Several distilleries today offer a private barrel program, where consumers, bars, liquor stores and whiskey societies can select their own casks and receive personalized bottles (and other perks). It’s an increasingly common part of the whiskey economy.
Starting May 13, Whisky Auctioneer will be debuting its third major sale of American whiskey, this time highlighting these private barrel stocks. But the concept of barrel picks has changed somewhat over the decades, and the bottles in the spotlight here point to a time when private barrel selection was far less common but, conversely, much more freewheeling and interesting.
“The growth in barrel picking is exceptional, and interest in private picks is at an all-time high,” as Fred Minnick, a whiskey historian, notes on the auctioneer’s website. “As we begin to see distillers limiting their private barrel programs, rare picks like these will be in demand. They represent a time when people had free reign in warehouses to select their ultimate flavor profiles. These bottles are capsules in time, reflecting a bygone era, and this is one of the last opportunities to get some of these extraordinarily rare gems.”
The prize bottle of the Whisky Auctioneer event, which runs through May 23, includes a Van Winkle 1975 Special Reserve 19 Year Old for Corti Brothers/Stitzel-Weller; a bottle of this sold for nearly $30,000 during an auction in August of 2021 (which was three times more than the bottle had ever fetched before).
Other highlights of the American whiskey auction include a Pappy Van Winkle 1984 Family Reserve 23-Year-Old Single Barrel selected by the Kentucky Barrel Society, a Willett Family Estate 1984 Single Barrel 24-Year-Old Bourbon selected by Bonili in Japan, a rare collection of Stitzel-Weller bourbons privately labeled for Berghof (a famous German restaurant in Chicago) and several private selections of the “Very Old Fitzgerald” with distillation dates back to 1954.
Overall, more than 60 of the 600+ bottles up for bid are exclusively selected barrel picks, most curated from a time long before the practice was common — although modern private barrel selects from Four Roses, Elijah Craig, Smooth Ambler and Buffalo Trace will be available.
“For our third American whiskey auction ever, we wanted to drill into something more specific and look for an angle that was more niche and targeted,” Whisky Auctioneer’s Head Curator Joe Wilson tells InsideHook. “And we noticed there’s been an emerging popularity for store picks and single-barrel private selections over the years.”
This was a far different practice before the new century’s whiskey boom kicked in. “These older bottles were private labeling that Stiltzer-Weller, and Maker’s Mark were doing primarily for bars and as corporate gifts,” says Wilson. “And if you go back to the ‘50s and ‘60s, it was sometimes hard to find what these companies were [that were doing private barrel bottles]. There were a lot of motor repair shops and more blue-collar industries doing it, for example.”
We can’t speak for the whiskey palate of the people at these motor repair ships, but some private barrel devotees certainly had a talent for finding great barrels: That includes the aforementioned Corti Brothers, who are longtime food and wine specialists in Sacramento. Darrell Corti was picky enough that he even bottled his store’s Van Winkle Special Reserve selections in cognac bottles.
With barrel picks, buyers who aren’t doing the selections themselves will need to have a level of trust for the people who are choosing the whiskey. “There’s certainly a gamble to drinking these,” Wilson admits. “You’re putting your money and experience into the hands of people who weren’t the distiller and the bottler, but that’s what makes it interesting.”
The private barrel focus was good timing for Whisky Auctioneer, as the auction was announced just as it looked like single barrel programs in Kentucky might be in legal jeopardy, as the long-running practice had never been codified and, it turned out, actually broke several existing laws — thankfully, the recently-passed, bipartisan House Bill 500 fixed that legal oversight, and points to a bright future for the practice.
“I think the private barrel selection is a celebration of the American drinker,” says Wilson. “These programs have transformed people from being passive consumers who, instead of picking up a standard Four Roses Small Batch, can now go to the distillery and act as an active co-producer. They choose their own barrel and decide what Four Roses means to them. It’s interesting to see what people think the best version of their favorite brand is.”
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