Old Elk's New Flagship, Woodford's Derby Bottle, Bushmills 46 year old, Penelope Rio, and More [New Releases]

Woodford Reserve this week released its annual Derby bottle ahead of the 2025 Kentucky Derby, which takes place on May 3. This year’s label was created by Cuban-American artist Humberto Lahera, who’s based in Louisville. The one-liter bottle retails at $50 and can be purchased on Reservebar, on Woodford’s online store, at the Woodford Reserve Distillery, and selected retailers nationwide.

Among other new releases, Orphan Barrel is out with a 17 year old, while Old Elk has a new flagship bourbon called Slow Cut. Penelope Rio, the amburana cask-finished bourbon, is back with its third iteration, while High West returns with the annual release of Bourye, its rye-bourbon blend. There's plenty more, with new offerings from Buzzard's Roost, Remus, and Westward, among others, including a noteworthy release from Bushmills, which has unveiled the oldest Irish single malt ever—a 46 year old with a limited global release of just 300 bottles, priced at a cool $12,500.

High West Bourye Blend of Straights (2025)

ABV: 46%
SRP: $125
Availability: Limited; nationwide

Utah-based High West has unveiled the latest batch of Bourye, its cult-classic blend of straight bourbons and ryes. This year’s release features two rye stocks: one sourced from MGP (95% rye and 5% malted barley), and one distilled by High West (80% rye and 20% malted barley). Those ryes are blended with three sourced bourbons—two from MGP and one from an undisclosed distillery in Kentucky. All of the whiskeys were aged for at least 10 years. The blending was overseen by Tara Lindley, High West’s director of sensory & new product development.

Orphan Barrel Fanged Pursuit 17 year old Kentucky Straight Bourbon

ABV: 46%
SRP: $200
Availability: Limited

Orphan Barrel’s latest whiskey marks a first for the brand: never before has it released a non-chill filtered Kentucky straight bourbon. In making Fanged Pursuit, lead blender Delicia James ended up with a final mashbill of 68-74% corn, 18-22% rye, and 8-10% malted barley. The whiskey aged for 17 years in charred American oak. While limited, Fanged Pursuit will appear at select retailers nationwide, and on reservebar.com.

Penelope Cooper Series Rio Straight Bourbon (2025 Release)

ABV: 49%
Price: $80
Availability: Nationwide

Penelope Bourbon is back with the third iteration of its popular double-finished Rio label. As a fixture of its Cooper Series, Penelope sticks to an identical mashbill as last year’s release, which features a blend of three bourbons composed of 75% corn, 15% wheat, 7% rye, and 3% malted barley sourced from parent company MGP’s Ross & Squibb Distillery in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. The heavily wheated bourbon is finished 1 to 3 weeks in bourbon barrels that previously held Illinois-sourced light amber honey. A secondary finish follows in new Brazilian amburana barrels for an additional week. (Amburana flavors whiskey quickly, hence the short finishing time.) Native to South American jungles, amburana is traditionally used to age the native Brazilian rum-like spirit, cachaça, but has become popular as a finishing cask for whisky in recent years.

Penelope, founded in 2018 and acquired by MGP in 2023, quickly gained notoriety for its innovative cask finishing, in large part due to this expression, as well as others that feature finishes from casks from around the world. The Cooper Series includes Rosé, Valencia, Tokaji, and more recently Havana, a bourbon finished in Caribbean rum casks and maple syrup barrels.

Jypsi Tribute Double Barreled Bourbon

ABV: 43%
SRP: $45
Availability: Nationwide

Jypsi’s latest whiskey is a Tennessee bourbon made with grains grown on small family farms, including Cherokee white corn. The whiskey is first aged for 4 years, then proofed down and placed into new American oak barrels for 3 to 6 months.

Jypsi is the creation of country musician Eric Church, in partnership with entrepreneur Raj Alva and whiskey maker Ari Sussman. The brand, which launched in 2023, has previously released blended whiskeys and finished bourbon.

Buzzard’s Roost French Oak Bourbon (Batch 2)

ABV: 50%
SRP: $85
Availability: Limited; arriving March 15th

Buzzard’s Roost’s second batch of French Oak bourbon is set to release on March 15th at a National Buzzard’s Day celebration at the brand’s home on Louisville’s Whiskey Row. The 5 year old bourbon has a mashbill of 75% corn, 21% rye, and 4% malted barley. Unlike the first batch—which was finished in limousin French oak barrels—Batch 2 is finished using French oak staves from Independent Stave Company for an undisclosed period of time.

Remus Master Distiller Experimental Series Bourbon (Batch 1)

ABV: 53.5%
SRP: $80
Availability: Limited

Luxco’s Remus Bourbon label, which is distilled at Ross & Squibb in Indiana, has announced the launch of a new series. Dubbed the Master Distiller Experimental Series, the collection will center on—you guessed it—experiments carried out by master distiller Ian Stirsman, showcasing different grains, mashbills, and maturation methods. This time the spotlight is on maturation, and Batch 1 aged for 9 years in lightly charred and heavily toasted barrels from Seguin Moreau, a cooperage based out of Napa. The barrels are said to contribute to aromas and flavors of oak, toasted marshmallows, and black walnut.

Old Elk Slow Cut Blended Straight Bourbon

ABV: 44%
SRP: $40
Availability: Nationwide

Old Elk debuted its flagship bourbon, made from a high-malt mashbill of 51% corn, 34% malted barley, and 15% rye, in 2017. Now, the Fort Collins, Colorado-based distillery is phasing that whiskey out in favor of Slow Cut, a blended straight bourbon that takes some of that same high-malt bourbon aged 4-7 years and blends it with other bourbons within the Old Elk inventory. Why do away with the original bourbon? For starters, Slow Cut carries a slightly more accessible price tag than its predecessor (which was $46). And it’s a chance for Old Elk to spotlight its signature proofing technique, appropriately called the Slow Cut Proofing Process, in which the distillery spends weeks adding small increments of water to distillate (as opposed to adding hundreds of gallons of water over the course of a day or two, as is industry standard) to keep the whiskey cool and save flavors produced during mashing, fermentation, distillation, and maturation.

Doc Holliday 10 year old Special Edition Collector’s Case Straight Bourbon

ABV: 48%
SRP: $249
Availability: Limited

Independent bottler World Whiskey Society has added a new limited-edition bourbon to its Doc Holliday lineup. The new whiskey is special not just for the 10 year old liquid within, but for its artful display as well—it’s packaged within a decanter that comes complete with a two-in-one cork gun stopper and display revolver, all housed within a special collectible case. The revolver is an homage to, who else, John Henry “Doc” Holliday, a Wild West icon who went from practicing dentist to gunslinging gambler.

Westward X Fort George Brewery Stout Cask Finished American Single Malt

ABV: 57.5%
SRP: $100
Availability: Westward Whiskey Club Exclusive

American single malt trailblazer Westward Whiskey is no stranger to using stout casks as finishing vessels—having worked closely with some 40 breweries in Oregon since 2015. But with this release, the distillery is quite literally doubling down on those efforts. The whiskey starts out as Westward’s core-range Stout Cask Finish, which is finished for an average of 12–14 months in stout beer barrels from local breweries. After that, it received a secondary finish in barrels that previously held Matryoshka—an imperial stout from Fort George Brewery—that was aged in Westward single malt barrels. Master blender Miles Munroe picked those casks for the rich dark chocolate and coffee notes they brought to the whiskey, and to spotlight the brewery, which has been one of Westward’s earliest and longest collaborators.

The Muff Liquor Company Irish Whiskey

ABV: 43%
SRP: $35
Availability: Nationwide

Originally slated for a U.S. launch in January, this peated Irish expression was reviewed by Whisky Advocate in our Winter 2024 issue. The whiskey is a five-part blend of single malt and grain distillate, sourced from Hinch Distillery and undisclosed producers. Muff Liquor Co. is located in Northern Ireland, 15 miles south of Belfast. The five components in the blend are:

- Triple-distilled Irish grain whiskey aged in virgin oak (made at Hinch)

- Tripled-distilled Irish grain whiskey aged in bourbon barrels (made at Hinch)

- Triple-distilled malt whiskey aged in sherry casks (sourced by Hinch)

- Double-distilled Irish malt whiskey (made at Hinch)

- Triple-distilled peated malt whiskey aged in bourbon barrels (sourced by Hinch)

The Muff Liquor Co. was founded by Laura Bonner in 2018. She was inspired to start her own spirits company—Muff also makes vodka and gin—in part by her grandfather, a potato farmer who made poitín (a traditional unaged Irish spirit that can be made from grain, potatoes, sugar beet molasses, or other ingredients). You can read our review of the blend here.

Bushmills 46 year old Secrets of The River Bush Irish Single Malt

ABV: 46.3%
SRP: $12,500
Availability: Limited; 300 numbered bottles; imported by Proximo Spirits

Bushmills Distillery in Northern Ireland is releasing the oldest Irish single malt ever bottled. Master blender Alex Thomas selected a marriage of distillates dating back to 1978, which had developed a rich, dark color through 46 years of maturation in oloroso sherry butts from the Antonio Paez Lobato Cooperage in Jerez, Spain. The bottle is presented in a handcrafted hexagonal walnut case, a nod to the nearby basalt columns of the Giant’s Causeway, on the north coast of Northern Ireland, with gold engraving that’s representative of the River Bush, Bushmills’ water source.

This expression is not the oldest ever Irish whiskey, as older single pot still whiskeys have been bottled, but it is the oldest ever single malt Irish whiskey, eclipsing the age of the 93-point Teeling 40 year old single malt released in 2024 and the peated 94-point Midleton Very Rare Silent Distillery Chapter One 45 year old single malt released in 2020. Notably, this Bushmills 46 year old is priced lower than either of those expressions, but they were more limited, with only 140 bottles of the Teeling and 48 bottles of the Midleton produced. The oldest whisky ever released, however, remains the Macallan TIME: SPACE, which contains scotch distilled in 1940 and bottled at 84 years old.