The most interesting thing about Heaven Hill’s Old Fitzgerald Bottled-in-Bond releases is just how much the distillery allows this product lineup to vary from batch to batch. Releasing twice a year, in “spring” and “fall” editions, Old Fitzgerald is now up to its sixth wide release, after two each year in 2018, 2019 and 2020. And in that time, these bottles have contained some seriously different bourbons, from several 9-year batches, to one that titled that scales at 15 years old in the fall of 2019. To their credit, Heaven Hill’s MSRPs on these bourbons are a sliding scale that moves with the age statement, typically just adding a “0” after the year. The 9-year-old Spring 2020 release, for instance, had an MSRP of $90, while this new Fall 2020 release is 14 years old, with an MSRP of $140. That’s a nice concession to the consumer … although it doesn’t mean much outside of control states, as package stores are now engaging in rampant gouging on these limited releases, to the point where average prices on Old Fitzgerald from online package stores sits between $300-700 as of this writing.
It’s not just the prices and age statements that have been differing from batch to batch, though—it’s also the flavors. Having now tasted three different batches of Old Fitz (Fall 2019, Spring 2020, Fall 2020) in rapid succession, I can speak to just how different they truly are, suggesting that the goal of the series is less “a very consistent profile” and more “an expression of our own changing tastes” at any given moment. For consumers, you might consider that something of a mixed bag, given the fact that it suggests liking one batch of Old Fitzgerald doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll like another, but on the other hand it’s a similar sort of variability that exists in buying single barrel bourbon brands.
Regardless, this Fall 2020 release of Old Fitzgerald is the second oldest that the series has ever seen, at 14 years old and the standard 100 proof for bottled-in-bond bourbon. There was one previous 14-year-old version of Old Fitzgerald earlier this year, but that was an entirely Kentucky allocated product bearing a red label. This bourbon bears the black label that is standard for Fall Fitzgerald releases (Spring releases get a green label), and was pulled from “different rickhouses, at different floors, and on different production dates” than the Kentucky only release. As such, this is the sixth “official” Old Fitzgerald BIB batch since the brand was redesigned from a budget wheated bourbon brand into a premium one that comes packaged in one of the most attractive bottles in the industry. That’s always a nice perk, to be sure.
So with all that said, let’s get to tasting.