The San Francisco World Spirits Competition is one of the largest spirits competitions in the United States. Run by The Tasting Alliance, it judges every entry blind, with panels scoring spirits without knowing the brand or the price.
The single barrel bourbon field at the 2026 competition produced seven Double Gold winners, which is a strong showing for the category. The list runs from a widely known Kentucky icon to craft releases of fewer than a hundred bottles, and it includes whiskey made grain-to-glass as well as bourbon sourced and bottled by independent brands.
Here is a closer look at each of the seven.
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Blanton’s Original 93 Proof Single Barrel Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
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Tasting Notes: Nutmeg, spices, vanilla, honey, caramel, corn
Find Your Next Bottle: $79 / £80
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In 1984, master distiller Elmer T. Lee released Blanton’s as the first commercially sold single barrel bourbon in honor of former master distiller, and Lee’s mentor, Albert B. Blanton. Blanton was known for drawing bourbon from so-called “honey barrels” to entertain visitors, an idea that inspired Lee to create the brand in his name.
Blanton’s is made at Buffalo Trace in Frankfort, Kentucky, drawn one barrel at a time from Warehouse H, the only metal-clad warehouse on the property, where wider temperature swings push the spirit further into the wood.
The recipe is Buffalo Trace’s high-rye Mash Bill #2, and the bourbon is bottled at 93 proof.
Each stopper holds one of eight horse-and-jockey figures that spell out B-L-A-N-T-O-N-S.
Despite a fairly reasonable MSRP of around $65, Blanton’s has become an aspirational bourbon that is increasingly difficult to find (and in in its home market. If you live in the UK, however, you can currently pick up a bottle from Master of Malt for just £79.95.
Blanton’s Straight From The Barrel
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: Dark chocolate, caramel, walnut, oak, butterscotch, honey, vanilla
Find Your Next Bottle: $140 / £150
This is the same liquid as Blanton’s Original, with one difference: nothing is watered down. Straight From The Barrel is bottled uncut and unfiltered at the barrel’s natural strength.
For years, it was an export product aimed mainly at Japan, where cask-strength single barrel bourbon has a long following, and it only became available in the United States around 2020. It is the most concentrated expression in the Blanton’s range, and the whiskey enters the barrel at 125 proof before maturation does the rest.
Conviction Single Barrel Small Batch Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: Vanilla, clove, honey
Find Your Next Bottle: $55
Conviction is quirky before you’ve even opened the bottle because it is made inside a former prison. Southern Grace Distilleries operates out of a 1929 correctional facility in Mount Pleasant, North Carolina, aging its bourbon in the original cell blocks and using loud music to vibrate the barrels, a process the distillery calls sonic aging.
The company was founded in 2014 by Leanne Powell and Thomas Thacker, and moved to the prison site in 2016 to expand into bourbon. The mash bill is 88% corn and 12% malted barley, with no rye or wheat. It goes into the barrel at around 104 proof and is bottled at cask strength, one barrel at a time.
Golden Beaver Distillery Pacific Flyway Single Barrel Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: Butterscotch and baking spices
Find Your Next Bottle: $99
The thing that sets this bourbon apart is in the grain bill. Golden Beaver uses 25% California-grown Calrose rice alongside 51% corn, 14% rye, and 10% malted barley, drawing on the rice-growing region around its home in Chico, California.
The distillery was founded by documentary filmmaker Kris Koenig and his brother Tom, and the tasting room opened in 2020. The name and the conservation mission both point back to California’s golden beavers, which were nearly wiped out in the 1800s and whose dams helped build the wetlands of the Pacific Flyway migration route. The company donates to the Occidental Arts & Ecology Center WATER Institute, which helps to restore beaver habitats, with every bottle sold.
The Pacific Flyway bourbon is a small annual release, and single barrels have been bottled at cask strength.
Mugen Spirit Shogun Series: Nobunaga Single Barrel Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: Ripe cherry, dark fruit, cacao, butterscotch toffee, prune and cherry compote, cinnamon, oak, chocolate malt, rye baking spice
Find Your Next Bottle: $349.99
Mugen Spirit is a Louisville brand built on a single idea: take aged Kentucky bourbon and frame it through Japanese history, folklore, and casks.
It launched in 2025 with a series named for Japanese mythological creatures, and its debut release was named Best New Bourbon by Uproxx that May.
The Shogun Series followed, themed on historical warlords, and Nobunaga is named for the 16th-century daimyō Oda Nobunaga. The release starts as Kentucky straight bourbon aged more than 15 years, then spends additional time in ex-whisky casks from the Chichibu distillery in Japan, and is bottled above 120 proof. The base distiller and the mash bill are not disclosed, and the bottlings are very limited.
Nashtucky Single 8 Year Old Single Barrel Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: Cinnamon, caramel, charred oak, raisins, orange peel, leather, dried oak
Find Your Next Bottle: $130
The name is the quickest way to understand the bottle: Nashtucky is Nashville plus Kentucky, a label of the Nashville Barrel Company that bottles Kentucky-distilled bourbon in Tennessee. The company was founded in 2018 by Mike Hinds and James Davenport, who started buying their own barrels during the bourbon shortages of that era and opened their own Nashville facility in 2021.
This single barrel carries an 8-year age statement, is bottled at cask strength, and varies bottle to bottle. The originating distillery and the exact mash bill are not made public.
Whiskey Thief Distilling Co. Wheated Single Barrel Straight Bourbon Whiskey B1 424
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: Honey, candied orange, vanilla, caramel, maple syrup, oak, cinnamon
Find Your Next Bottle: $80
Whiskey Thief built its reputation on letting visitors fill their own bottle straight from a single barrel, using a copper whiskey thief, uncut and unfiltered; the distillery describes its goal as the best single barrel tasting experience in Kentucky. It sits on a 127-acre family farm in Franklin County, just outside Frankfort, where the team grows its own grain and distills on site.
Ross Caldwell founded the operation in 2012. Whiskey Thief was its legal name from the start, registered before the distillery was licensed to make bourbon, but the family operated it publicly as Three Boys Farm Distillery, named for Caldwell’s triplet sons.
Walter Zausch, a former architect who had bought barrels from the farm for his own brand, took ownership and brought the original name back in 2022, on the distillery’s tenth anniversary.
The winning expression here has a high wheat mash bill of 70% corn, 21% wheat, and 9% malted barley. It is aged for at least 5 years and bottled from a single barrel.
Baker’s 7 Year Old Kentucky Straight Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: Fruit, vanilla, caramel, oak, toasted nuts
Find Your Next Bottle: $35 / £28
Baker’s takes its name from Baker Beam, a grandnephew of Jim Beam, and it was one of the four original members of Beam’s Small Batch Collection when the range launched in 1992, alongside Booker’s, Knob Creek, and Basil Hayden’s.
For most of its life it was a batched bourbon, but in late 2019, Beam relaunched it as a single barrel, with each bottle drawn from one cask and the barrel details printed on the neck. It is made at the James B. Beam Distilling Co. in Clermont, Kentucky, from Beam’s standard mash bill of 77% corn, 13% rye, and 10% malted barley, aged a minimum of seven years and bottled at 107 proof. The proof is deliberate: Baker Beam liked his bourbon at that strength.
Baker’s 13 Year Old Kentucky Straight Bourbon
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: Fruit, vanilla, caramel, oak, toasted nuts, fruity notes
Find Your Next Bottle: $140 / £112
This is the older, scarcer sibling of the 7 Year. It uses the same Beam mash bill and the same single barrel format, but spends thirteen years in new charred American oak, and like the rest of the line it is bottled at 107 proof.
The release first appeared as a one-off in 2019, then returned in 2023 as an annual limited edition.
The extra six years of aging is the whole point of the bottle: more time in the barrel pulls out deeper oak, dried fruit, and toasted nut notes than the younger version carries, and the price reflects the wait, running well into the hundreds. As a continuously aged 13-year single barrel, it sits at the older end of what any major Kentucky producer releases on a regular basis.
Maker’s Mark Private Selection “Milk Chocolate Truffle” Distillery Exclusive
Medal: Double Gold
Tasting Notes: Vanilla, honey, bright fruit, creamy caramel, toasted caramel, milk chocolate, almonds, clove, ripe fruit, orange peel, coffee
Find Your Next Bottle: $292 / £219
This is a single barrel from Maker’s Mark’s Private Selection program, which lets a buyer build a custom finish. Every Private Selection starts as Maker’s Mark at cask strength, already aged around six years, and is then finished in the distillery’s limestone cellar with ten wooden staves chosen from five different wood types, each cut and cooked to push the spirit in a particular direction.
The stave recipe is the one variable that turns one bourbon into many, and the combinations run to over a thousand.
The master distiller names each barrel for the flavor it most resembles; this one was tagged “Milk Chocolate Truffle.” Like all Maker’s Mark, it is wheated, using corn, wheat, and malted barley rather than rye.
The 2026 SFWSC Single Barrel Verdict
Because every one of these is a single barrel, a medal reflects the exact cask the judges tasted rather than a promise that every bottle on the shelf will be identical. That is worth keeping in mind, though it takes nothing away from the result.
It also cuts the other way, and that is the fun of it. The specific barrel that won at the competition has long since been bottled and sold, so you will never taste the exact whiskey the judges scored. The barrel sitting on the shelf is its own thing, with its own proof and its own quirks, shaped by where it sat in the warehouse and how long it stayed there. With cask-strength single barrels like most of these, two bottles of the same expression can taste noticeably different.
So the only way to settle it is to buy one and see whether you agree with the judges. Pick the bottle that interests you most, pour it next to a brand you already know, and decide for yourself.
Compare prices and find your bottle through the links above, and tell us which of the seven you would put your money on.
