Eight American states took home best-in-state whiskey awards at the 2026 International Whisky Competition, and the winners have very little in common beyond the country they were made in.
Some came from large operations with national reputations, including two bottles from Sazerac’s stable that spend most of the year on collectors’ want lists. Others came from small distilleries that grow their own grain and sell most of what they make within driving distance of the still.
The categories are just as varied, covering wheated bourbon, rye, American single malt, and even light whiskey, which rarely gets this kind of attention.
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READ THE STORYBelow, we look at how each of the eight was made, where it comes from, and the people behind it.
NOCO Distillery Rye Whiskey Founders Reserve PX Finish
Award: 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
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Find Your Next Bottle: $150 / £111
NOCO Distillery is a small operation in Fort Collins, Colorado, founded in 2016 by Sébastien Gavillet and Leif Jensen, with Gavillet serving as master distiller. This award-winning bottle is a rye whiskey made from 100% malted rye, triple distilled in copper stills using local water.
For the finish, the distillery sources Pedro Ximénez sherry directly and uses it to season its own used whiskey barrels in-house for up to a year before filling them with rye.
This was a limited single-barrel release. NOCO’s whiskeys have been available in Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada, and the distillery has announced plans to expand into Wisconsin and launch internationally in Hong Kong and Switzerland during 2026.
Warfield Gently Peated American Single Malt Whiskey
Award: 1st Place, Best Idaho Whiskey, 88.10 points
Tasting Notes: Autumnal smoke, sweet grain, dark chocolate, sea salt caramel, cocoa, leather
Find Your Next Bottle: $64.99 / £48
Warfield Distillery & Brewery sits at 280 North Main Street in Ketchum, Idaho, in the Sun Valley area. According to Forbes, founders Alex Buck and Ben Bradley met in 2013 and opened the combined brewpub and distillery in 2015, and it remains independently owned.
Warfield is one of a small number of fully certified-organic distilleries in the United States, and it works with Idaho-grown barley, mountain water, and Scottish copper pot stills.
The Gently Peated expression arrived in 2026 as part of a refreshed lineup that also includes Sun Valley Whiskey and Idaho Highlands Whiskey, and it is the first peated whiskey the distillery has carried as a core product. It is also the only Warfield release to use imported barley, sourced from Crisp in Scotland.
The peated malt is folded into the mash bill, and the whiskey is aged a minimum of four years before bottling at 46% ABV with non-chill filtration and no added color. It has been sold in Idaho and select markets.
William Larue Weller
Award: 1st Place, Best Kentucky Whiskey, 91.73 points
Tasting Notes: Vanilla, maple, leather, tobacco, oak, ripe fruit
Find Your Next Bottle: $1,800 / £1,440
William Larue Weller is the only wheated bourbon in the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, the annual autumn release of limited, well-aged whiskeys from Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Kentucky.
The distillery is owned by Sazerac, and Harlen Wheatley has been its master distiller since 2005. This bourbon is made from the same wheated mash bill as the regular W.L. Weller range and the Pappy Van Winkle line, using wheat rather than rye as the secondary grain alongside corn and malted barley.
It is matured in new charred oak and bottled once a year at whatever proof that year’s barrels come in at. The 2025 release was bottled at 129 proof (64.5% ABV) and aged 12 years and 7 months.
It is one of the most heavily allocated bourbons released each year, and bottles are difficult to find at retail.
Brother Justus Founder’s Reserve 3 (2025)
Award: 1st Place, Best Minnesota Whiskey, 91.07 points
Tasting Notes: Fresh orange, candied cherry, caramel, cherry vanilla cream, lemon drizzle cake, toasted hazelnut, campfire smoke
Find Your Next Bottle: $129.99 / £97
Brother Justus Whiskey Company is a craft distillery in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Founder’s Reserve 3 is the third release in its annual Founder’s Reserve series, following the 2023 and 2024 editions.
It is an American single malt, and like the rest of the series it is made from 100% Minnesota pale ale malted barley, aged in native Minnesota white oak, and made with water from the Headwaters of the Mississippi River.
Founder and CEO Phil Steger describes a production method built around a seven-day fermentation and distillation at higher proof. T
he whiskey is bottled at cask strength, 125 proof (62.5% ABV). According to the distillery, two-thirds of the blend was aged three years and 100 days in new medium-char 30-gallon casks, with the remaining third aged one year and 150 days in new medium-char five-gallon casks.
It was released as a limited edition, sold online with shipping to most states, at the distillery’s Minneapolis location, and in Minnesota liquor stores.
Flag Hill Straight Rye Whiskey Single Barrel Cask Strength 2026
Award: 1st Place, Best New Hampshire Whiskey
Tasting Notes: Soft, buttery, honey, sweet
Find Your Next Bottle: N/A
Flag Hill Distillery, in Lee, New Hampshire, is the oldest distillery in the state, although its whiskey venture began in 2004. It works grain-to-glass on a farm, growing its own corn, rye, and wheat, and produces a range of whiskeys that includes straight bourbon, wheated bourbon, a Breakfast Bourbon, American single malt, maple bourbon, and this straight rye.
The distillery describes its Straight Rye as using a high-rye mash bill. An earlier batch of the standard Straight Rye was reported as 85% rye and 15% malted barley, aged two years in charred barrels. This award-winning whiskey is a single-barrel version bottled at cask strength.
A caveat worth noting: I could not find an image or any specific articles relating to the 2026 release, and the information given on the distillery’s website sits next to an image of the 2022 release. The mash bill and age figures above come from an earlier bottling of the standard Straight Rye, so the details for this specific single-barrel cask-strength release should be treated with caution. Perhaps this is upcoming?
Weldon Mills Reserve Straight Bourbon Whiskey
Award: 1st Place, Best North Carolina Whiskey, 92.45 points
Tasting Notes: Caramel, vanilla, baked bread, toasted oak, baking spice, crushed nuts
Find Your Next Bottle: $64.95 / £48
Weldon Mills Distillery sits on the Roanoke River in Weldon, North Carolina, and was founded in 2018 by Bruce Tyler and Michael Hinderliter. Weldon Mills works grain-to-glass, and the Reserve is a barrel-proof straight bourbon made from a wheated mash bill of North Carolina corn, malted wheat, and malted barley, with water from the Roanoke River.
The distillery sources its grain locally, and according to Drinkhacker the corn comes from a farm about fifteen minutes away that supplied the original mill more than a century ago.
The team reportedly uses sour mash fermentation and 300-gallon batch distillation in hybrid stills, then ages the whiskey in a combination of 15, 30, and 53-gallon barrels with a #4 char. It is aged at least two years and bottled at barrel proof, so the strength varies by batch.
Austin 121 Cask Strength Single Barrel Light Whiskey
Award: 1st Place, Best Texas Whiskey, 91.33 points
Tasting Notes: Mineral, butterscotch, vanilla, dark spice, sweetness
Find Your Next Bottle: N/A
This one stands apart from the other winners because of its category. Light whiskey is a distinct American classification. According to the TTB Class and Type Designation list, light whiskey is “Whisky produced in the U.S. at more than 80 percent alcohol by volume (160 proof) [but less than 95 percent alcohol by volume (190 proof)] and stored in used or un-charred new oak containers.”
Distilling to that higher proof strips out more of the heavier grain flavors, and the used or uncharred oak gives it far less of the barrel character you get from bourbon. It is not a category you often see win state awards.
Austin 121 is made by Austin Craft Spirits Company in Austin, Texas, and its co-founder is Tom Buchsbaum. The whiskey is built from 100% Texas grains.
The distillate enters the barrel at 125 proof and rests in previously used barrels of varying sizes, from 15 up to 53 gallons. Austin 121 begins as a barrel of the distillery’s Austin 101, and selected barrels are aged longer and bottled at full cask strength, with each bottle falling somewhere between 121 and 136 proof.
It is not often that light whiskey tops an awards category.
A. Smith Bowman Cask Strength (Batch #5)
Award: 1st Place, Best Virginia Whiskey, 94.60 points
Tasting Notes: Candied apples, smoke, ripe plums, cherries, sweet florals
Find Your Next Bottle: N/A
This was the highest-scoring American whiskey in the competition. A. Smith Bowman Distillery has been owned by the Sazerac Company since 2003. It is often described as the sister distillery to Buffalo Trace, and the two share a parent company.
One point worth understanding about Bowman is that while the distillery does distill on site, some of its whiskey begins at Buffalo Trace or another Sazerac distillery before being shipped to Virginia to be redistilled and aged.
Batch #5 was aged a minimum of ten years and bottled uncut and non-chill filtered at 137.6 proof (68.8% ABV). It is a limited annual release. Bottles were sold through an online lottery in February 2026 at an MSRP of $99.99, with a limited number also reaching select bars and retailers through Sazerac’s distribution network.
Final Thoughts
These eight winners show just how much ground American whiskey now covers, literally and figuratively. In one competition, you have two long-aged, heavily allocated bourbons from Sazerac sitting alongside a handful of small distilleries working with grain grown on or near their own land, and the categories run from wheated bourbon and rye through American single malt to light whiskey.
What ties most of them together is a focus on where the grain comes from and how it is handled, whether that is a farm in North Carolina or barley from the Idaho mountains.
Have you tried any of these? Are there any you would like to track down, and do you think the judges got it right? Let us know in the comments.
