Booker's The Reserves Offers A Taste of the Brand At Its Oldest & Rarest
September 3, 2024 –––––– Julia Higgins
Booker’s bourbon has long been a distinguished member of the Beam portfolio. When Booker Noe launched the brand in 1988, it was a daring thing. The release not only popularized the term “small-batch,” but it was a barrel-proof bourbon in an era when it didn’t even have a fraction of the fan base it boasts today. Now, Booker’s grandson and master distiller Freddie Noe has added another notch to the Booker’s belt: The Reserves, the first extension since 2018. Unlike the brand’s customary quarterly released batches, The Reserves will be an annual release that’s comprised of far older (and fewer) barrels.
For this inaugural expression, Freddie took eight barrels of straight bourbon, each from a different production date and warehouse, and blended them together. The exact barrel breakdown is as follows:
Barrel 1: aged 8 years, 2 months, 12 days on the 4th floor of warehouse G
Barrel 2: aged 8 years, 5 months, 19 days on the 5th floor of warehouse I
Barrel 3: aged 8 years, 5 months, 20 days on the 5th floor of warehouse Z
Barrel 4: aged 9 years, 2 months, 3 days on the 5th floor of warehouse Q
Barrel 5: aged 9 years 2 months, 4 days on the 6th floor of warehouse J
Barrel 6: aged 9 years, 5 months, 18 days on the 7th floor of warehouse H
Barrel 7: aged 10 years, 3 months, 2 days on the 4th floor of warehouse X
Barrel 8: aged 14 years, 4 months, 16 days on the 6th floor of warehouse I
As with all Booker’s releases, The Reserves is bottled at cask strength, which in this case is a heady 62.3% ABV. While extremely limited, Booker’s The Reserves will be available nationwide for $130.
It's been a busy year at Beam, where the innovations have ranged from new batches of Booker’s and Little Book to the reintroduction of Jim Beam Black. A running theme among the new releases is greater age—master distillers Fred and Freddie Noe have tapped into older stocks of whiskey for Jim Beam Black, Little Book, and now The Reserves, displaying Beam’s prowess at more mature, higher ABV levels.
