The 16 Best Bourbons To Drink In 2023

Bourbon is having a heck of a century, and each year seems to bring better and better expressions. While your wallet may disagree, there's never been a better time to be a bourbon drinker, at least in terms of being spoiled for choice. From wildly artistic experimentation to the forefront of scientific wisdom, bourbon truly stands at its pinnacle of craft and creativity. And we're not even halfway through the year yet! That means plenty of 

With that happy reflection in mind, here are our picks for the best bourbons of 2023, although expect plenty of updates with what we know about annual and upcoming releases, plus plenty of surprises along the way. And if you don't see your favorite bourbon on our list, that doesn't mean it doesn't deserve to be — it just means you're smart enough to keep your secrets to yourself so that the treasured rare bourbons in your collection stay affordable. We get it. We savor our favorites, too, even when we want to tell the whole world about the underrated bourbons out there.

Charlie's Batch is named after woodworker Charlie Hutchens, who designed and created the wooden boxes that house each widely anticipated Booker's releases. The first one of this year is no exception to both hype and hope. The original small-batch bourbon famously kicks like a mule, with a hefty nose that nevertheless delivers the sweet scent of clover and white nectarine. For a straight bourbon, it sure smells like a wine. Perhaps surprisingly for such a punchy bourbon at 126.6 proof, its legs run fast and thinly spaced, about a centimeter apart.

As all Booker's releases are, it's a potent sip, and it feels like there are two kinds of burn going on at once here atop delicious caramel, chocolate, and oak. Surprising again, only a drop or two of water quells the flames much more than one would expect of something so high-test, and the result is a milder experience that unlocks the door to a very strong base that shows why Booker's batches are so beloved. It's a sipping whiskey, less for its strength and more for the fact that the Kentucky chew makes the finish too energetic, but if you treat it with a careful approach, you'll understand the buzz.

Cedar Ridge doesn't make waves, possibly because it's too busy winning awards and moving units on a scale that might surprise you. Iowa's first distillery since Prohibition knows both corn and grapes, since Cedar Ridge also boasts a vineyard and winery. The multiple rounds of fermentation, distillation, and aging create something special, and it's not too many alcohol producers who can do a barrel exchange program with themselves. That's likely why you have a broad range of options to sample Cedar Ridge's products: bourbon, rye, American single malt, etc. aged in Port, sherry, etc. yields a heck of a lot of combination even before the maple and BiB versions.

Still, by reports all that expertise comes to bear in February's 2023 Port Cask Finished Bourbon, using Iowa corn and the brand's premium Estate Port wine casks, which expresses numerous stone fruits in spicy vanilla. One note: for more of that unique expertise, Iowa-local readers should head to Cedar Ridge for the blazing-new release of The QuintEssential™ Special Release: Pete & Sherri, Married – 1st Anniversary. It's a six-year, peated American single malt aged in sherry barrels that truly speaks to the nature of the location. Alas, it's only available onsite.

Ah, mizunara: the rich guy's oak. Everything about this wood makes it more of a pain in the neck to harvest and turn into a usable barrel, over a longer period of time, and thus, it's a baked-in premium. But hold up: it also has an effect on the flavor that sounds terrific, meaning this isn't just some marketing hype. Mizunara will give your whiskey a rich, sweet undertone, like the base layer on a canvas.

Compounding that, there's a lot to raise an intrigued eyebrow to here. Four Gate aged this 117.4-proof Kentucky straight bourbon for seven years, six months and longer, finishing in the Japanese oak. It's available in a winding path through the South and — perhaps tellingly, despite this being distilled in Kentucky — Indiana. However, at a limit of 1,673 bottles, anyone more interested in the prize than the hunt might want to order a no-fuss delivery through Four Gate's website.

Remember what we said about Heaven Hill being unable to fail? The question of whether or not to chase down their recent work is less yes/no and more a question of whether you like your whiskey wheated or not. Wheaters are definitely having a moment, but not everybody's ready to tackle it at 125.8 proof. For those who are, Larceny's first 2023 release is an obvious destination.

Heaven Hill obviously knows what they've got in hand with the Old Fitz-adjacent brand, as the label starts its second decade of commercial sales. While the small batches are renowned for a perhaps too-low price point even as enthusiasts chase down their best releases, the barrel-proof bottles are going for $80 and up. However, the reports are that the premium pays for itself, laden with all the flavors of a premium sundae.

If you wanted a bottle of Weller Full Proof, you'd be paying half a grand. But for about the same price as Weller Special Reserve, you can get your hands on the highly comparable Larceny, making this a no-brainer purchase.

The hook with the Charter Oak series is that while bourbon must be made in America in new charred oak barrels, that oak doesn't have to be American itself. The imported Spanish Oak for this iteration of the series follows Chinkapin Oak, Mongolian Oak, French Oak, and Canadian Oak. As more and more distillers argue that the terroir that feeds the cereals matters just as much as the water source, you'll find it a factor in the wood as much as the type of wood itself and any previous alcohols in finished barrels. The fact is, every factor in production can send a barrel in drastically different directions, and oak from Europe reportedly gives bourbon a spicier and more earthy taste due to the wood's tighter grain.

Buffalo Trace is betting on some of the centuries packed into these trees lending it fantastic depth. But that depth is not for everyone. Let the potent nose of fruit and roses and camphor warn or entice you to what awaits. This hits differently from almost all bourbons, salty and leathery, then a willow bitterness. It's not an everyday bourbon, but it sure delivers on the depth. You'd never guess this is as low as 92 proof. All the diesel here is in the flavor, not the ABV, but sip it lightly enough, and you'll catch cherry. This bourbon definitely recommends itself with a drop of water, so that you can appreciate what differentiates it from American oak-aged bourbons.

Alright, alright, yes, this is technically a 2022 release, but hear us out: it dropped on the tail end of 2022, and we already bit our tongue about Stranahan's Snowflake, because no way are you getting your grabbers on that. Wyoming Whiskey's first double-digit birthday bourbon might not come cheap, but you can have it in your hands tomorrow thanks to the magic of the internet.

Reviews have said that among the usual suspects (wood, vanilla, butterscotch, caramel, etc.) comes cherry and bubblegum. So that's different. More germane to its allure, if you ask us, is the report that this is a thick, oily whiskey: always a hallmark of rich flavor. No wonder the Ten Year Anniversary Edition gets praise as a triumph for the Wyoming Whiskey distillery and likely the best bottle it's put out to date. And for $200 you might just have an incentive to make it last until the Twenty Year Anniversary edition. (You might get lucky with a Ten Year non-anniversary using this mash bill this decade, though.)

People either love Texas whiskey or it's an affront to their tastes, but there's no denying that three or four years in the Lone Star heat (and in much of the state, freeze) produces a firework beyond what ten often gives us elsewhere. Even a relatively mild Texas whiskey, pulled off at a low ABV, is volatile with flavor. But it doesn't have to be a kick from a cowboy boot, either. Enter the new one-off from Hye, TX: Garrison Brothers Lady Bird, which couches a malted and milled grain taste in pleasant herbal sweetness.

As mentioned in our Belle Meade entry in the best sourced bourbons, honey whiskeys sure are having a moment, and Garrison Brothers is no stranger to the field, having produced Honey Dew to satisfied acclaim. The XO cognac finish is a new touch though, and one concluded with a dip in a dark purple wax that suggests the bluebonnet, the official state flower of Texas. Named in honor of Lady Bird Johnson and created to help support bees and other pollinators, it's a total Texas experience that does a lot of good in the world. A smidge over 5900 bottles were produced, so some hunting is necessary, but as with a bumblebee, a far-ranging search will yield sweet rewards.

Given the acclaim that follows these experiments, the whiskey market really ought to devote more attention to the treasure hunters who find fine offerings from distillers both premier and esoteric, and create new blends. For as often as they're hailed, this remains a market where drinkers love the mythos of the ancient knowledge being made for generations in antique rickhouses. And yes, those distilleries produce undeniably excellent whiskeys — you won't find us short on praise for Buffalo Trace, Heaven Hill, Beam Suntory, and the rest. But what about the adventurers who make something greater than its parts?

If that's a taste you want to try, the praise for Dixon Dedman's work is a great place to start. With 2XO, the blender combines personally selected whiskeys into a second oak barrel — not so unusual, although the fact that this is a new, charred oak barrel is. It's almost like a rebirth and baptism for the blend as a unified bourbon. Though 2XO is a newcomer to the whiskey scene, Dedman's success at resurrecting Kentucky Owl raises an intrigued eyebrow to its releases thus far. While Phoenix was greeted with a positive though sometimes middling reception, 2XO seems to be where Dedman has hit a home run in his second at-bat.