in the finished bourbon category of uneven quality, there’s no denying that its release was a watershed moment in the contemporary bourbon industry.
11. Smooth Ambler Old Scout Single Barrel Bourbon (MGP Sourced)
A bit of a curveball on this list; this is another one of those representative choices that speaks to a wider trend. These Smooth Ambler Old Scout Single Barrel expressions in the 12-year age range, sourced from MGP in Indiana, drove the bourbon world crazy when they first hit shelves. While there had been earlier examples of stellar, sourced MGP bourbon on the market, this was definitely the tipping point that drove consumers into a craze, hunting this expression into extinction.
Since these bottles first hit shelves, there have been countless brands built with MGP-sourced liquid, whether they eagerly disclose that fact or not, and with MGP now situated as perhaps the biggest producer of sourced bourbon in the industry (they don’t disclose such details publicly) it’s safe to call the Smooth Ambler tipping point a crucial one for the contemporary market, driving popularity and demand for MGP juice, and proving its viability.
The Old Crow Chessman series is emblematic here of several critical developments in the industry. For one, in 1969, during the lean period when these were produced and domestic whiskey sales were in the tubes, decanters became all the rage to spruce up American whiskey’s presentation. The Old Crow Chessman were some of the most ostentatious and ambitiously packaged whiskeys of all time, coming in a fully functional chess set with an oh-so-70s shag rug with black and white squares to play on.
Another aspect that makes this series historically important is its tangential ties to the man who founded Old Crow, James C. Crow. Dr. Crow is widely credited as being the man to introduce or at least popularize the sour mash process in the bourbon industry. Though Crow passed away long before this expression was created (it was sold in 1969 by National Distillers, and the Old Crow brand is today owned by Jim Beam), this was one of the last prominent releases to bear his name before Old Crow became a bottom-shelf offering, not worth exploring. More than that, in fact, this is frequently cited by critics as one of the best bourbons of all time.
I’ll be the first to admit that this selection is speculative, but here’s the path to historical import for Eagle Rare 25. Joined by Weller Millenium (which isn’t officially a bourbon) in Buffalo Trace’s uber-premium range, Eagle Rare 25 is historically significant not just for being a hyper-aged expression but also for the process that produced it. This expression spent the first decade of its life destined to be Eagle Rare 10-Year Single Barrel Bourbon before graduating past that mark to be earmarked as a future Eagle Rare 17 release. Having aged beyond 17 years, it was then eligible to become Double Eagle Very Rare, but at the 20-year mark, the whiskey that wound up in this release was moved to Buffalo Trace’s experimental Warehouse X, a climate-controlled aging facility which the distillery hopes will allow them to push the ages of future releases beyond 25 years, perhaps as high as 50 or more.
As the first step toward that ambitious goal, Eagle Rare 25 is easily the most historically significant bourbon released in the last two years. Going one step further, the case can be made that this uber-premiumization of the category could become a thing of the future in line with Distiller’s Masterpiece helping to create the super-premium market as it exists today. If successful, Eagle Rare 25 will mark the opening salvo in that effort to put hyper-aged bourbon expressions on par with offerings in the same age range from Scotch and Japanese distilleries.
The expression that most bourbon enthusiasts cite as the one that put single-barrel bourbon on the map is Blanton’s. Not only did this brand’s popularization of single-barrel bourbon completely revolutionize the American whiskey landscape, leading to scores of imitators, but it’s also remained one of the most commonly sought-after bourbons on the market today. The popularity of Blanton’s (aided, in part, by its prominent place in the John Wick movie franchise) has been another of the pivotal moments in recent bourbon history that created the craze that it is today.
While many people cite Blanton’s as “the first single-barrel bourbon,” there’s an important distinction to note there, as Blanton’s was actually the first bourbon to be commercially marketed as a single barrel. In fact, Old Forester’s President’s Choice is generally considered the world’s first single-barrel bourbon, debuting back in 1962 as a unique expression of hand-selected casks from Old Forester’s President, thus the name.
The 20-year version of Pappy Van Winkle is teeming with historical significance. This offering was the first to be bottled in the celebrated Pappy Van Winkle lineup, which now stands as perhaps the most widely sought-after lineup in the entire bourbon world when it hit the shelves back in 1994. The culmination of several earlier iterations by Julian Van Winkle III, this expression was initially utilizing liquid sourced from Old Boone Distillery (a little-known-fact gaining more widespread attention thanks to soothsayers like Gil Schwarz) and was the first bourbon to receive a 99-point rating from the Beverage Testing Institute in 1997 in Wine Enthusiast Magazine.
One can also make the case that this expression was pivotal in launching the bourbon boom as the late chef Anthony Bourdain’s proclamation that “if God made bourbon, this is what he’d make” on his show The Layover back in 2012 helped send the fervor around the brand into hyperdrive, fueling today’s bourbon mania.
Sure, you may just see Old No. 7 for what it is, the most ubiquitous American whiskey on the planet, and for that reason alone, it’s certainly important to the history of the category. Jack Daniel’s goes a step further, however, as the whiskey that popularized — perhaps even invented — the Lincoln County Process, which is the backbone of the Tennessee whiskey category. A quick obligatory note for any time one discusses Jack Daniel’s: yes, it is technically a Tennessee whiskey, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a bourbon. Some people will argue this point with you until they’re blue in the face, but the facts are simple: Jack Daniel’s is made to the regulations of bourbon, which means it is legal to label it as such, but the Lincoln County Process ALSO makes it legally a Tennessee whiskey, while not stripping it of its status as a bourbon. The difference may seem negligible to some, but it’s a constant point of contention worth dispelling here.
One last bit that makes Jack Daniel’s important is the brand’s more recent embrace of Nearest Green, a formerly enslaved man who they believe taught Jack Daniel (the man) how to filter his whiskey in what became known as the Lincoln County Process. As the most prominent American whiskey brand on the planet (and arguably the biggest bourbon brand), there can be no debate about Jack Daniel’s importance to the category.
Very Very Old Fitzgerald is a now-discontinued line of wheated bourbon from the famed Stitzel-Weller Distillery, aged for either 12, 15, 16, or 18 years. This particular bottling was created to honor the family that owns the Chicago Blackhawks organization, which in itself isn’t historically significant. What is, however, significant is that this rare bottling is considered one of the hardest-to-find expressions in the vaunted lineup, which led to it becoming the highest-priced bourbon ever sold at auction earlier in 2024, fetching a whopping $80,100 before fees and taxes. While the sale has since been surpassed (by a Van Winkle Single Barrel Bourbon) this bottling remains indicative of bourbon’s continuing rise to prominence in the global whiskey space and reflective of just how coveted some of the most acclaimed expressions of America’s Native Spirit have become.
Of further historical significance is the Old Fitzgerald lineup’s role in popularizing Bottled in Bond bourbon. It first began as a bonded bourbon in 1904, but things really picked up post-Prohibition when Old Fitzgerald became the Stitzel-Weller Distillery’s flagship bourbon, with Very Old Fitzgerald and eventually Very Very Old Fitzgerald joining the lineup. It should be noted, however, that all of the Old Fitzgerald bourbons were bonded products in Julian Van Winkle’s lifetime, though we began to see higher-proofed options (like this Blackhawk single-barrel) after he passed in 1965.
Old Forester has a well-loved portfolio of high-quality bourbons today, but what makes their entry-level offering perhaps the most historically significant of all boils down to one thing: it was the first commercially available bourbon to promote the fact that it was exclusively sold in glass bottles. That little innovation quickly became an industry standard that pervades to this day and would mark the first of Old Forester’s two revolutionary marketing tactics over the course of its 150+ year history, with the second being the introduction of single barrel products.
Maker’s Mark is a bourbon borne from the minds of the Samuels family, and as history tells it, they settled on the iconic wheated mash bill after baking several batches of bread with different grain recipes. As one of the most historic distilleries to only ever produce a single mash bill and never sell their liquid to other brands, Maker’s Mark is significant, but the real hook is the way the brand transformed the industry with its emphasis on tourism.
Margie Samuels designed Maker’s Mark’s distillery to be a visiting place for a tourist industry that didn’t yet exist but, through her visionary work, became a multi-billion dollar industry that netted her a posthumous Kentucky Bourbon Hall of Fame induction in 2014. Of lesser, but still notable, significance was Margie’s decision to use the iconic red wax that adorns each bottle for which Maker’s Mark is known. They remain the only brand whose specific use of wax (red, with dripping tendrils) is protected from imitation. For dawning a new age of branding and tourism while standing as an exemplar of quality in American whiskey around the world, Maker’s Mark is one of the most important bourbons of all time.
Any savvy bourbon enthusiast today will note the prevalence of cask-strength offerings on the market, and if you’re wondering where it all began, look no further than 1988, which witnessed the first commercially available release of Booker’s. Booker Noe, the brand’s creator, had been personally bottling and wax dipping some of his favorite bourbon barrels from the “center cut” of Jim Beam’s voluminous warehouses for years, giving them out as Christmas gifts to friends and beloved employees.
However, when the popularity of “Booker’s bourbon” caught on, it became inevitable that those special selections would go on to become a commercially available product. Once it hit the market, Booker’s became the most prominent example, if not also the first example, of cask-strength, undiluted bourbon to hit liquor store shelves. While tastes at the time were less adapted to absorb all that high-octane alcohol, barrel-proof bourbon has since become a huge craze, with offerings in that style proliferating across seemingly every brand in America.
Booker’s, as part of Jim Beam’s Small Batch Collection, also marked one of the first times the phrase “small batch bourbon,” which was coined by Booker Noe himself, was used to market what was at that point already a prevalent practice of producing bourbon in batches. You can even use the creation of Booker’s to trace the genesis of the rise of “hazmat” offerings and increased appreciation of full-flavored bourbon, which continues to this day. It’s all of these factors that make Booker’s the most important bourbon of all time.
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