The 27 Best Bourbon Brands, Ranked

The great thing about this whiskey scene is it's always in motion, which means that even the same mash bill, process, and label can change a famed, big batch product quite a bit from one expression to another. And while distillers strive for consistency and quality, sometimes variation in the former can really crank up the latter.

With that in mind, we're here to share our current assessments of the best bourbon brands in America at this moment. Sorry if your favorite's not on here, but it's probably repped by a similar label because there's a definite path from the bottom to the top shelf. Our method was simple: Treat distilleries like record labels, brands like bands, and labels like albums (with expressions being their single tracks). Wherever a bourbon bottle has a unified identity, it was fair game for us. This is a lineup of true bourbon winners, and we're excited to share it with you.

Officially, this is where Benchmark resides, but unofficially, we're leery of placing it as high as it deserves because we're working off of popular regard and definitely not for fear of repeating that Evan Williams price creep. Still, this Buffalo Trace bottom-shelfer has been climbing the ladder of late, with an expanding and increasingly aged line that saw BT insiders gush about it to us as their most underrated bourbon. 

That expansion has paid off, seeing more and more reviewers stop and say, "Wait, Benchmark might actually become ... a benchmark?" It's not a game-changer as yet, but you do find a lot of lineup reviews questioning whether this isn't dramatically overlooked. We say yes, but feel free to ignore us and keep the price down.

Weller might be the original wheated bourbon, but Maker's Mark might be the most poured one. This bourbon whisky (yeah, it's one of the oddballs spelled without an "E" stateside) is a staple that really deserves more love for even the regular edition, though the whole line is what makes it flourish on this list. Sorry, Maker's, you even have middle-child syndrome on your own ranking entry.

Still, there's a reason you see Maker's Mark sitting handily in frequent-pour reach on almost every bar in America. It's still great and frequently excellent, as seen in both the Maker's 101 and 46ers if you're not the type to go all-in on private selections or other higher-end options. 

For the longest time, Old Fitzgerald was a regular ol' cheap and okay pour, and then a lot more shook up in the whiskey world than we can stuff into a short space. The result was the Larceny line, spinning out basic Fitz under a new package, while Heaven Hill reserved the venerable Old Fitzgerald label for the really special product. It's all the same juice, only divided by time and temperature, the same as how a bottle of W.L. Weller that makes something of itself becomes William LaRue Weller.

But then something funny happened. Larceny went from being a reliably alright bottle priced just right at $30 dollars or so to something to seek out all by itself. Depending on which expression you're after, you might have to move fast before the price escalates. And we're not even including Old Fitz special releases in this ranking!

While the Willett Distillery has a storied history, including recent rebirth and reinvention (and will pop up again on this list), we're focused on the Willett name brand line here, which includes the Willett Family Estate cask-strength, single-barrel, "purple-top" bottles, which splash onto the scene whenever a standout SiB makes itself known.

But there's a but on those butts: some fans, of late, feel that the really high-end releases are coasting a bit on the strength of earlier barley juice. But even the but has a but: the fact remains that every purple top still commands a fervent hunt from true believers. And there's no accounting for taste, which is a wonderfully liberating realization. When this many people like something, there's something to like.

Honestly, the only thing keeping Woodford from placing even higher is that the base edition is just that: kind of basic. While sticking to classic tenets might help you get named the official whiskey of the Kentucky Derby (along with a healthy sponsorship), everything from here forward is unmistakable. Still, another way of looking at it is that Woodford's extremely well-regarded luxe releases escalate it several spots above some overall brands whose starting point is more sought-after than this Woodford 1.0.

However you look at it, nobody is disappointed to find Woodford Reserve in their glass. It's a reddish beauty that you can use in just about any way you like without flinching.

Basil Hayden tastes like a duel at high noon (maybe it's all the char and smoke involved) but bears the distinct lineage of Old Grand-Dad himself, Basil Hayden, borne through the legendary Booker Noe, master distiller at Jim Beam. This is a supremely affordable whiskey for the value, at under $50, that presents like a rich man's bourbon. 

Bold in flavor and essential in design and character, Basil Hayden starts from a resplendent place and then rises higher with each variation in the lineup. With all that said, a very palatable 80 proof makes this one an easy day drinker that won't put you down for the count anytime soon.

Another entry in the "American whisky" series, Old Forester has been around longer than anyone else in the whiskey game, presents a broad fleet of bourbons and whiskies, and has a prominent single-barrel program for anyone looking to go all-in on a particularly fine specimen.

Old Forester runs pretty light in the ABV department. The original is a breezy 86 proof, while other prominent bourbons in the line tend to stick to 100 or below — in our opinion, right around the sweet spot. While a couple of higher 105s and mid-110s show up, it's a bit of a surprise when the barrel-proof, single-barrel bottle drops in like an atom bomb at 130. Dang, Old Forester, did you just "She's All That" us?

You all need to check your attitudes about sourced whiskey. It comes from the same place that disdains any distiller who hands a mash bill and processes off to Midwest Grain Products (MGP) as not having the wherewithal to do it themselves. But just as the real cause is very often one of economic and production means in the latter case, there's another very good reason for the former: some tasters, blenders, and distillers have a vision drawn from different quarters, while others know the good stuff when they try it and know where to get it and dare to experiment to push it to even greater heights. 

Whiskey is a great big world, and there's plenty of room for different approaches. When the results are as good as a lot of what Barrell puts out, how can anybody complain?

Noah's Mill is a hearty — though far from overclocked — 114.3 proof, but it tastes like a rich punch in a silk glove. The Willett whiskey comes in strong, like a Christmas cake, before rising into springtime with floral and herbal notes. It's a really tough whiskey to get a handle on, except that you know you're drinking quality. It's widely respected and maybe even a little bit feared, as many conquerors of boozier whiskeys still recommend watering it down or even chilling on the rocks.

To be honest, we kind of wanted to roll Rowan's Creek into this one, even though they're separate brands from the same distiller. They just feel like such bookend bourbons that if one isn't your speed, the other may encapsulate what people love about Willett's product for you. But then, we'd be hard-pressed not to dive into Johnny Drum, Old Bardstown, and more.

Well, here it is. Marketed as the original wheated bourbon, and formerly casually referred to as "poor man's Pappy" before word got out about Weller's close roots to Van Winkle and it became middle-class man's Pappy and launched a thousand disgruntled Reddit posts about how it's a solidly $30 to $40 bourbon that tastes great and not a $60 to $500 one. Well, that's, like, your opinion, man. But also, yes. 

Regardless, it's an excellent whiskey, and it's hard to say the sour grousing isn't from people who have a hard time saying goodbye to a great deal that never could have lasted. Weller would have risen to this point even without a hand from the Van Winkle family.

If you want to know the real tragedy of reviewing whiskey for a living, it's that every day, you're blessed with a new product showing up at your doorstep to review, sample, rank, and compare; that's one more day your bottle of Col. Edmund Haynes Taylor, Jr. stares at you longingly from the shelf, inert for another evening. 

There's no bad bottle in this beautifully crafted series. A lot of fans are cantankerous about its showboating and stunting, but nobody's saying it doesn't deserve universal praise, so much as how high that praise rises. And yeah, thousands of dollars for Warehouse C Tornado Surviving is an irreplicable gimmick, but it's such good stuff we wouldn't blink if it one day ended up the sixth sibling in the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection.

Old Carter makes big headway throughout its entire lineup, with the non-bourbon American whiskeys drawing particularly high praise, but you could quite happily stick to its prize-winning straight bourbon lineup and walk around telling everyone you met that you just sipped a real contender for best of the year. 

The Louisville-based whiskey distillery actually makes its mark blending high-corn products from various larger whiskey makers — most notably Midwest Grain Products but purportedly also Cascade Hollow — and is the leading argument for the reputability of this as a real art. Winemakers Sherri and Mark Carter brought back Kentucky Owl before devising their own label as the outcome of their careful attention to what a balanced palate can bring to bourbon, and reviews have been unflaggingly positive.

Fair warning: Old Carter bourbons unfailingly come in high-proof, so clear some space in your schedule to sip and appreciate these bottles very slowly all evening. Unfortunately, the word is increasingly out on a limited product that only gets distribution in select markets, so the high but fair price point jumps even more as soon as it hits the shelves. But if you intend to really treat yourself or a friend, here's a guarantee of greatness.

Remember that episode of "Parks & Recreation" where Ron Swanson's chairs get celebrated by an influential lifestyle maven, but he refuses to mass produce them? That's the Van Winkle family. It's continuing to make what's overwhelmingly considered the best bourbon in the world (more on that in a minute) the way it always has, at production levels that let it maintain its quality. 

While expansion is desirable, it's only going bigger if they can keep making it up to its exceedingly high standard. And this stuff is offered up at a fair price for the labor put into it. By God, it makes you think the soul of American honor endures in these wild times. And hey, great bourbon. Really, top of the mountain.

Our methodology for picking these brands went like this: First, we developed an aggregate list of the top bourbon brands on the market. When choosing brands, we aimed for labels that offer more than one style or age statement. The entirety of a brand's line-up was taken into consideration. General popularity within the bourbon market was considered, though lesser-known brands were also given merit. 

Once the line-up of candidates was developed, the list was trimmed down and then ordered using several factors, including price, quality, and availability. The majority of these bourbon brands have been tasted by the author, and for those brands that haven't been personally sampled, online consumer reviews, trade publications, and insider feedback were taken into account.