The World's Best Bourbons

Scotch might suck up a lot of the oxygen when talking about spirits, but Bourbon is really the one to beat.

Bourbon really does have it all. It has cachet, it has prestige, and it can command often quite ridiculous prices these days (as we may have mentioned already). It is also immensely popular among consumers and collectors, who have helped drive producers to turn out increasingly higher-quality bottlings.

And these better-quality products, combined with a renewal in consumer appreciation for the inherent quality of Bourbon generally, have not just pushed top-end Bourbons up the price scale, but they have also seen overall scores for Bourbon increase. We live in a time when Bourbon has literally never been so good.

It wasn't always like this, of course. Until the late 1980s, Bourbon as a sector was treading water at best. Dominated by a couple of brands (well, one really), it wasn't exactly a touchstone of innovation or progress. The launch of Beam's small-batch collection in the early 1990s changed a lot of that, as it showcased exactly how good artisanal Bourbon could be.

The success of those releases (Booker's, Baker's, Knob Creek and Basil Hayden) inspired other distilleries to follow suit and soon a boom was underway. That boom has never really deflated and three decades later we find ourselves awash with quality Bourbons, often at very affordable prices.

So which ones are the best, and how do we measure their greatness. Well, the simplest way is via our aggregated critic scores. As we consider the scores of more and more critics, our aggregated scores become more robust and a more accurate reflection of quality, as perceived by the critics.

At the wine end of things, this has meant an inflation in scores, as better vintages (and more excitable critics) have ensured an uptick in quality. For whiskey, quality is much less vintage-dependent, so sharp rises or falls in scores are rarer. That said, whiskey reviewers tend to be more level-headed about scores anyway, with scores in the 80s considered pretty impressive.

So let's see how this year's top Bourbons fare.

The World's Best Bourbons on Wine-Searcher:

There's quite a bit to pick out of this list, so let's start with scores. Last year's list had three whiskeys with 96-point scores, so it might appear at first look that the quality is slipping, but it isn't. Last year's list also had five scores of 92 or 93, which is very different this year. Overall, the mean average score for the top 10 last year was 93.9, whereas this year it is 94.3, just a shade under where it was back in 2021.

Another significant element is price. Last year, the mean global average retail price was $2491, a 4.3 percent drop on 2021. This year the drop is even more noticeable, down almost 5.5 percent to $2354.50. And that's good news for consumers, because it means that quality is going up while price is going down.

And a special mention this year for two whiskeys on this list: the Knob Creek 12 Year Old and the Four Roses Single Barrel. Every year there is an affordable Bourbon that makes this list and, with a global average price of $72, the Knob Creek represents an affordable slice of luxury Bourbon for all collectors and consumers, not just the wealthy.

While that's a bit steeper than last year's value champion, its price has remained stable for the past year – and is cheaper than its $78 peak in February 2020.

Even better news is that the Four Roses bottling has a global average retail price of just $48 (again, unchanged since last year), making it by far the most affordable whiskey on the list.

It's symptomatic of Bourbon generally – consistency like that takes some beating.