If you could go back in time 10-15 years to visit the whiskey aisle of your local package store, one of the first things you’d note (beyond the fact that you’d desperately want to acquire all the Pappy Van Winkle you could for modern resale) would be how our relationship with the words “bottled in bond” has changed in recent years.
A decade ago, you’d have found it difficult to find the words “bottled in bond” on anything that wasn’t on the bottom shelf, or near to it. That doesn’t speak necessarily to the quality of those whiskeys, but to the fact that the term itself had become something of a dinosaur—an archaic bit of whiskey terminology that was a holdover from an era when it was a more useful descriptor. It’s no surprise that the term was largely associated with older brands such as Rittenhouse Rye, Old Granddad or Very Old Barton—they were the only ones still using the words.
The term had arisen in the first place way back in 1897, as a guarantee of sorts of whiskey purity and quality. The “bottled in bond” designation implied a number of quality standards, from being the product of a single distillery, to being at least 4 years old and 100 proof. At that time, it meant products bearing the “bottled in bond” designation were premium whiskeys of their day. Over time, however, as large distilling corporations produced older and generally more refined and fancy flagship spirits, the “bottled in bond” designation eventually came to symbolize “value” more than anything else. In the 1990s or 2000s, if you visited a package store, the bottled in bond whiskeys available often held the distinction of offering some of the most bang for your buck. They were cheap, but dependable.
But then … the microdistillery/independent distillery revolution happened. As it was with craft beer, so it was again with whiskey, only this time it took rather longer for the little guys to catch up. You can’t exactly blame them, given that proper bourbon and rye take years to age. But when a young crop of microdistillers all started reaching maturity together, they discovered something: They could once again use the term “bottled in bond,” except now they could apply it as evidence that they were producing a special, more premium product. In a sense, it means we’ve come entirely full circle, and we’ve reviewed some really excellent, independently produced BiB bourbon and BiB rye in the last year. Once again, “BiB” is en vogue.
The major distilleries haven’t been sleeping on these developments, either. In fact, several of them are now toying around with the bottled in bond label, applying it to their own well-aged, premiumized products, seemingly in an effort to expand the cultural consciousness of what “bottled in bond” really means. There’s Heaven Hill, for instance, offering a 13-year-old expression of their wheated bourbon Old Fitzgerald, and selling it for a gaudy $130. Nevermind the fact that the whiskey only had to be 4 years old in order to have the words “bottled in bond” on it—this is indicative of old companies looking at old labels in a new way.