The American Distilling Institute has announced the winners of its 2026 International Spirits Competition (ADI ISC), and as ever, we are taking a look at some of the best whiskeys in the competition. Today, we are specifically focused on the American whiskeys that earned “America’s Best” trophies, the top tier of US winners across the competition’s whiskey classes.
Elijah Craig Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey Barrel Proof Batch A925 was named America’s Greatest Whiskey 2026. Joseph Magnus Bourbon took America’s Best Barrel Finished Whiskey, while four craft producers from Missouri, California, Texas, and Ohio rounded out the list with wins for cask strength, single barrel, bottled-in-bond, and new American spirit categories.
Below, we take a closer look at the whiskeys that stood out at the ADI ISC 2026.
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How The ADI “America’s Best” Awards Work
Every spirit entered in the ADI ISC is tasted blind by an expert panel of judges, who score each whiskey individually before discussing what medal, if any, should be awarded. Panels can award Double Gold (every judge scored 90 or above), Gold, Silver, or Bronze, and there are no quotas. As ADI puts it, all medals are earned solely based on the “quality of the spirit in the glass”.
From there, the trophies build in tiers. Best of Category goes to the single highest-ranked medal winner in a specific style (Bourbon, Rye, and so on), provided it earned at least a Silver.
Best of Class is selected by a grand panel from spirits that won both a Gold or Double Gold and a Best of Category, covering broader classes like Whiskey or Gin.
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READ THE STORYADI also awards additional trophies for excellence, including the sponsored Best New American Spirit 2026 Presented by Total Wine & More, which usually require at least a Gold medal to qualify.
Elijah Craig Kentucky Straight Rye Whiskey Barrel Proof A925
Awards: America’s Greatest Whiskey 2026 – Best of Class, Best of Category, Double Gold Medal
Tasting Notes: Baking spices, molasses, cinnamon, stewed fruit, nutmeg, butterscotch
Find Your Next Bottle: $74.99
The biggest winner at the ADI ISC 2026, Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Rye Batch A925 was named America’s Greatest Whiskey, capping a run that already included being crowned Whisky Advocate’s 2025 Whisky of the Year, the first rye ever to take that title.
It is produced by Heaven Hill Distillery, the family-owned giant based in Bardstown, Kentucky. The whiskey is distilled at Heaven Hill’s Bernheim facility in Louisville using the company’s standard Kentucky-style rye mashbill of 51% rye, 35% corn, and 14% malted barley, then aged in Bardstown’s rickhouses for 12 years and 3 months. It was bottled at 108 proof.
A925 is the first batch of an ongoing barrel-proof rye program now released three times a year. Each release is bottled uncut and non-chill filtered with an MSRP of $74.99. However, the price can vary by market.
The batches are named as such: The first letter represents the order of release for that year, with ‘A’ being the first. The first number represents the month of release, and the last two represent the year of release.
The first batch of 2026 — A126 — was released in January, bottled at 120.4 proof at 11 years and 11 months old.
Heaven Hill is a distilling institution in the United States and a 3-time winner of Distiller of the Year the World Whiskies Awards.
StilL 630 Distillery Due Process Bourbon
Awards: America’s Best Cask Strength Whiskey, Best of Category, Double Gold Medal
Tasting Notes: Caramel, charred oak, vanilla, brown sugar, toasted grains, cinnamon, leather, dark chocolate, honey, black pepper
Find Your Next Bottle: Coming Soon
Due Process is one of the more intriguing winners on this list, partly because it seems to be a forthcoming release rather than an established bottling. StilL 630 is a craft distillery in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, founded in 2011 by Dave Weglarz and named for the height of the Gateway Arch.
The bourbon is listed as ‘coming soon’ on the website huntsmanheritage.com, and is described as an unfiltered Missouri Straight Bourbon Whiskey bottled at a hefty 130.6 proof (65.3% ABV). StilL 630 has not yet disclosed the mashbill or barrel type, though the distillery is best known for its double pot-still distillation and its use of locally sourced Missouri grain and new Missouri oak.
StilL 630 also has a strong track record at ADI, having previously won Best of Category Rye in 2022 for its Double Barrel RallyPoint Rye, so a cask strength bourbon trophy continues an established run of recognition for the distillery.
Keep an eye out for this upcoming release on StilL 360’s website.
Update: According to David Weglarz, Owner and Distiller at StilL 630, the bourbon has a mash bill of 70% Missouri yellow corn, 20% rye, and 10% malted barley. It is aged for over 5 years. The bourbon is in fact an upcoming release, and will be available at the distillery on June 12 2026, priced at $75.
Joseph Magnus Bourbon
Awards: America’s Best Barrel Finished Whiskey, Best of Category, Double Gold Medal
Tasting Notes: Orange citrus, dried dark fruits, vanilla
Find Your Next Bottle: $65
Joseph Magnus Bourbon has a story rooted in family history. The original Jos. A. Magnus & Co. was founded in Cincinnati in 1892, before Prohibition shuttered operations in 1918.
In 2014, Joseph Magnus’s great-grandson Jimmy Turner discovered a sealed bottle of the family’s Murray Hill Club whiskey, and the brand was revived in 2015 with a Washington, D.C. distillery and tasting room. In 2020, the company relocated production to Coppercraft Distillery in Holland, Michigan.
The bourbon itself is sourced from MGP in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, and the brand has not publicly disclosed the mashbill. After aging, it is finished sequentially in three different cask types: Oloroso sherry, Pedro Ximénez sherry, and Cognac. It is bottled at 100 proof, and master blender Nancy Fraley oversees each batch.
Redwood Empire Pipe Dream Triple Toasted Bourbon Whiskey
Awards: Best New American Spirit 2026 Presented by Total Wine & More, Shortlist for America’s Best Barrel Finished Whiskey, Gold Medal
Tasting Notes: Applewood, caramelized crème brûlée, burnt honey, pie crust, toasted pecan, dark cherry, spice
Find Your Next Bottle: $55.99
Pipe Dream Triple Toasted picked up the Best New American Spirit 2026 trophy, sponsored by Total Wine & More, which recognizes recently released expressions of note.
Redwood Empire is a Sonoma County, California producer founded by Derek Benham, with each of its whiskeys named for a redwood tree and a tree planted for every bottle sold.
The bourbon is built on Redwood Empire’s Pipe Dream four-grain mashbill of 72% corn, 18% rye, 5% wheat, and 5% malted barley, with component whiskeys aged between 4 and 14 years.
The “Triple Toasted” name refers to a secondary finish in three different species of toasted oak: French, Hungarian, and Garryana, a Pacific Northwest oak rarely used in whiskey cooperage. It is bottled at 92 proof.
Hush & Whisper Distilling Single Barrel Straight Rye Whiskey
Awards: America’s Best Single Barrel Whiskey, Gold Medal, Silver Medal
Tasting Notes: N/A
Find Your Next Bottle: Coming soon
Hush & Whisper is one of the youngest distilleries on this list, based in downtown Bryan, Texas, in the historic 1948 Varisco Building. The distillery was founded by Caleb Clanton, a Bryan native, Texas A&M graduate, and former US Navy intelligence analyst who trained at Moonshine University in Kentucky before opening the operation.
The distillery’s first Straight Rye was released in September 2025 at 100 proof. Hush & Whisper runs a genuine grain-to-glass operation, with corn and grain sourced from Denena Farms around 13 miles away, a three-story copper still from Vendome Copper and Brassworks as the centerpiece of bourbon production, and spent grains returned to the farm to feed cattle.
I cannot find much information about the Single Barrel expression, which appears to be a forthcoming release built on the same high-rye foundation, with each bottle drawn from a single hand-picked barrel. Again, this will be one to keep an eye out for.
Minglewood Distilling Company Bottled-in-Bond Rye Whiskey
Awards: America’s Best Bottled in Bond Whiskey, Gold Medal
Tasting Notes: Black tea, nutmeg, cured hay, grain, charred oak
Find Your Next Bottle: $64.95
Minglewood Distilling Company is a small-batch craft distillery in Wooster, Ohio, founded in 2016 by father-and-son team Mark and Andrew Morrison. The distillery is housed in the restored Minglewood Coal & Ice building, an 1880s structure in downtown Wooster from which it takes its name.
A Bottled-in-Bond designation carries strict requirements: the whiskey must be the product of a single distillery and a single distillation season, aged at least four years in a federally bonded warehouse, and bottled at exactly 100 proof.
The rye is built from a two-grain mash bill of 80% winter rye and 20% yellow corn, unusual for a rye, but clearly a winner at this particular competition. Minglewood also goes a step further with aging, maturing the whiskey for a minimum of 5 years rather than the required four.
Final Thoughts On The ADI ISC 2026 American Whiskey Winners
The ADI ISC 2026 American whiskey winners make for an interesting list because the six bottles tell two different stories at the same time. Heaven Hill’s Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Rye A925 and Joseph Magnus Bourbon represent two opposite philosophies from heritage producers, one bottled uncut from the barrel and the other shaped by three sequential cask finishes.
Meanwhile, four craft distilleries from Missouri, California, Texas, and Ohio show what regional American whiskey can look like in 2026, with two of them earning trophies for releases that have not yet reached shelves.
As always, the medal is only part of the story. The real question is whether the whiskey itself sounds like something you would want in your glass. So, which of these winners (if any) would you like to try? Would you like to have seen something else on the list? Let us know in the comments below.
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