So, wow. A lot has happened in the last few weeks, huh?
A couple of weeks ago, I got the bright idea that I wanted to up the level of competition this year on the Bottom-Shelf Brackets. At the time it wasn’t for any real reason, I just thought it might be fun. Over the previous six years, we’ve explored the best of worst that bourbon has to offer. And, if we are being honest, some of the worst of the worst as well. This year, I had the idea to do something a little different.
In the past, I’ve had a definition of “bottom-shelf” that ranged from $15-$18 (or under) per 750, $20-$24 per liter and $35 per 1.75 liter. That definition got me a lot of entries by Heaven Hill and Jim Beam but only a couple from any other distilleries. I had one year where half of the entrants were Jim Beam products and another where half were from Heaven Hill. So this year I decided to limit each distillery to one entrant.
Of course, not all distilleries have products that meet the definitions that I had defined for “Bottom-Shelf.” So what was I to do? Well, for this year, I’ve decided to throw out any pretense that this is a competition between “bottom-shelf” bourbons. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to go all-in and jump to the top of the price point. I mean, this is still a contest about being frugal.
That and I have to buy all of these things and I am still a freelancer…
So, here are the new rules:
One entry per distillery
Purchased for under $25. No matter the size. No matter if it was on sale.
Available in the Twin Cities metro area.
That’s it. As a general guideline, I tried to find the “best” offering from each distillery at the price point. Once I purchased all the entrants, I needed to seed them into brackets. For that, I usually use proof and stated age, but since all of these are non-age stated, I went by proof and then flipped a coin when two were the same proof. In order to maintain balanced divisions, I alternated which division chooses first, so Division One got to chose first on the first round, but Division Two got to choose first on the second round, then One on the third and back to Two on the fourth.
So let’s meet the competition in this “Not-So-Bottom-Shelf” Bracket, shall we? It should come as no surprise that I was able to find entrants from Jim Beam, Heaven Hill, Wild Turkey, and Barton 1792. Each of these has produced winners in the past. In fact, some of those past winners are represented this year in Division Two, number four seed Very Old Barton 86 proof and Division One, number one seed Wild Turkey 101 proof. But I was a bit shocked to find that the Heaven Hill entry was Division One, number two seed Elijah Craig and that the Jim Beam entry was Division Two, number one seed Knob Creek. Though I’ve been able to find Knob Creek for about $25 for a while now, so it really shouldn’t have been that surprising. Rounding out the rest of our entrants from Division One are number three seed Makers Mark and number four seed Four Roses. In Division Two are number two seed Old Forester 100 proof and number three seed Buffalo Trace.
I can’t wait for this one. It should be fun!
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