[WD] Bottled-in-Bond: Consumers Are Looking Away.

Would you risk your government job for Pappy? One Oregon official thought 30 years of rare bourbon worth $100,000+ was worth that gamble—secretly buying earmarked Pappy Van Winkle while state customers faced 21,000-to-1 lottery odds. Ethics commissioners called his penalty of $500 "laughable," and honestly, who wouldn't take that deal?

In today's dispatch, we're diving headfirst into:

• Bottled-in-Bond: the whiskey consumers don’t care about?

• Worthy Reads: Sampling some of the best from around the web

• Rewind: Some of our most popular Instagram posts from last week

Why Bottled-in-Bond Pricing Makes No Sense

The US government standardized bottled-in-bond (BiB) whiskey down to the proof point and the aging requirement. Every bottle follows identical rules: 100 proof, minimum 4 years, single distillery, single season. The government standardized everything… except price. That's where the rules end and the chaos begins.

Not sure what bottled-in-bond is? click here

Make it Make Sense 

The whiskey aisle should be simple. Older whiskey costs more. Higher proof costs more. Small batches cost more. These patterns make sense to shoppers. But bottled-in-bond breaks every rule. So we did what any data-obsessed individual would do. We captured 182 BiB expressions since 2022 and got busy making graphs. What we found was pricing that looks like someone threw darts at a board while blindfolded.

Look at that orange explosion across the bottom of the chart. Wildly different cost per year of age. We even removed two outliers; High Wire’s Jimmy Red 10th Anniversary and WhistlePig’s Beyond Bonded. But if you look at the five and six-year releases (in dark pink), they cluster between $10-15 per year. By eight years, nearly every bottle falls into a narrow $12-18 range. The wild scatter becomes a neat formation. Almost beaten into submission by peer pressure.

Why does this happen? Maybe it's what buyers expect to pay. Maybe it's storage costs. But younger whiskeys are like test products. Distillers use four-year bottles to see what people will pay. By year five, everyone agrees on the "right" price. The older it gets, the more predictable the price becomes.

Look at those tall pink bars between $40 and $80. They contain 88 different bottles—but tell two different stories.

Big Kentucky names like Jim Beam and Old Grand-Dad charge sub-$40. These bottled-in-bonds have been around for decades. Craft distillers like Still Austin and Kings County charge $70-80. Same government stamp. Same four years aging. Double the price.

Why? Kentucky's BiB bottles carry generations of trust. They don't need to prove anything—just deliver what grandpa drank. But craft distillers outside Kentucky use that government stamp as social validation. They choose BiB certification to add credibility. People pay $70+ for the story backed by federal proof, not just the age.

That empty space above $80 tells yet another story. Heritage brands aren’t readily crossing that line. They don't need to. Craft producers on the other hand, push right up to it. Only outliers like Jimmy Red ($150) dare go higher. Both strategies work because they solve different problems. Kentucky sells trusted tradition at fair prices. Craft distillers sell government-certified quality at premium rates. What started as consumer protection in 1897 now serves two masters: preserving heritage and validating craft. And yet there is always an surprise in the data.

Outliers in the World of BiB

For bottled-in-bond, that surprise is Heaven Hill. They turned the category consumers ignore into competitive advantage.

Heaven Hill makes 20 of the 182 bottled-in-bond whiskeys we tracked. One in every nine bottles. While others chased single barrels, cask strength, and Amburana finishes, Heaven Hill quietly claimed a market nobody wanted.

Sixteen of those twenty carry the Old Fitzgerald name. From 2018 to 2021, every bottle followed simple math: $10 per year of aging. Then Fall 2022's 19-year bourbon jumped to $12.74 per year. Today a 9-year costs $14.44 per year. The steady climb shows strategy. And keep in mind this excludes the VVS offerings.

Is Old Fitzgerald the best whiskey? No. But those diamond-shaped decanters transformed a government designation into luxury. Through packaging and patient pricing, Heaven Hill created premium BiB from nothing.

Other producers will eventually release premium aged bottled-in-bond. Ten years, twelve, fifteen. But Heaven Hill already owns this space. Old Fitzgerald trained the market: aged BiB costs this much, not more. Future premium BiB releases will live under the price umbrella Heaven Hill built years ago.

While bourbon prices exploded everywhere else, bottled-in-bond stayed cheap. Since 2022: 182 releases, middle price $61.50, with 83% under $100. Why? Most drinkers don't care about bottled-in-bond. Better options exist. Higher proof beats 100-proof. Single barrels beat government standards. With thousands of choices, bottled-in-bond feels ordinary.

This lack of interest protected prices. Why raise prices when buyers see it as backup bourbon? But change is coming. Heaven Hill shows the conflict. They keep making affordable bottles while testing luxury prices on special releases.

Two futures are possible. Craft distillers will keep raising prices to match rare Kentucky bourbon. Why sell 12-year bottled-in-bond for $70 when you can charge $200? Or buyers will ignore it. Bottles will sit on shelves. Distillers will quit making products that don't sell. The next 18 months will show us which way it goes.

What Is Bottled-in-Bond?

Before 1897, whiskey could be grain alcohol mixed with tobacco juice. People died.

Four Rules Since 1897
Congress created bottled-in-bond to stop the poisoning.
1. Every bottle - 100 proof exactly
2. Four years aging minimum
3. Single distillery, single season
4. Government supervision from barrel to bottle

Why It Still Matters Today?
But that government stamp adds validity to a specific process. Bureaucracy became a credential.

📰 Worthy Whiskey News (a.k.a. our favorite reads)

• The not so transparent world of Bottled-in-Bond.

• The most coveted private whiskey collection goes to auction this month

• A sign of things to come? Middle West buys Old Elk

• Diving deep into a cornerstone of Texas Whiskey - Still Austin

📸Rewind: A selection of our most popular IG Posts

• Batch sizes +5.3x and 75% bump in SRP and still fans want more

• Eagle Rare 12 drops at SRP of $50 but how likely are you to see it?
  

• There are whiskey rules and then there are commandments
  

• Alcohol tops Tobacco as leading tax source for the first time

What a week — whiskey, numbers, and highway kangaroos.

Thanks for flying with us. If you’ve got friends who appreciate a good pour and a better story, send this their way. We’re always looking to add more passengers on our bus.

Until next time, keep your bottles upright and your marsupials properly fenced in.

Cheers.