Since its inception, Stoli Group’s Kentucky Owl brand has been defined by an ultra-premium price point, with $300 editions being a norm, and occasional special releases like last year’s Dry State carrying truly absurd price tags in the $1,000 range. In the process, the brand helped to normalize the idea of purchasing $200 or $300 bottles of bourbon from an independent bottler, rationalized by the idea that a superlative master blender is creating blends from well-aged sourced bourbon that you wouldn’t be able to taste anywhere else. Since Kentucky Owl first came onto the scene, we’ve seen an exponential increase in the number of sourced, ultra-premium brands out there.
Eventually, though, the pendulum always swings in the opposite direction, and even the likes of Kentucky Owl begin considering how they might exploit the non-luxe bourbon market. Enter, The Wiseman, a new Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey from Kentucky Owl that may well redefine the company’s image with its lower age statements, proof point and price tag. Suffice to say, one has never been able to purchase a bottle with the Kentucky Owl name on it for anywhere close to $60 before.
The company describes The Wiseman Bourbon as “its first Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey produced and distilled by Kentucky Owl in collaboration with the Bardstown Bourbon Company.” It goes on to say that the product is “a blend of Kentucky Owl 4-year-old wheat and high-rye bourbons, along with 5 ½-year and 8 ½-year-old Kentucky-sourced bourbons.”
This is a little bit confusing, but I believe this is essentially an announcement that The Wiseman contains the first whiskey Kentucky Owl has ever put out that was distilled by Kentucky Owl or distilled for Kentucky Owl, rather than being entirely sourced. Some of the whiskey here was obviously produced at Bardstown Bourbon Co., although I would assume the 8.5 year old product would have to be coming from another source, as BBC probably isn’t selling anything that old. Regardless, The Wiseman is bottled at an approachable 45.4% ABV (90.8 proof), and that $60 MSRP makes it less than half the price of the cheapest whiskey that Kentucky Owl has sold to date, the $125 Kentucky Owl Confiscated.
At the same time, though, it begs the question of what exactly makes The Wiseman so different from Confiscated, that their prices end up so far apart. Confiscated is a non-age-stated blend, with a similar proof of 96.4 (48.2% ABV), and yet it still retails for $125-150. We can presumably assume that it’s an older blend on average, but being NAS, we have no concrete way to really compare the two more closely. Suffice to say, though, one is a whole lot more affordable to the average whiskey consumer than the other.