The Tasting Alliance has named the finalists for Best of Class Special Barrel-Finished Bourbon at the 2026 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, with the winner due to be announced at the Top Shelf Awards Gala in November.
The San Francisco competition is one of the longer-running and more closely watched spirits contests in the United States, and its Best of Class round pulls only from bottles that already earned a Double Gold during judging. All five of these bourbons cleared that bar before reaching the final cut, so the shortlist is competitive from top to bottom.
This particular category rewards bourbon that has spent time in a second cask after its first maturation, and the five finalists show how many directions that idea can take. Here is a closer look at each one.
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Maker’s Mark 46 Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky
Medal: Double Gold
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Tasting Notes: “Toasted coconut and anise with delicate florals — white flower, honeysuckle — and honeyed brioche. Punchy at proof and pleasantly tannic, with lingering spice, caramel, and licorice into a shorter, savory finish.” – SFWSC 2026
Find Your Next Bottle: $39 / £36
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The defining feature of Maker’s 46 is what happens inside the barrel near the end of its life. After the wheated bourbon has fully matured, the team inserts ten seared French oak staves into each barrel and lets it rest for additional time. The “46” in the name comes from the stave profile the distillery settled on after working through a long run of options with its stave supplier.
The base whiskey follows the familiar Maker’s recipe of corn, soft red winter wheat, and malted barley, with no rye in the mix, and it goes into the bottle at 94 proof without an age statement. Maker’s Mark itself dates to the 1950s, when Bill Samuels Sr. bought the Loretto distillery and built the brand the family still runs today.
Maker’s 46 arrived in 2010 as the first new product the company had released in decades, and it became the starting point for the Wood Finishing Series that followed. The bottle also took the World’s Best Finished Bourbon title at the 2026 World Whiskies Awards earlier in the year, which makes it the most decorated name heading into this round.
Wenzel Distillery Sherry Cask Finished Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: “Fruity, raisiny, and complex, with a rich, chewy, nutty palate evoking Oloroso sherry. A classic.” – SFWSC 2026
Find Your Next Bottle: $109
Wenzel is a young name with a fast-moving story. The distillery’s first batch of this sherry-finished bourbon won World’s Best Finished Bourbon at the 2025 World Whiskies Awards, which brought a lot of attention to a brand that almost nobody outside Kentucky knew the year before.
Wenzel has begun to distil its own product, but this particular whiskey was originally distilled at Ghost Coast Distillery in Savannah, Georgia. Its stock was sold to Wenzel in 2023.
Batch 2 blends various bourbons aged at least 7 years with various different finishing times from 9 to 36 months. It was bottled at 119.1 proof with a run of just 679 bottles.
Wenzel opened in 2022 as the first bourbon distillery to operate in Covington since before Prohibition, working out of an 1873 building, and it now sits on both the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and the regional B-Line.
Starlight Distillery Mizunara Reserve Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: “Pretty and evocative — light notes of incense like an old temple — opening into a rich, round, sweet palate of leather, vanilla, and creamy caramel with balanced spice. The finish is long, warm, and drying with a touch of heat.” – SFWSC 2026
Find Your Next Bottle: $149.99
Starlight comes from Huber’s Orchard, Winery & Vineyards in Borden, Indiana, where the Huber family has farmed since the 1840s and now runs one of the larger fruit farms in the state. The distillery began making spirits in 2001, growing most of its own corn and rye on the estate and using a sweet mash process rather than the sour mash common across the bourbon world.
The bourbon in this bottle blends Starlight’s three-grain and four-grain mash bills and spends somewhere around seven and a half to eight years in new charred American oak before the finishing step.
From there, it finishes in Japanese Mizunara oak, a wood that is both expensive and difficult to source. Those casks can run thousands of dollars each. Mizunara tends to give whiskey notes of incense and sandalwood.
The finished bourbon goes into the bottle at 112 proof. The Mizunara Reserve is part of Starlight’s run of finishing-cask releases, and it was one of four Double Gold winners the distillery earned at the 2026 competition.
Polly’s Still House Double Barrel Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: “A playful, layered nose of banana candy, Honey Nut Cheerios, and candied orange peel deepens into fruitcake, toasted oak, marshmallow, ginger, and tea. Crème brûlée, figs, and baking spice carry a lingering, luscious, cinnamon-tinged finish. Complex from start to end.” – SFWSC 2026
Find Your Next Bottle: Available at Polly’s Still House
Of the five finalists, this is the name most readers are least likely to recognize, which makes the Double Gold a pleasant surprise. Polly’s Still House is one of the labels produced by Black Shire Distillery, also known as Hermann Farm Distillery, in Hermann, Missouri, a Missouri River town settled by German immigrants in the 1830s.
This bourbon spends five years in a new charred Missouri white oak barrel, then moves into a second new Missouri oak barrel for two years, which gives the spirit another round of fresh charred wood to draw from. It goes into the bottle at 100 proof.
The distillery has not published the mash bill for this release, and most of what it makes is poured at the Polly’s Still House tasting room with limited reach beyond Missouri, so this is a harder bottle to chase down than the others here.
Wenzel Distillery Double Oak Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: “Bold and jammy, with leather, toffee, and vanilla.” – SFWSC 2026
Find Your Next Bottle: $99
Wenzel’s second appearance on this shortlist is a notable result for a distillery that has only been around since 2022, and it takes a different route to the finish line than the sherry cask bottle higher up this list. This one builds on a second helping of new charred oak, which puts it in the same family of ideas as the Polly’s Still House bottle just above.
The base whiskey shares Wenzel’s Covington home and almost certainly comes from the same Georgia-distilled stock the company has been finishing and bottling since 2023. The bourbon is double-oaked, meaning it goes through a second maturation in fresh oak after its first aging, and it reaches the bottle at a barrel proof of 110.1.
Wenzel has shared less detail about this expression than its sherry-finished sibling, and the mash bill and exact age have not been confirmed, so there are a few gaps in the record. What is clear is that the company walked away from the 2026 competition with more than one Double Gold, which is a strong showing for a distillery still early in its life.
Which Finished Bourbon Will Win?
The thing that stands out about this group is how many ways there are to finish a bourbon well. The five finalists cover French oak staves, sherry casks, Japanese Mizunara, and second charred barrels, and the judges rewarded all of them. There is a real gap in scale, too, with Maker’s Mark representing the one household name in a field otherwise made up of small producers, two of which lean on sourced or estate-grown stock to get there.
On paper, Maker’s 46 arrives as the favorite given its recent run of awards, but the craft finishers are the more interesting bets, and blind judging has a habit of going its own way. The winner will be announced at the Top Shelf Awards Gala in November.
Have you tried any of these five? Tell us in the comments which one you would reach for first, and whether you think the judges have the right bottles in the running.
