Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Bourbon (Batch C923) Review
Photos via Heaven Hill
For a number of years, the release of batches in Heaven Hill’s Elijah Craig Barrel Proof series had become so dependable and nearly rote for me as a writer that I had a pre-written introduction I would copy-paste into the beginning of reviews, simply explaining the brand and its place in the whiskey market, so as to not have to write variations on the same spiel over and over again. I would explain that “ECBP” was considered a bastion of quality and value in the industry, a dependably extra-aged bourbon at a very sturdy proof point, and that even as the MSRP creeped up a little bit it still pretty much always represented one of the best overall buys an aspiring whiskey geek could make.
And then Heaven Hill threw a wrench into the status quo. This spring, they announced that Elijah Craig Barrel Proof would drop its permanent 12-year age statement in favor of a fluctuating age statement that would rise and fall just like the proof point of these cask strength bourbons, with entries both younger and older than the previous 12 year mark. Unsurprisingly to anyone who knows the whiskey world, this led to great hand-wringing and consternation among bourbon geeks, who understandably feared that the announcement was a pretext to a gradual lowering of ECBP’s age statement. In truth, we still don’t know if this is the case, and won’t be able to see the real trajectory of the brand until a few years have passed.
What we do know is that the first ECBP release of this era, B523 (so named because it’s the second release of 2023, hitting shelves in May), carried an age statement of 11 years, 5 months–arguably a change small enough to not have much of an impact. I reviewed it, and found it to be a pretty good, fairly standard batch of Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Bourbon in the context of the brand. In other words, it was quite good. Was it among the best ECBP batches ever? No, but it also wasn’t anywhere near the bottom of the pile.
Now, however, is the moment that the bourbon geeks have been waiting for: The reveal of ECBP C923. This is the bottle clearly intended to show that Heaven Hill is still willing to put some of their extra, extra-aged juice in an Elijah Craig Barrel Proof bottle, and as a bonus, it’s also the strongest batch of ECBP we’ve seen hit shelves since before the COVID-19 pandemic began in earnest in the U.S. Seemingly everything about this bottle looks designed to pique the interest of the most intense whiskey collectors out there, and you can expect this one to absolutely disappear the moment it touches a shelf. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
ECBP C923 weighs in at 13 years, 7 months old–a full 19 months longer than the previous 12 year age statement. It has a strength of 66.5% ABV (133 proof), which is the strongest ECBP batch since the 136.6 proof of A120 more than 3.5 years ago. In fact, this is the first Elijah Craig Barrel Proof batch to crack the 130 proof mark since the end of 2020, as the series has notably moved in a direction where it sits in the 120s, even occasionally dipping below that mark. The 133 proof here feels like a calculated choice on Heaven Hill’s part to entice the most selective of collectors and proof hounds by giving them a reminder of a strength that was once common to the series–in the old days, ECBP often sat in the 130s and peaked at 140 or above, although I’ve always personally been partial to batches in the 120s.