Let’s face it: keeping up with new bourbon releases in 2025 feels like drinking from a firehose. Between the big heritage distillers dropping wave after wave of limited editions, and craft distilleries fighting for attention with bold new finishes and branding gimmicks, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
Whether you're a seasoned collector or a casual sipper just looking for something worth the hunt, the bourbon landscape in 2025 demands strategy, discernment, and maybe a little help cutting through the noise. This guide is here to provide said help.
We’re no longer living in the early days of the modern bourbon boom where any bottle with a label that said “Limited Edition” was automatically worth grabbing. 2025 is a different scene:
• Oversaturation is real. Shelf space is crowded with new brands, sourced blends, and "finishes" stacked on top of finishes.
• Price creep continues. What was $50 five years ago is now pushing $80–$100 for comparable quality—sometimes with no real added value.
• Secondary market cool-down. Some previously white-hot bottles are seeing softening prices as supply increases and hype dies down.
So, where does that leave us? Right in the middle of a paradox: we’ve never had more options—but never needed more guidance to navigate them.
Let’s define it. “Worth your time” doesn’t mean the rarest, most expensive bottle on the market. It means something that delivers a compelling experience—whether that’s flavor, uniqueness, value, or collector upside.
• Released by Michter’s as a part of its legacy series joining the likes of Shenk’s and Bomberger's annual releases, Bomberger's PFG is a whole 100.2 proof and aged in specially crafted barrels made with extra-fine grain American oak then transferred to toasted and charred French fine grain oak barrels. Week after week, the secondary price for this bottle has continued to climb tied to folks realizing this pour lives up to the hype. The current Bourbon Blue Book® value is $428.
• A. Smith Bowman Cask Strength Batch 4 follows in the footsteps of the Virginia distillery’s previous releases with this bold, well-aged bourbon with serious depth. Bottled at a powerful 137.1 proof, this batch delivers a rich and layered experience that’s much smoother than the proof point would suggest. Made from Buffalo Trace distillate but aged and finished entirely in Virginia, Batch 4 showcases a mature, full-bodied profile that rewards slow sipping – anything else and you’ll find the bottle empty and a rough day ahead. The current Bourbon Blue Book® value is $404.
• The first ever Bulleit-distilled bourbon, having previously sourced their whiskey from Four Roses, is balanced and unexpectedly complex. At seven years of age, the folks at Diageo held back – not releasing a 4-year-old product – and it was worth it. Likely you can walk down to your local liquor store and pick this up on the shelf. The current Bourbon Blue Book® value is $46.
• Time doesn’t always make bourbon better, but in the case of Jack Daniels latest 14-year-old release, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Bottled at 100 proof, the Lincoln County Process has produced another gem in the distillery’s ongoing lineup of age-stated offerings – highlighting the nuance of how age affects their whiskey. The current Bourbon Blue Book® value is $475.
• I don’t think there’s a year that passes by that Michter’s 10 won’t be a solid pickup. Bottled at 94.4 proof, Michter’s to me always has this intriguing sawdusty type note that gives it a character much unlike anything else on the market. I’m clearly not alone in my lustfulness of this bottle as these never sit around for any time at all before being snatched up. The current Bourbon Blue Book® value is $333.
• Having just recently found its way out onto the market, Old Swagger 12 Year is a bottled in bond bourbon made from 12 barrels of 12-year-old MGP distillate. Released by Rising Tide Spirits, if you like high rye this is going to be a standout for you. The current Bourbon Blue Book® value is $316.
• The newest permanent expression from Buffalo Trace Distillery, this bottling elevates the previous 10 year offering by amping up the heat, being bottled at 95 proof and with the added nuance of more age. For those of you that love the 10 year, you’re going to really love what a couple more years do to the juice. The current Bourbon Blue Book® value is $308. That's an $80 drop in a single day, so keep your eyes posted as the hype train will die down and you should be able to get this for a much more reasonable price.
• A limited run, 114 proof offering from the craft distillery Garrison Brothers out of Hye, Texas makes you want to buy it especially when they give $5 per bottle back to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildlflower Center. This however is either a love it or hate it type pour, and I fear to say that the nay’s are likely significantly greater than the yay’s on this. If you like them sweet, this is going to be your jam – or honeycomb rather – and certainly occupies a niche all on its own. The current Bourbon Blue Book® value is $179.
• The first release out of the gate in Elijah Craigs three-barrel proofers they release each year denoted as A125. The coding is broken down as A (first batch of the year),1 (month of release, January), and 25 (year of release) now being on the 9th year of releases. This batch ventures a bit astray from the bones of what I typically think of as their “standard” profile…it lacks the typical complexity and depth of what I’d expect from this lineup. The current Bourbon Blue Book® value is $104.
• Imagine you go out and buy a Woodford Double Oaked bourbon and fall in love with it. Then in January of this year, Woodford releases their Double Double Oaked bourbon which you naturally believe to be superior to the bottle you just drank at roughly $60. You shell out the $200 or so to acquire it at the liquor store down the road and open it up to find that it’s not significantly different, and, when you look real closely, it’s not even the same sized bottle – it’s smaller. If you really need to have this in your life, get it on the secondary as it’s cheaper than retail! The current Bourbon Blue Book® value is $176.
• We won’t belabor a discussion on this bottle, if you want the full run down on it and have a couple extra minutes see Bourboneur’s full thoughts on it in our recent post. This is however a massively hyped up bottle that you should not spend your hard earned cash on – there’s plenty of others that would provide a much better pour. The current Bourbon Blue Book® value is $518.
• Similar to Elijah Craig’s numbering system, this too represents the first release of the year. A wheater from Heaven Hill, it’s bottled at 125 proof, it’s a fine enough pour, it just won’t be terribly memorable beyond the backend heat that takes you on a dogleg to the left in the enjoyment of a middle of the road bourbon. The current Bourbon Blue Book® value is $90.
• Orphan Barrel is known for their high age-stated releases, and in the last number of years, has been frankly on the struggle bus in landing anything worth much fan fare. Fanged Pursuit, bottled at 92 proof is another one of “those bourbons” that generally fall into the same mix as their recent releases. The current Bourbon Blue Book® value is $229.
Bourbon marketing in 2025 is louder, slicker, and in some cases, more misleading than ever. If you’ve noticed that every bottle now seems to have:
• A “master blender’s reserve” edition,
• A wild cask finish (Amburana! Tequila! Double wine!),
• And a story tied to a dead ancestor, war hero, or bootlegger…
…you're not imagining things.
The bourbon world is in a full-on branding arms race. And while many of these expressions are fun to explore, they can also serve as expensive distractions from actual quality brownwater. The smart move in 2025 is to develop your own internal filter. Ask yourself: if this bottle had a plain label and no story, would I still buy it?
With so many bottles flooding the shelves, it’s never been more important to separate the wheat from the chaff—or in this case, the wheat whiskey from the hype. The bourbon game in 2025 isn’t just about chasing unicorns or flexing allocations—it’s about making smarter choices. Whether that means stocking up on under-the-radar gems like Bulleit Bottled in Bond, or skipping the overfinished, overpriced, and overhyped, your wallet (and your palate) will thank you.
So as you make your way through the rest of the year, trust your taste, ignore the noise, and let this guide be your North Star. Not every bottle is worth your time—but a few truly are. Here’s to finding them. Cheers.
If you’re buying, selling, or trading bourbon—especially rare or allocated bottles—real-time data is everything. The bourbon secondary market is constantly shifting and staying informed means knowing what bottles are really worth right now.
That’s where the Bourbon Blue Book® as recently featured in Forbes comes in.
Powered by the Bourboneur App (available for iOS and Android), the Blue Book provides verified secondary market pricing for over 6,000 bottles and counting. Whether you’re checking a newly released drop or tracking market trends, this tool helps you avoid overpaying or underselling your collection.
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• Regular updates based on actual sales—not guesswork
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• Reflects economic shifts—like the 11.2% dip in the market over the last 14 months
The app requires a subscription—but at just $3/month or $25/year, it pays for itself the first time you avoid overpaying for that hot bottle.
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