Whisky Advocate Exclusive: Old Fitzgerald Adds a Permanent 7 Year Old Release

Heaven Hill master distiller Conor O’Driscoll reverently refers to Old Fitzgerald as a “grand old brand.” He’s right, of course—the whiskey dates back to the 1870s, when, as the story goes, Old Judge Distillery worker John E. Fitzgerald had a whiskey named after him and went on to sell it to steamship lines and private clubs throughout the South. The name “Old Fitzgerald” was trademarked in 1884, and the whiskey hit the wider market by 1889. In the century-plus that followed, the brand changed ownership several times, surviving Prohibition and coming under the ownership of Julian “Pappy” Van Winkle at Stitzel-Weller Distillery. Van Winkle was instrumental in modernizing Old Fitzgerald, adjusting the whiskey’s recipe to include wheat in the mashbill and transforming its look by bottling it in heavy glass decanters.

Stitzel-Weller was sold to a forerunner company of Diageo in 1972, and Old Fitzgerald stayed there until it was acquired by its current owner, Heaven Hill, in 1999 as part of a Diageo deal to sell Bernheim Distillery in Louisville. But the brand continued to toil away outside the limelight. In 2014, amid an industry-wide shortage of bourbon stocks, Heaven Hill discontinued the Old Fitzgerald 1849 label to focus on other whiskeys, but in 2018, Old Fitzgerald returned as a bi-annual release, the Old Fitzgerald Bottled in Bond Series, appearing in spring and fall.

As limited releases that sometimes soar as high as 19 years old, the Bottled in Bond Series whiskeys are often hard to find; now, Heaven Hill is introducing an Old Fitzgerald 7 year old to broaden the distribution of its well-loved label. This new addition to the Old Fitz portfolio is priced at just $60 a bottle (compared to $130 for the latest spring release of the Bottled in Bond series, which is made with 9 year old whiskey). It too is bottled in bond and maintains the Old Fitzgerald wheated profile, with a mashbill of 68% corn, 20% wheat, and 12% malted barley. It’s thus similar in basic profile to its sibling releases. The palate is rich and viscous, and it carries a tremendous amount of spice, as well as sweet citrus, honey, and berry fruit. “We talk about wheat whiskeys and wheated bourbons as having yeasty, bready notes, but to me, this one comes across as more graham cracker-y, and it has a richness that lasts,” notes O’Driscoll.

With inventories now building up across the whiskey landscape amid a softening in overall sales over the past couple of years, Heaven Hill, like most whiskey companies nowadays, is looking for ways to get inventory to market. The big winner here is the whiskey lover, who now has far greater access to older whiskeys than has been seen in many years. This new 7 year old is the latest example. O’Driscoll stresses that this is a whiskey that will be around for the long haul. “We’ve got 2.1 million barrels aging across our warehouses, and about 20% of those are Old Fitzgerald’s wheated bourbon,” he notes.