The 2026 San Francisco World Spirits Competition wrapped up on November 8 with the Top Shelf Awards Gala, where Elijah Craig 15-Year-Old Single Barrel was named Best Overall Bourbon. The Heaven Hill bourbon also won Best of Class Single Barrel Bourbon, 11 Years and Older, and Best Overall Single Barrel Bourbon. Heaven Hill took home two more bourbon titles on the night and was named Most Awarded U.S. Distillery for the third year in a row.
The other winners include a cask strength bourbon from Abstraction Spirits in Paducah, a Mizunara-finished bourbon from Indiana’s Starlight Distillery, and a toasted barrel blend from Wenzel Distillery in Covington. So, here’s a closer look at all eight of this year’s winning bourbons and what goes into each of them.
How the Top Awards Are Won
At the San Francisco World Spirits Competition, judges taste every entry blind, alongside other spirits of the same style. A spirit earns a Double Gold medal when every judge on its panel gives it a gold, and only Double Gold winners go through to the final rounds.
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READ THE STORYThese finalists are then tasted blind against each other to decide Best of Class in each category, with this year’s bourbon finalists scoring between 97 and 99 points.
The Best of Class winners from each type of spirit compete for Best Overall, and those winners go on to compete for Best in Show.
Wenzel Distillery Toasted Bourbon
Award: Best of Class Blend of Straight Bourbons
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Tasting Notes: Bold oak, clove, toffee, pepper, caramel, vanilla, coffee, rich nuttiness
Find Your Next Bottle: $99 / £75
Henry Wenzel built the Covington, Kentucky, building that now houses Wenzel Distillery in 1873, and he used it to bottle mineral water and whiskey for his bar. The distillery opened there in 2022, bought the barrel inventory of Savannah’s Ghost Coast Distillery in 2023, and began distilling its own whiskey in April 2025.
Its Toasted Bourbon is a blend of straight bourbons aged at least eight years, made from a mash bill of 69% corn, 21% rye, and 10% malted barley. It then spends six to eight months in new toasted barrels from Kelvin Cooperage and is bottled at 111.8 proof.
Wheel Horse Whiskey Barrel Master Select Batch #2 Bourbon
Award: Best of Class Small Batch Bourbon, Up to 5 Years
Tasting Notes: cherry, mocha, warm spice, toffee, vanilla, café au lait, toasted walnut, burnt sugar, Black Forest cake
Find Your Next Bottle: $43.99 / £32
Wheel Horse launched its Barrel Master Select series in July 2025 as the brand’s first line of barrel proof small batch whiskeys. Batch #2 sells for around $43. It’s a blend of 14 barrels of five-year-old Kentucky straight bourbon (some over 6 years old), non-chill filtered and bottled at 112.6 proof.
The whiskey is distilled and aged at Green River Distilling in Owensboro, which was founded in 1885 and revived under its original name in 2020, from a mash bill of 70% corn, 21% rye, and 9% malted barley. Barrel Master Stephen Corrigan blends each batch for the brand’s owner, Latitude Beverage Co.
Pinhook 10 Year Vertical Series Bourbon
Award: Best of Class Straight Bourbon
Tasting Notes: Burnt orange, brioche, butterscotch, clove, brandied cherry, salted caramel, candied pecan, cinnamon stick
Find Your Next Bottle: $100 / £80
Pinhook’s Vertical Series follows one group of 1,350 bourbon barrels distilled at MGP in Indiana, with a new vintage released each year since the first, a four-year-old, came out in 2019.
The 10-Year is the seventh release. It’s blended from 75 barrels filled in 2015, which aged at Castle & Key in Frankfort, Kentucky, since they were a year old, and it’s bottled at 115.9 proof without chill filtration.
Pinhook was founded by sommelier Sean Josephs and his friends Charles Fulford and Jay Peterson. The brand takes its name from a horse racing term for buying young foals and developing them.
Starlight Distillery Mizunara Reserve Bourbon
Award: Best of Class Special Barrel-Finished Bourbon
Tasting Notes: sweet French vanilla, baking spice, sandalwood, coconut
Find Your Next Bottle: $151 / £121
Starlight Distillery has won this category two years running, and in 2025 its Mizunara Reserve was also named Best Overall Bourbon.
The distillery sits on the Huber family’s farm in Starlight, Indiana. The family traces its roots there to Simon Huber, who set out from Baden-Baden, Germany, in 1843. The Hubers bought their first pot still in 2000 and started making bourbon in 2013.
Mizunara Reserve comes out in small, numbered batches at cask strength, and it’s finished in a second barrel made from Japanese Mizunara oak grown on the country’s northernmost island.
Mizunara oak is prized for its rarity and distinct notes of sandalwood and incense that it imparts to a whiskey. It is notoriously difficult to work with thanks to its porous nature, and takes a very long time to reach maturity, contributing to its rarity.
Heaven Hill Traditional Barrel Series Kentucky Straight Wheated Bourbon
Award: Best of Class Wheated Bourbon
Tasting Notes: Sweet and smoky, polished oak, savory barbecue spices, sandalwood, tropical fruit, white pepper, new leather, dried grasses, complex spices
Find Your Next Bottle: $129.99 / £97
Each release in Heaven Hill’s Grain to Glass series names the variety of corn used to make it. For this third edition of the wheated bourbon, all of the corn was Beck’s 6269 grown in Nelson County, Kentucky.
The mash bill is 52% corn, 35% wheat, and 13% malted barley. The whiskey was distilled in 2019, entered the barrel at 107 proof, and spent six years on the third, fourth, and fifth floors of Warehouses W5 and W6.
The 170-barrel batch was bottled at cask strength, 107.8 proof, and released in June 2026 as one of three wheated bourbons in this year’s series.
Henry McKenna Single Barrel 10-Year Bourbon
Award: Best of Class Single Barrel Bourbon, Up to 10 Years
Tasting Notes: Vanilla, caramel, oak, a light herbaceous note, sharp spices, honey, long, sweet and spicy finish
Find Your Next Bottle: $55 / £44
Back in 2019, Henry McKenna Single Barrel was named Best in Show Whiskey at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. At the time, Gear Patrol reported that it was only the second bourbon to win the title.
Heaven Hill makes the whiskey and names it after an Irish immigrant who, according to the distillery, adapted his family’s whiskey recipe to the grains he found in Kentucky. Each bottle comes from a single barrel aged 10 years.
It’s also Bottled-in-Bond, which means it was made at one distillery during one distilling season, aged in a bonded warehouse, and bottled at 100 proof.
Time Sipping Away Small Batch Straight Bourbon
Award: Best of Class Small Batch Bourbon, 6 to 10 Years · Best Overall Small Batch Bourbon
Tasting Notes: Caramel, vanilla, a hint of spice, cereal sweetness, baking spices, pepper, dried fruit
Find Your Next Bottle: $79 / £59
The label on Time Sipping Away is a painting by artist Jim Warren. Abstraction Spirits says it chose the piece because “it reminds us of how time slips away when enjoying a good drink with friends.” The brand’s founder had been collecting art for about 20 years when a 2016 trip to Louisville led to the idea for the company.
Abstraction now runs a tasting room in Paducah, Kentucky, and its general manager has told WPSD that it sources its whiskey.
Time Sipping Away is a six-year-old high rye bourbon, bottled uncut and unfiltered at cask strength in small batches, and is currently listed at 58% ABV.
Elijah Craig 15-Year-Old Single Barrel Bourbon
Award: Best of Class Single Barrel Bourbon, 11 Years and Older · Best Overall Single Barrel Bourbon · Best Overall Bourbon
Tasting Notes: dark fruit, figs, roses, roasted nuts, toasted oak, caramelized sugar, crème brûlée, ginger, cloves
Find Your Next Bottle: $264 / £150
Heaven Hill bottled its first Elijah Craig 15-Year-Old Single Barrel at 108 proof, or 54% ABV, which the distillery calls “a subtle nod” to May 4, 1964, the date Congress officially recognized bourbon.
Made from a mash bill of 78% corn, 10% rye, and 12% malted barley, it launched nationally in March 2026 as a higher-proof addition to the brand’s single barrel lineup. Master Distiller Conor O’Driscoll said, “We were looking for exceptional depth and character in our first 15-Year-Old Single Barrel Bourbon.”
The brand is named after the Reverend Elijah Craig, who founded his distillery on Elkhorn Creek in what is now Georgetown, Kentucky, in 1789, and is credited with being the first distiller to age whiskey in charred oak barrels.
What Do You Think?
Heaven Hill had a big night, winning three of the eight bourbon titles, including Best Overall Bourbon for Elijah Craig 15-Year-Old Single Barrel. Starlight Distillery won its category for the second year in a row, and Abstraction Spirits, which opened its Paducah tasting room this year, took home Best Overall Small Batch Bourbon. Pinhook, Wheel Horse, and Abstraction all use whiskey distilled elsewhere, and most of this year’s winners were bottled at cask or barrel strength.
Have you tried any of these bourbons, or is there one you’d like to try? Do you agree with the judges’ picks? Let us know in the comments.
