A Decade After Its Debut, Woodford Reserve Double Double Oaked Is Now Available Nationwide

Over the years, Woodford Reserve has introduced numerous intriguing whiskeys through its Distillery Series—a collection of experimental releases sold exclusively at the distillery in Versailles, Kentucky. But few of these expressions have captured the hearts and minds of the Woodford faithful more than Double Double Oaked, which takes Woodford's flagship bourbon and gives it an extra-long finish in toasted oak barrels. For the past decade, interested drinkers had to either journey to Woodford to snag a bottle or take their chances on the secondary market. But today the distillery announces that this bourbon will be available nationwide going forward.

Doubling Down

Double Double Oaked was first released in 2015 and, as master distiller Elizabeth McCall remembers, it was something of a happy accident. Three years earlier, Woodford Reserve introduced Double Oaked, a 5–7 year old bourbon that was finished in toasted and flash-charred barrels for an additional 6–12 months. McCall—who was Woodford’s master taster at the time—noticed that the finished bourbon started to pick up some new flavors around the 12-month mark. Intrigued, she decided to finish a few Double Oaked barrels for more than 12 months to see what would happen.

After about a year, McCall sat down with then-master distiller Chris Morris to evaluate the results of a finishing time that averaged 24 months. During the tasting, they were both enamored by the “significant flavor shift” they found. “It went from that butterscotch/caramel loveliness to a totally different lovely flavor profile of rich dark chocolate, roasted coffee,” recounts McCall.

Woodford decided to release the whiskey, which it called Double Double Oaked since the finishing length was twice as long as Double Oaked’s. Initially, the plan was for it to be a one-off for visitors to the distillery, since Woodford had a very limited number of those longer-finished stocks on hand. McCall recalls that the first batch sold out in seven months, and that fans responded to it with overwhelming enthusiasm. Thus motivated, the team decided to bring back Double Double Oaked as an annual release—each year tucking away 30 barrels for extended finishing—but those subsequent batches would sell out faster and faster.

Eventually, the Woodford team made the decision to ramp up production in order to fulfill the growing demand, with the ultimate goal of expanding availability beyond the distillery. Part of the plan included giving the Double Double Oaked barrels their very own rickhouse, where they could be stored separately from the rest of Woodford’s inventory. McCall notes that the warehousing decision was made entirely for logistical reasons, and that the Double Double rickhouse is basically the same as the other rickhouses in terms of layout and temperature control.

It took a bit of time, but the distillery has finally built up enough volume to offer Double Double Oaked to fans around the country. “It was just inventory management,” says McCall. “We finally got our stocks to a place where we could introduce [the whiskey] to a wider audience, and then also have enough inventory to continue doing it year over year.” It will continue to be an annual release, with new batches touching down between January and February.

This year’s batch is the largest one yet: encompassing approximately 300 barrels, roughly 10 times larger than the debut batch. The whiskey, which has a suggested retail price of $200/700 ml, is currently rolling out to retailers across the U.S. and Canada. As of this morning, it’s also currently available for purchase at the distillery, with a limit of two bottles per customer while supplies last. It will also be available for purchase via the Woodford Reserve online shop, which ships to Kentucky, North Dakota, Nebraska, and D.C.

Sticking To The Recipe

If you’re already a fan of Double Double Oaked, the great news is that this new batch will be very reminiscent of the older ones. Going into the expansion project, McCall wanted to make as few changes to the recipe as possible, with the intention of keeping the exact flavor profile as previous batches. Initially, there was some discussion around the distillery about using younger liquid for the project, but McCall was quick to shoot down that idea. “Everything should be consistent,” she said. “If my name is going on this, I want it to be matching what people fell in love with…If it ain’t broke, let’s not do anything to try to ‘fix it.’”

In fact, the recipe basically hasn’t changed much since the first batch arrived 10 years ago. The base bourbon—a 5–7 year old with a mashbill of 72% corn, 18% rye, and 10% malted barley—has remained consistent across the past decade. The sole difference is that newer batches utilize a slightly longer finish—clocking in at an average of 30 months, compared to the 24-month period seen by earlier versions. But that aside, McCall says that any batch-to-batch differences should be negligible. “You can compare [batches] year over year, and there shouldn’t be any major differences,” she claims. “If there are, somebody needs to let me know, because something has gone wrong and I haven’t done my job,” she added with a chuckle.

Arguably the most important part of the Double Double Oaked formula is the finishing cask of choice. Though sometimes overlooked, toasted casks are a bit of a signature for Brown-Forman’s whiskeys—it’s most often identified with Woodford Reserve, but sister brand Jack Daniel’s also widely uses them, as does Cooper’s Craft and Old Forester. Brown-Forman has been toasting its own barrels since the ’90s, primarily for the Sonoma-Cutrer wine label which it sold to Duckhorn in 2023. Woodford Reserve’s earliest forays into toasted cask finishing were directly inspired by those wines, with the first Double Oaked project aiming to replicate the butteriness of a chardonnay by tapping heavily toasted and flash-charred barrels typically used to age chardonnay.

Woodford Reserve gets its barrels from Brown-Forman’s cooperage in Louisville, Kentucky, a state-of-the-art facility that really hangs its hat on its toasting program. Each Brown-Forman brand has a completely unique and proprietary toasting regimen done to the distillers’ specifications. While the exact steps of the process are a closely guarded secret—even the cooperage’s tour program skips the toasting stage—Woodford Reserve’s Double Double Oaked finishing casks are toasted for 40 minutes, roughly four times longer than the process used to toast its maturation casks.