The San Francisco World Spirits Competition has been running since 2000, and over the past quarter century it has become one of the largest and most closely watched blind tastings in the spirits world.
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READ THE STORYOrganized by The Tasting Alliance, it judges every entry without labels, prices, or packaging in view, so a whiskey rises or falls on flavor. The top score a panel can give is Double Gold, which means every judge on the panel awarded it a gold, and only those bottles move forward toward the Best of Class titles.
This year, five straight bourbons earned their place as finalists for Best of Class Straight Bourbon, and the winner will be named at the Top Shelf Awards Gala in San Francisco this November.
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So, before the winner is announced later this year, here is a closer look at all five, how each one is made, and where you can find it.
Finalist: Brother’s Bond Cask Strength Straight Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: “Notes of fig cake and dark muscovado sugar lead this sweet, dessert-like pour.” – SFWSC 2026
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Find Your Next Bottle: $70 / £56
Plenty of people meet Brother’s Bond through its founders before its whiskey. Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley played the Salvatore brothers on The Vampire Diaries, and they launched the brand in 2021 after spending close to a year blending samples at Ian’s kitchen table. They worked from taste rather than theory. As Paul told me when I spoke to them both, “I drank a lot of bourbon in Georgia. I preferred that sweetness, more corn.”
The four-grain recipe they settled on, 65% corn, 22% rye, and 13% wheat and barley, is distilled at MGP in Indiana and aged at least four years. The cask strength version bottles that same profile uncut, around 115.8 proof.
Ian keeps the priority simple: “Quality first, quality first. If it’s not in the bottle, it ain’t in the bottle.” It has now taken Double Gold three years running.
Finalist: The Maven Kentucky Straight Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: “A classic, seamless bourbon layering brown sugar, toasted oak, ginger, and baking spice. Toasted caramel and burnt sugar deepen into rancio-like complexity, carrying through a long, smooth, and spicy finish.” – SFWSC 2026
Find Your Next Bottle: $TBC
The Maven is the one bottle here you can’t yet buy, with a countdown on its website ticking toward a September 8, 2026 release. It also tells you very little. There is no published mash bill, age statement, or proof, only the brand’s own description of a whiskey “created with a selection of six exceptional bourbons curated from our library,” blended for what it calls the new standard for luxury bourbon.
Trademark filings connect The Maven to IJW Whiskey Company, a Kentucky producer that has been quietly buying and aging bourbon for years, though the brand itself doesn’t confirm the link or name its sources.
So, until release, there isn’t a huge amount of info available on this one. We will be counting down the days until release.
Finalist: Square 6 High Rye Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: “Distinctive and intriguing, with aromas of yeasty proofing dough, Darjeeling tea, and fresh sawdust. The palate brings tea, kitchen spice, and caraway, finishing long and fruity with a pleasant tannic grip.” – SFWSC 2026
Find Your Next Bottle: Available at the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience and selected retailers in Kentucky
The name Square 6 points back to the plot of Louisville land where Evan Williams set up Kentucky’s first commercial distillery. The bourbon comes from Heaven Hill, the largest family-owned distiller in the country, but it isn’t made on the big stills. Instead, it is produced on a small copper pot still at the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience on Whiskey Row, at a rate of roughly one barrel a day.
A pot-still-only bourbon is unusual in Kentucky, and the recipe is unusual for Heaven Hill too: 52% corn, 35% rye, and 13% malted barley, which makes it a genuine high rye. It carries no age statement, though the distillery has put it at around six years, and it is bottled at 95 proof. Think of it as a craft project running inside one of the category’s giants.
Finalist: Willett Pot Still Reserve Kentucky Straight Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: “Rich and beautifully balanced, opening with charry black fruits and spiced orange. The palate is round and easy-drinking — caramel, toffee, cocoa, and baked apple — with gentle heat and a soft, nutty finish. A classic bourbon through and through.” – SFWSC 2026
Find Your Next Bottle: $45 / £78
You will probably recognize this one before you read the label, because the bottle is a glass replica of the copper pot still the whiskey is named for, built by Vendome to match Willett’s own. The distillery is in Bardstown and has been in the Willett family since Thompson Willett founded it in 1936.
After a long decline, Even Kulsveen bought the business in 1984 and spent years bottling sourced whiskey under labels like Noah’s Mill and Rowan’s Creek before the family returned to distilling on site in 2012. It is now run by the next generation, Drew Kulsveen and Britt Kulsveen Chavanne, following the deaths of Even and Martha Kulsveen in 2025.
Pot Still Reserve is the family’s flagship, a wheated bourbon made from a recipe reported as 65% corn, 20% wheat, and 15% malted barley, bottled at 94 proof. It started life in 2008 as a sourced single barrel and became a small-batch release around 2015. Willett now describes it as distilled, aged, and bottled in-house, carrying no age statement but with a minimum of four years in the barrel.
Finalist: Pinhook 10 Year Vertical Series Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: “Intense, concentrated, and layered. Baked cherry and kettle corn give way to dark chocolate, toffee, black pepper, and warm cinnamon and cardamom spice over baked red fruit. Mouthcoating and bold, with a long, peppery, gently warming finish.” – SFWSC 2026
Find Your Next Bottle: $90 / £72
Pinhook does something here that not many brands attempt, which is to bottle the same set of barrels year after year so drinkers can taste what another twelve months in the wood actually does. The Vertical Series follows a single lot of barrels as they age from four years all the way to sixteen, and this is the ten-year release.
The whiskey was distilled at MGP in Indiana. The mash bill is 75% corn, 20.5% rye, and 4.5% malted barley. This release was blended from just 75 barrels, the smallest batch in the series so far, and bottled unfiltered at cask strength, 115.9 proof, under the gold wax the series is known for. At $99.99 for well-aged MGP whiskey, it has been an easy one for reviewers to recommend.
The brand was founded in 2011 by Sean Josephs, a sommelier and restaurateur, along with Charles Fulford and Jay Peterson, and the name comes from the horse-racing practice of buying young thoroughbreds and bringing them along, which is why every label carries a racehorse name and jockey-silk colors.
Which Bourbon Will Win?
It is a varied group of finalists, taking in a celebrity-founded brand, a secretive newcomer that isn’t even on shelves yet, a craft experiment from one of Kentucky’s biggest names, a family distillery with one of the most recognizable bottles around, and an age-stated release from an independent blender. All five earned Double Gold in blind judging, where the panel had no labels or prices in front of them, and now only one can take Best of Class.
We will find out which at the Top Shelf Awards Gala in San Francisco this November. Tried any of the five, or have a favorite from the lineup? Let us know in the comments which one you think should win.
