The International Whisky Competition has been running since 2010, and every entry it receives is tasted blind and scored out of 100 across fifteen separate criteria. The people preparing the samples are kept as unaware of what they are pouring as the judges themselves, and each category awards a single gold, silver, and bronze rather than handing out medals in bulk.
The 2026 results were announced on July 7 following judging at the Louisville Thoroughbred Society in Kentucky. Seven American category titles went to six whiskeys between them, and here is a closer look at each one.
A. Smith Bowman Cask Strength (Batch #5)
Award: 1st Place, Best American Whiskey (Overall), Best Bourbon Whiskey, Best Bourbon Whiskey – Cask Strength, Best Bourbon Whiskey – Small Batch, 94. 60 points
Trending Content
Tasting Notes: Candied apples, smoke, ripe plums, cherries, sweet florals
Find Your Next Bottle: N/A
A. Smith Bowman is unusual among bourbon producers in triple distilling its main line, a practice master distiller Brian Prewitt has said the distillery has followed since the 1980s. Partially distilled spirit arrives in Fredericksburg from sister distillery Buffalo Trace, and Bowman completes the job on a 2,000-gallon copper pot still.
Signup now to make sure you don't miss out on the latest whiskey news and deals.
By Signing up, you accept and agree to our Terms of Services and you acknowledge our Privacy Statement. The Whiskey Wash is protected by reCAPTCHA, and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Signup now to make sure you don't miss out on the latest whiskey news and deals.
By Signing up, you accept and agree to our Terms of Services and you acknowledge our Privacy Statement. The Whiskey Wash is protected by reCAPTCHA, and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Abram Smith Bowman and his sons founded the company in 1934, the distillery moved to its current site in 1988, and Sazerac has owned it since 2003.
Batch #5 carries a minimum age statement of 10 years and was bottled at 137.6 proof, uncut and without chill filtration, with an MSRP of $99.99. Master distiller Brian Prewitt has explained that Virginia’s hot summers and mild winters evaporate more water than alcohol during maturation, which pushes the proof up over time.
The Cask Strength series has been an annual limited release since 2021, and Batch #5 was sold mainly through an online lottery in February 2026 with pickup at the distillery.
NOCO Distillery – Rye Whiskey – Founders Reserve – PX Finish
Award: 1st Place, Best American Rye Whiskey, 1st Place, Best American Cask Finished Whiskey, 1st Place, Best Colorado Whiskey, 91.93 points
Tasting Notes: Fig jam, black cherry, sticky toffee pudding, rye spice, roasted pecans, cocoa powder, dark berries, molasses, plum, dates, maple, nutmeg, cinnamon, orange peel, toasted oak
Find Your Next Bottle: $150 / £111
Distilleries finishing a whiskey in Pedro Ximénez casks usually buy barrels that have already held sherry somewhere else, though NOCO decided against it, saying used PX casks often arrive “tainted with unwanted sulfur compounds.” The distillery bought Pedro Ximénez sherry directly instead and aged it in its own used whiskey barrels for up to a year before filling those casks with rye.
The whiskey is made from 100% malted rye and triple distilled in copper stills, using Rocky Mountain water and a slow fermentation. NOCO is a small operation on South Link Lane in Fort Collins, Colorado, founded in 2016 by Sébastien Gavillet and Leif Jensen, with Gavillet working as master distiller.
The release was announced on May 1, 2025, in limited quantities at $150, sold through the Fort Collins distillery and selected retailers.
Hogback Peat Smoked Single Malt Whisky
Award: 1st Place, Best American Single Malt Whiskey, 91.17 points
Tasting Notes: Smoke, oak, peat, BBQ meat, beef jerky, vanilla, pepper, blackberry and apple pie
Find Your Next Bottle: $70 / £52
Graeme Wallace spent roughly twenty years in Scotland reviewing and writing about Scotch, including a book on the history of Ardbeg, before leaving in 2016 to build a distillery of his own in Colorado. He named it after the Dakota Hogback Ridge, which runs the length of the Colorado Rockies, and now makes close to twenty styles of whiskey from a base in Boulder, with a tasting room up in the mountain town of Estes Park. He talked Samuel Wright through the move in our Q&A with him last year.
The distillery calls this bottling “a truly personal endeavor,” and the reason is in the barley. Hogback says it is made from Scottish grown barley malted over peat cut from a bog a few miles from where Wallace was born, then aged for a minimum of three years in virgin oak casks and bottled at 100 proof.
Austin 121 Cask Strength Single Barrel Light Whiskey
Award: 1st Place, Best American Light Whiskey, 1st Place, Best Texas Whiskey, 91.33 points
Tasting Notes: Mineral, butterscotch, vanilla, dark spice, sweetness
Find Your Next Bottle: N/A
Light whiskey is a thinly populated corner of American whiskey, and Austin Craft Spirits Company has built its whole range inside it. The company says its method was inspired by traditional French eau de vie, distilling to a higher proof than bourbon and filling recycled oak whiskey barrels, many of them from local craft bourbon makers, rather than new charred oak.
Austin 121 begins life as a barrel of the company’s Austin 101. Selected barrels are aged for longer and bottled at full cask strength without chill filtration, and each bottle carries its own barrel number and proof, which the company says runs between 121 and 136.
No mash bill percentages have been published, though Breaking Bourbon reports the grains are non-GMO white corn from Texas, red winter wheat from the Texas Panhandle, and Texas barley malted in Fort Worth.
Tom Buchsbaum, Gary Cotshott and Stephane Godevais founded the company in 2018, and Austin 121 is sold through selected Texas retailers.
Traveller Whiskey – Blend No. 40
Award: 1st Place, Best American Blended Whiskey, 87.80 points
Tasting Notes: Vanilla, fruit, buttery shortbread, caramel, oak, spice, toasted nuts
Find Your Next Bottle: $28 / £28
Buffalo Trace master distiller Harlen Wheatley worked through more than fifty blends with musician Chris Stapleton before the two of them settled on one, Number 40, and Wheatley has described the process in terms of making music: “you experiment, test, adjust, and don’t give up until you’ve got it right.”
What actually goes into the blend is something Wheatley has declined to spell out. Asked by Whisky Advocate how many labels were involved, he answered “more than two,” and on the age of the oldest component he offered “old enough to taste good.” He did confirm the whiskey comes from Buffalo Trace’s own stocks and contains no neutral spirits, which the blended whiskey category would otherwise permit.
Traveller launched in January 2024 at 90 proof, blended and bottled in Frankfort, Kentucky, and initially sold for around $38.95. It remains a permanent release and was joined in February 2026 by a 121 proof version called Full Proof.
Rockfish Whiskey
Award: 1st Place, Best Corn Whiskey, 87.07 points
Tasting Notes: Vanilla, caramel, oak
Find Your Next Bottle: $24.95 / £18
Weldon Mills Distillery works out of a former corn mill on the banks of the Roanoke River in Weldon, North Carolina, which is a fitting enough home for a corn whiskey. Bruce Tyler, a former officer in the US Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, bought the mill property in 2019 and restored it alongside his friend and business partner Michael Hinderliter, with the distillery opening in 2020. Rockfish takes its name from the striped bass that spawn in the rapids running past the site.
Recognition arrived quickly. Roughly a year after opening, Rockfish took Best in Show at the 2021 Heartland Whiskey Competition alongside Best North Carolina Whiskey and Best in Category, and it went on to win Best American Craft Whiskey at the 2023 Craft Distillers Spirits Competition.
Weldon Mills describes itself as making everything in North Carolina with small batch equipment and locally sourced ingredients, and the distillery holds itself out primarily as a bourbon producer, with whiskey, gin, vodka and tequila alongside it. No mash bill percentages or age statement have been published for Rockfish.
Final Thoughts
The six winners divide fairly neatly. Two come from Sazerac-owned operations, with A. Smith Bowman taking the overall American title and Traveller the blended category. The other four come from distilleries that have all opened since 2016, two of them in Colorado. Availability follows a similar split, since Traveller is a permanent national release and Rockfish sells regionally, while the Bowman, NOCO and Austin bottles are variously limited, single barrel, or sold through a lottery.
Have you tried any of these six? Are there any you would like to seek out? And what do you make of the results? Let us know in the comments.
