The 12 Best Bourbons We Tried In 2024

At year's end, we're always faced with the terrible specter of personal improvement: resolutions, gym memberships, dry January. All the more reason to really stride into the winter solstice with a firm commitment to personal indulgence. Pour yourself a bourbon and throw another log on the fire. Of course, epicurean delights are best shared, so if you're looking for a great bourbon, you won't be ashamed to pour any of these for your loved ones this holiday season.

While a lot of great bourbon filled my glass in 2024, I'm focusing on the best new ones (or at least new to me) that I tried. Sorry, Evan Williams, but I still love you. We just didn't go on any new adventures together. And Col. E.H. Taylor — magnificent work with that rye, but I've been tasked with bourbon at year's end. See you both in 2025 when you innovate some great new expressions for me to fall in love with all over again.

Everyone else, let's get this non-denominational Winter Light Festival Bourbon Celebration Party for Communal Festivities of Fun started. Here are the bourbons that caught my attention in the past year, for you to enjoy without regret — including a couple you can pour into eggnog without fear of squandering their strengths! (Or use them however you choose to cook with bourbon.)

Some recommendations are based on firsthand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by distillers.

Blue Note Juke Joint is an unfiltered, small-batch, straight bourbon clocking in at a very amenable 93 proof. There's no age statement or mash bill disclosure on this Kentucky-distilled and Tennessee-bottled release. A lot of booze gets added to my shelf each year, and this is one of the few bottles that has been steadily drained since first arriving. It's good enough to spend money on, though not so sacrosanct that I reserve it for company and special events. If you can get that honey cask rye, it's the best Blue Note, but the whole lineup impresses, and Juke Joint does so as raucously as its name implies.

The nose is chlorine and dog fur while being much more pleasant than either of those sound. (Sorry if your dog doesn't smell as good as mine.) I'm hard-pressed to think of the last time a bourbon, despite its requirements, smelled just of corn ... probably when I had Jeptha Creed's Bloody Butcher, which was one of the funkiest whiskeys I ever put in my mouth. Juke Joint comes across much more traditional, ending with chocolatey and peach notes.

It loses its appeal with a touch of water, though, becoming astringent, all lemon pith. However, ice cubes sweeten it back up, if not quite as good as neat. This would be a great Lynchburg lemonade mixer, or poured with some ginger ale on a hot day.

While there's a more intense and oakier Chicken Cock Red Stave specialty bourbon out there, I actually prefer the regular stuff. This 90-proof straight bourbon rewards drinking more interactively than Red Stave, which tends to be best as it washes over your tongue unencumbered. Meanwhile, the standard bottle, a revival of a 19^th-century brand, gives up the usual lemon scent atop something much more unusual, perhaps poached pear.

What you get in the drinking is a far less pronounced oakiness, and a centrally situated mildness that doesn't overcommit to fruit or nut. Adding water brings the richness and sweetness forward without altering its nature, with a similar result on the rocks. However, I do think ice is to be avoided here, as the flavors dilute but do not change beyond a slightly more caramel nuttiness. Chicken Cock is a fine enough bourbon standing on its own many legs; there's no need to change it. It's a good spring spirit: subdued enough not to warm you, and good enough not to take all day drinking on ice.

A list of tasting notes that commences with "snickerdoodles sprinkled with cinnamon sugar powder dipped in maple syrup" and only gets sweeter, might make your eyeballs contract diabetes if you read it all in one sitting. Some crazy things happen at 140.2 proof in the Texas sun. The nose gives, first and foremost, tomato leaves and some canned peaches, before the more familiar Garrison chocolate, caramel, leather, and tobacco play catch-up.

For such a high proof, it's real soft on the snoot with no ethanol blowout. The first taste is almost as smooth as the sniff: curious in any instance, let alone at an ABV that could launch a small rocket. Splash a little on your tongue and let toasted coconut walk you through salty-sweet butterscotch and down the lane to a tobacco finish.

Reading through whiskey discussions, Garrison Brothers releases feel divisive to me. Cowboy is therefore a cautiously great purchase if you want maximum potency that isn't an ass-kicker. Master distiller Donnie Todd brings these bottles to a richness that rivals Stagg or an 18-year scotch, albeit with a little less complexity. It runs deep if not broad, though adding water peps up all of these qualities at the cost of making it more fiery. On ice, things sweeten up without tannin onslaught, though my preference remains neat. The 2024 release is one of the finest GBs in my recent, if limited, memory as a fan.

Here's the proof this list is alphabetical, not ranked, or else Stagg would be in its usual top spot. Look, you're not going to get a bottle of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection's George T. Stagg, although it was the best bourbon of the bunch this year. But you can usually find a bottle of the unadorned Stagg (formerly Stagg Jr.) releases that come out a little more frequently and with less fanfare, even if they have been climbing up to a few hundred dollars in recent years.

I leave it to you to debate whether any bottle of whiskey is ever worth more than a day's pay, but I can tell you which bourbon I poured for my family this Christmas, and which one I would indeed pay a few hundred for if I wanted to mark a special occasion. If you take a single recommendation from this list, good luck choosing between Pinhook and Stagg, though you'll find it easier to locate a bottle of the latter on your local liquor store's upper shelves.

Now this is some fun stuff that drinks really sweet. High-rye with medium toasted #4 char, High & Wicked's 104 proof is non-chill filtered, and gosh, I love all of these adjectives so much already. This ticks a lot of boxes that I take as good signs. The five-year label tells you the whole story, including the two kinds of stills used. Most of the mash bill is locally sourced too, with 51% corn and 39% rye grown in Kentucky. No word on the malted barley.

As with Smokeye Hill, I keep finding myself reaching for this bottle without even realizing it's becoming my regular. The latest entry in saying "Man that is good stuff" aloud to no one in particular, H&W's nose comes in heady but friendly: apple cider and gasoline, but only after an onrush of cherry. Like ... possibly the most cherry I have ever inhaled off of a bourbon. Drink it, though, and get ready for light lemon, vanilla, caramel, chocolate, and ... gosh, what else? The right amount of oak for the likes of me.

You won't affect this much with water. You need to commit to a side and either drink it neat or enjoy the pleasantly embittered iced version. It's a top pick.

Maker's Mark is already an impressive wheated bourbon, but with its new aging cellar in Loretto, Kentucky, the distiller has slowed the climate's roll on its barrels to let them mature at their own pace. As I was able to taste for myself back in September, the resulting Maker Mark Cellar-Aged is a rollicking bottle of exotic flavors not commonly found in whiskey. Although Scotch distilling principles are at play in the cool, moist cellar, they're only a starting point from which to set out for terra incognita.

If you like trying new things, Cellar-Aged 2024 offers quite a bit of novelty amid quality, though I'd caution any wheat fanatic from expecting something too far astray from the familiar profile. It delivers exactly on its premise: bold macro notes, with micro ones coaxed out from charging into undesirable territory. But hey, if you want to know what wheated Scotch would taste like, this is one of the brands that brings you closer to an idea.

Now, uh ... can we get a single malt/wheat mash bill aged for a decade or so in this wonderful cellar?

Master Distiller Nancy Fraley set out to recreate the 19^th-century Murray Hill Club whiskey as a blended bourbon. As she described in a Reddit thread, she used "about 1 barrel of light whiskey to 16 Bourbon barrels of the MGP 21% BBN recipe in order to pay a nod to the historical product while also making it a high end product." The result is all fruit and spice, in a great whiskey worth remarking upon. The nose throws out so much apple, pear, and strawberry, I was making notes before my face even got near it. Once my snout was in the Glencairn, the spice came forward, prompting me to jot down, "Is it possible this has rye and wheat in it?"

There's a good bit of burn that quickly fades, and you're left with a platformer jump from peppermint to peanut with tobacco and char along the way, ending on some sweet berries. It makes me think that depth and complexity might not be 100 notes, but the liquid's ability to hold and maintain any one of them while you interact with it. Familiar notes triumph in unfamiliar ways, creating a distinguished whiskey that makes me want to own a fireplace and complete manuscripts. Should I buy a pipe? You wouldn't drink this every day, but it's a top recommendation. With water, the burn fades to a low background hum. Even on ice, the oak comes forward brilliantly, lacquering a hunk of beautiful wood.

Although the standard bottle has made the brand beloved at the rodeo and divisive online, drawing either all your devotion or scorn, a tasting flight of the full line proves Pendleton whiskeys are so smooth, it's almost suspicious.

Pendleton's 1910 Bourbon uses a mash bill of two parts corn to one part rye, and boy do they come through in the smelling, along with plenty of fruit and white pepper. Tasting it, these elements sustain themselves while adding a bit of fennel, so you'd better like anethole in your alcohol. Funny enough, I actually preferred this 10-year bourbon's smooth, high-rye pepperiness to that of Pendleton's luxe 20-year, which had the mildest nose of the batch but also the oakiest, amid hay and cocoa. The 20 inarguably has the richest depth of quality, but the 1910 has a better taste to my mind — and great news for you, is easier and cheaper to come by.

You'll have to decide for yourself, but it's an excellent starting point for anyone who wants to like whiskey, but can't deal with the kick and burn that so often accompanies it. Name a smoother bourbon that doesn't taste cheap, and I'll call you a liar.

Pinhook isn't a distillery but an artfully sourced series that deliberately alters its profile in its annual releases, seeking to emphasize each straight bourbon's best traits rather than corral them into a consistent shape. This means that year to year, the Pinhook releases are going to vary by what's been sourced and combined. The brand is not the taste but the method.

2024's Vertical Series is nine years old, tracking and tracing a batch of 1,350 barrels as they age from four to 12 years, so not long to go. At this age and stage, the whiskey is rich and very sweet, despite a deceptively muted nose, but even more so with the complexity of long-simered caramel rather than simple sugar. A certain grassiness glides in beneath, yielding to the familiar lemon. The oak is all but absent but can be coaxed out with enough water. Still, I recommend it neat. Why change near-perfection?

Pinhook is simply phenomenal, and though its reputation is strong, I think for online chatter, it might be one of the most slept-upon bourbons out there.

Now that American single malt is legally its own thing, I expect we'll see a lot of company coming out to Colorado to join Stranahan's. Smokeye Hill's already there doing its own bourbon with heirloom blue corn and — well, it might be requisite on those icy elevations — malted barley alongside yellow corn and rye. (The label doesn't disclose the exact bill proportions.) Compared to the regular straight bourbon bottle (also made with blue corn), the Barrel Proof Straight promises a lot more caramel and vanilla at first sniff. And where that whiskey was straw-gold, this one has a rich copper hue.

Sipping this, I involuntarily uttered, "Ooh, that's really nice." The blue corn comes through in a different way than you might be used to in a bourbon. And while barrel proof is quite naturally stronger (this one was 131 proof), it's curiously also smoother. Its suppressed burn makes way for nice, tangy, and complex sugars. I'm not sure whiskeys get richer than this. A great pick for all of you Colorado trail passholders looking to bring a minimal amount of flask for a maximum amount of flavor. Anything more than a couple drops on your tongue and a couple minutes between sips, and you're speed-running its hall of phantom flavors to your detriment. If you're only getting one bottle of Smokeye Hill, this is the better buy. And you should get a bottle of Smokeye Hill.

This article took a lot longer to compile than expected, because combing through all of my tasting notes for the year, it turned out my favorites were ryes, new-to-me Irish whiskeys, and a couple of incredible Highland Parks. Fortunately, a few American distillers made it easy to nominate both of their bottles — Chicken Cock, Blue Note, and most definitely Templeton, whose new Fortitude bourbon joins the Iowa distillery's exceptional Midnight rye as an example of what's waiting to be found on the whiskey landscape beyond the usual borders.

An unusually vegetable perfume of celery, corn silks, and the like plays its cards close for a burnless drink of popcorn-flavored sans butter. It's sweet and easy at 92 proof, but if you want to amplify those flavors, funny enough, the way to do it is with a drop of dilution. Serving it on the rocks continues this effect, while adding a touch of citrus. I'm not sure there's a bad way to play Fortitude's hand.

If you get the chance, the 10-year single barrel reserve rye is even better, though a much wilder stallion, bucking grain and fruit and — really, Vaseline? — from the nose. It opens up to a much friendlier flavor once it's done kicking, expanding on those promises with a rose water taste that swivels into orange blossom.

The latest in preservation-supporting series announces its bourbon in strong aroma, smelling like lemon, straw, and, funny enough, Doritos, or at least a pronounced cumin and to lesser extent, cheese scent. Though the tasting notes aren't nearly so exotic, they are volatile, making it impossible to say it's X, Y, or Z before it morphs into a new taste. The throughline is ... well, I'd say cherry, but I think it's more accurate to say cherry pit. You can chew and churn it to get a fruit punch. 

All of this works around a minimal and manageable burn. If you like Still Austin, you'll find No. 4 a subdued counterpart that still manages to whip an entire buffet your way. If I have a major criticism, it's that the finish comes in with too much oak, but I'm a light touch, and those who love wood might find it just right for their tastes.

While it squares toe to toe with other Wyomings I've had, it stands out more than most. It's quality, rich stuff, but cantankerous enough that it has to be your thing. Case in point, I would skip the drop of water, as it accentuates the oak to a bitter-pill degree, and only brings out a smidge of that Doritos corn. But with ice to mellow it, this expression proves its best self, offering Honey Nut Cheerios instead.