12 Absolute Best Bourbon Brands To Add To Winter Desserts

Bourbon is one of the top beverages to cozy up with during the wintertime. The rich warm vanilla and caramel notes bourbons take on as they age in their all-important charred oak barrels make a perfect complement for sitting fireside, watching the snowfall, or warming up on a frosty evening. Sipped neat or mixed into a hot mug of eggnog, cocoa, or cider, bourbon always feels like an ideal fit for the winter season. Beyond a deliciously seasonal beverage, bourbon makes a fantastic ingredient in many winter desserts, as well.

To learn more about which bourbons make the absolute best additions to winter desserts, we spoke to three bourbon experts: Sean Ebbitt, owner of Bluegrass Tavern, one of the top 15 best bourbon bars in the U.S.; Kenny Coleman, executive producer of Bourbon Pursuit podcast; and Peggy Noe Stevens, the first female master bourbon taster, 2019 Bourbon Hall of Fame and 2020 Whisky Magazine Hall of Fame inductee, and author of "Which Fork Do I Use with My Bourbon."

Though their opinions were as varied as their backgrounds, they all agreed on two things. Bourbon makes a divine addition to winter (or any season's) desserts, and the best way to find the right bourbon for your dessert is to experiment, taste a lot of different bourbons, and most importantly, have fun. Here are the 12 best bourbon brands to add to winter desserts.

Starting off with a well-known classic, Sean Ebbitt suggests Maker's Mark — a popular choice that will blend easily into winter desserts. A well-established Kentucky distillery that's been crafting bourbon since 1953, Maker's Mark is a straightforward bourbon choice for winter desserts. Known for its sweetness and prominent vanilla flavors, this bourbon is a smooth and creamy crowd pleaser — not too harsh with light spice and a soft finish. As its website explains, "the process of firing barrels opens pores in the staves and caramelizes the natural wood sugars. This helps give Maker's Mark those pleasant vanilla notes."

Ebbitt is particularly fond of using Maker's Mark in sweet breads like banana bread, pumpkin bread, or pound cake, but he also enjoys bourbon chocolate balls. "Bourbon is made to stand out with strong flavors," he explained, "unlike vodka." That strong flavor profile is part of what makes bourbon a natural match for winter desserts. Kenny Coleman goes further, saying, "Bourbon's depth of caramel, vanilla, spice, and oak flavors naturally complement many flavors found in baking, and shine in the wintertime."

Bourbon is so synonymous with vanilla that Peggy Noe Stevens admits, "Any dessert that calls for vanilla, I replace with bourbon due to its rich tone of vanilla and caramel." Those sound like words to live by, and an excellent place to start when learning to bake with bourbon.

Sean Ebbitt's next pick is Old Forester 86 proof, a full-bodied bourbon created in 1870. Winner of a 2019 International Spirits Challenge Gold medal, and one of the 27 best bourbon brands, Old Forester 86 is characterized by its sharp and sweet floral character and hints of mint, tobacco leaf, light orange notes, and, of course, vanilla.

One tip Ebbitt gives for incorporating bourbon into your desserts is to keep in mind the flavor balance of the ingredients. He says, "Sometimes people use too much bourbon and it overpowers the dish. The goal is for the person to eat a dessert with a hint of bourbon, not to bite into a mouthful of bourbon. If they wanted a lot of bourbon, they would just drink it neat."

With that in mind, practice moderation as you experiment with incorporating bourbon into a sticky toffee pudding bundt cake, gingerbread, cinnamon rolls, and other winter desserts. Start with a little, and taste as you go to make sure the bourbon doesn't overpower the recipe.

Another popular bourbon, Elijah Craig, made Peggy Noe Stevens' list of the top bourbons to use in winter desserts. Elijah Craig has been making bourbon in Kentucky for more than 250 years, and its Small Batch Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey has taken home multiple awards in the past few decades alone. It's a preferred bourbon for Stevens because of its complex, warm and woody flavors, accented with nutmeg, spices, and smoke.

Stevens notes bourbons often have flavors of vanilla, caramel, cherries, peach, cinnamon, nutmeg, almonds, or pecans — to name just a few of the flavor components commonly detected in the alcohol. She continues, "A bourbon can offer just the right mix of mystery with tantalizing hints of the familiar."

In particular, Elijah Craig's higher spice notes make it an excellent choice for some of Stevens' favorite desserts, such as blackberry jam cake, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, and Springerle cookies. You could even try adding bourbon to your pie crust. Additionally, she proclaims coconut cake, pineapple upside down cake, and pot de crème with drunken cherries as winning bourbon-infused desserts. "I find the flavors of bourbon truly sing when paired with these desserts," she states.

Kenny Coleman looks to smaller, less conventional distilleries for inspiration. "While many of the big distilleries would give you the standard profile you're looking for, these options will provide some interesting flavors you didn't expect," he explains.

Frey Ranch exemplifies the unexpected. Based in Nevada (rather than Kentucky), The Frey family has been farming the ranch for five generations. Today, they produce a true farm-to-table, 100% sustainably grown bourbon that's malted, distilled, matured, and bottled on the ranch. The resulting bourbon has the expected vanilla and caramel notes with oak flavor, as well as hints of banana chips, mint, candy corn, and dried hay. The finish is described as cedar, pepper, and treacle.

Kenny Coleman suggests adding this bourbon "into something rich that can handle it like a bourbon brownie batter," though he has many favorite bourbon-friendly winter desserts. These include bourbon pecan pie, the infamous bourbon ball, a Kentucky tiramisu (literally just add bourbon), or anything you can drizzle with a bourbon caramel sauce.

Coming to us from Wyoming is another less traditional bourbon option chosen by Kenny Coleman for pairing with winter desserts. Wyoming Whiskey's Small Batch Bourbon has a floral aroma with a hint of vanilla bean and caramel pudding. On the palate, the floral notes blossom with baking spices and browned butter, caramel, and a hint of cinnamon spice. It has a toffee finish as the vanilla and spice flavors fade.

Coleman says of Wyoming Whiskey, "This wheated bourbon has a silky smooth texture and always reminds me of honey, where it would shine in a bourbon-infused whipped cream." You could even double up the flavor by infusing bourbon into a cake and topping it with a Wyoming Whiskey-infused whipped cream.

As you're considering the bourbon selection for your desserts, Coleman suggests you consider the bourbon's proof. Since the alcohol evaporates as it's heated during cooking, he recommends "bourbons less than 90 proof or 45% ABV." Of course, at 88 proof, Wyoming Whiskey fits the bill perfectly.

While Kenny Coleman admits to being a little biased about Bourbon Pursuit's propriety spirit, he stands by his product, calling it his household's go to. Created by blending different mash bills and barrel types from distilleries in Kentucky, Tennessee, and New York (with varying aging conditions), Pursuit United Bourbon seeks to "harmoniously unite the best characteristics from multiple bourbons" with its new, blended whiskey. Coleman states it "delivers bright fruit flavors with an orange marmalade finish, but also has a bit of spice which makes it ideal for holiday treats like gingerbread or a bourbon-soaked pound cake."

With this in mind, Pursuit United would make an excellent addition to winter desserts that incorporate a touch of citrus zest. You could mix it directly into the batter of an orangey carrot cake to compliment the recipe's citrus and spices, in the cranberry jam filling in a white chocolate cranberry tart, or drizzle a little into your whipped cream when topping a citrus-almond tart.

Peggy Noe Stevens stated she always considers three things when pairing food and bourbon: balance (complimentary flavors that match a bourbon's dominant notes), counterbalance (contrasting flavors that highlight each other), and explosion (matching two predominant flavors for a "surround-sound flavor in your mouth, hence explosion"). With that in mind, another top pick from Stevens is Johnny Drum bourbon from Willett Distillery, which provides opportunities for all three factors.

Johnny Drum is a 15-year aged private stock label bourbon produced by Willett. Stevens notes it has a nutty and caramel profile, which will complement winter flavors nicely. Now, for balance, she gives the example of "detecting a nutty note in a bourbon and pairing it with a dessert that has nuts." This could mean complementing the fruit and spice notes of Johnny Drum with the fruit and spice in cranberry cinnamon rolls.

As for counterbalance, Stevens mentioned the spices in an apple pie. "The spice is opposite of the apple flavors," she explains, "but a perfect complement." And when experimenting with explosive flavor, consider pairing Johnny Drum's strong caramel notes with a simple bourbon caramel sauce for a caramel-on-caramel explosion.

Another bourbon selected by Peggy Noe Stevens for winter desserts is Peerless Bourbon, noting its rich toffee and caramel notes will work well with the season's flavors. Kentucky Peerless Bourbon's story began back in 1881, when its distillery was first built in Henderson, Kentucky. Eventually bought by Henry H. Kraver, its peak production came in 1917, when the distillery was turning out 200 barrels a week. Although it has not been continuously operating since then (nor been continuously held by the family), Kraver's descendants revived the family legacy in 2014, and Peerless Distilling Co. remains owned by the fifth generation of its founders.

Peerless Small Batch Bourbon has flavors of caramel and toasted oak with a sweet and spicy finish, where flavors like cocoa, cinnamon, and citrus dance with florals and spicy oak. Consequently, Peerless could be a great opportunity to try the explosion pairing technique described by Stevens. Try layering its cocoa and cinnamon with a Mexican hot chocolate or exploding its toffee and caramel flavors by adding it to an old-fashioned homemade toffee recipe (among other tips for baking with bourbon).

RD1, or Registered Distillery 1, draws its name from the first registered distillery opened in Lexington, Kentucky in 1865. Though that original distillery was destroyed by a fire only a decade later, its memory was honored when RD1 opened in 2020. Since then, the distillery has taken home the gold in dozens of spirits competitions for its line of wood-finished bourbons. And it earns a place on Sean Ebbitt's list of best bourbons for winter desserts with its Small Batch Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey Finished With Brazilian Amburana Wood.

Ebbitt cites the bourbon's strong unique oak flavors, which comes from the amburana wood finish. Amburana trees are native to South America, where the wood is used for making essential oils and cachaça barrels. But the wood has gained popularity among U.S. brewers and distillers in recent years due to its intense aroma of cinnamon baked goods — aromatic compounds that get infused into amburana-finished bourbons.

Since RD1 features notes of baking spices like apple cinnamon, nutmeg, and light brown sugar, you can take advantage of the bourbon's unique flavor profile by adding it to classic spiced baked goods (particularly ones that prominently feature cinnamon). Put a little in your apple pie filling, or incorporate it into your homemade cinnamon rolls. You can substitute bourbon for the vanilla, mix it into the glaze, or drizzle a bourbon reduction over the top of the finished rolls when they come out of the oven.

Woodford Reserve Double Oaked is produced by Woodford Reserve distillery (a National Historic Landmark) in Versailles, Kentucky. The distillery combines a unique yeast strain and one of the longest fermentation processes in the industry to create its signature bourbons. Woodford Reserve is also one of the few distilleries in the U.S. that makes its own barrels, so it can oversee the crafting, toasting, and charring of those crucial flavor-imparting casks. Given this, Sam Ebbitt chose Woodford Double Oaked as a favorite dessert ingredient because of its strong oak flavor, but light spice.

Woodford Double Oaked is twice-barreled, so it's matured in two separate, charred oak barrels to extract additional soft, sweet oak character. It's a full-bodied bourbon that features a mix of vanilla, dark caramel, hazelnut, apple, and fruit flavors, alongside that oak and spice. Use this bourbon to add depth and richness to a pecan pie or try adding it to your next batch of brownies (you could even try brushing bourbon over baked brownies).

When it comes to beautiful bourbons for winter desserts, Peggy Noe Stevens also enjoys Booker's. A barrel-strength bourbon distilled by Jim Beam, this whiskey was introduced in the late 1980s by Booker Noe (Jim Beam's grandson) as the ultimate holiday gift for his special friends. It was so well received that a few batches began to be released each year.

Stevens prizes Booker's for its deep smoke and dark fruit flavors. Though it can be pricey, she maintains you shouldn't skimp on the quality of the bourbon you choose to cook with. "Chefs cook with the best olive oils, the best vinegars," Stevens told us. "So why not cook with the best bourbons? The ingredients to any recipe should never hold back on quality. The biggest mistake is when you take a not so flavorful spirit and put it in your desserts."

Since it's fairly expensive, opt for recipes that use bourbon sparingly to allow the nuances of this spirit to shine. Think of delicate, elegant desserts such as panna cotta or creme brulee. You can also select a recipe that only requires a few tablespoons of bourbon, such as a decadent caramel sauce to drizzle over cheesecake or pecan pie. Keeping the bourbon concentrated in the topping will keep it from getting overwhelmed by stronger spices and sugar in the dessert.

There's high-quality bourbon, and then there's extravagance. If you're in the mood to splurge on a truly decadent dessert, pick up Kenny Coleman's priciest choice: Bardstown Bourbon Discovery #12. Coming out of Bardstown Distilling in Kentucky, the distillery's Discovery series celebrates the art of blended whiskies, and Discovery #12 is a blend of four different bourbons that have aged between six and 14 years. With aromatic baked cherry, toasted oak, vanilla cream, and hazelnut, plus tasting notes of wood, sugar, spice, coconut, red fruit, and caramel, it sounds like a dessert on its own.

Now, since it costs nearly $140 per bottle as of November 2024, some may wonder if it's the best bourbon to cook with. But according to Coleman, "The answer comes down to the barrel proof concentration of flavors. Its complexity and proof will make sure the bourbon flavor is known, which makes it perfect for chocolate-covered bourbon balls or a bourbon chocolate ganache."

No matter what winter desserts you prefer, experimentation is the key to finding the right bourbon match. As Coleman explains, "Just like how there are infinite combinations to continue reimagining the desserts we love, there are just as many variations when it comes to the bourbon category, where we are in pursuit of the next great bottle." So get out there this winter and try some boozy baking with bourbon.