When it comes to age statements in American bourbon, it’s pretty easy to illustrate the concept of diminishing returns. Jim Beam’s flagship small batch bourbon series, Knob Creek, allows an almost perfect illustration in and of itself, with its flagship bottle (aged for 9 years) long representing one of the best pure values in the whiskey world. Whether you find it at $30, $35 or $40, there’s no denying that represents an excellent value for a mature, 100 proof expression of Beam’s bourbon.
In recent years, though, the Knob Creek series has been undergoing a premiumization effort, tied to ascending age statements. First it was Knob Creek 12 Year, a surprisingly effective transformation of the flagship spirit with a few more years in the oak, and an MSRP around $60-70. Then came 2020’s initial release of Knob Creek 15 Year, the oldest in the series at the time, with an MSRP of $100 or beyond. And now, yet another big jump forward has arrived on the market, with the first release of Knob Creek 18 Year. The price tag? About $170, give or take.
Obviously, that kind of price point is going to draw some attention. We’re talking about a bottle twice as old as the 9-year-old flagship, but exponentially more expensive—going from $35 to $170 is quite the quantum leap. Granted, this is a limited release, and one designed as part of the celebration of the Knob Creek brand’s 30th anniversary, but it sort of breaks the mold of the “high value” that Knob Creek is known for. On the other hand, there’s very little other 18 year old bourbon on the market to compare it to, other than the likes of Heaven Hill’s equally expensive Elijah Craig 18 Year.
As with the Elijah Craig, though, the real issue here isn’t just one of price—it’s a question of whether the liquid inside that bottle deserved to continue aging for 18 years, or whether at this point the continued exposure to the barrel is doing it more harm than it is benefit. Or in other words, is there really something being gained by pushing the age statement and MSRP forward? Or is this just age statement as gimmickry, a justification for another in a long series of limited edition releases? And will the bourbon be notably overoaked, drying or tannic after all that time in the barrel?
I was certainly a little concerned about the latter going in to tasting this, because I felt when sampling Knob Creek 15 that the series had arguably pushed things to a point where the value of a higher age statement had already been diminished. It’s easy to imagine another three years pushing this bottle into actively unpleasant territory. Thankfully, that’s not really what I found.