Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Lowered Age Statement

Elijah Craig Barrel Proof Lowered Age Statement

Recently, there has been a lot going on in the bourbon industry. Some positive, some negative. In these articles, I want to be as positive as I can, while acknowledging the truths of what we are experiencing in the industry as consumers and fans. My goal is to give my opinion on what I see in the industry and open the conversation with everyone. Adding to that, I think there things we get a feel for being consumers. When you are constantly looking through the American whiskey isles, we pick up on trends, and wonder if others see them too. Our curiosity is piqued by a cool new bottle, or a YouTubers review or internet article of a bottle makes us want to hunt for it. Talking to other whiskey nerds and friends, I’ve discovered many of us are curious about other’s opinion to help formulate our own, or help inform us on whether a bottle would be one we want to pass, try or buy.

I have to be completely honest here: I have only been a whiskey fan since 2022. I have a background as a coffee roaster, and much of a coffee roaster’s job is tasting, and making adjustments to roasts so that quality is always as high as it can be. Naturally, this applied to tasting whiskey as well. Tasting is something that I enjoy quite a bit. Dissecting a whiskey and searching for nuanced flavor is really fun. So when I had that AHA moment where I realized bourbon had flavor and it wasn’t just something that burned on the way down or tasted good with coke, I dove deep into it (like most of us probably did). Since my experience is fairly limited in years, and I haven’t tasted as much as some out there, I have tasted a lot, and tried some unique things to grow my palate and figure things out. I also have enjoyed diving into the history of some of the distilleries. I’ve learned a lot about many of the incredible whiskeys I most likely will never have the opportunity to taste, and yet, good whiskey, actually incredible whiskey is still being made today in 2025. 

Now let’s talk about Elijah Craig Barrel Proof. Over the years, I’ve observed, and heard others observations from books, YouTube videos, and documentaries about the trends in bourbon. Specifically, one that shocked all of us as fans of Elijah Craig Barrel Proof was the removal of the consistent 12 year age statement from the Barrel Proof offering. This is something that was foreshadowed years before as the 12 year age statement was removed from the small batch 94 proof offering in 2016. From what I’ve read and heard, this caused quite an outrage since it was many peoples beloved go-to affordable bourbon. And 7 years later it  was announced that the age statement of 12 years minimum would move to a variable age statement, which could be above or below 12 years. At the time, I had only been in bourbon for a short time, but even I could already sense the frustration, and had quite a bit of my own frustration. Age statements DO NOT indicate that a product will be good, but what it does indicate is QUALITY. I think many of us felt that the quality of a product that is consistently a top contender would be severely hurt. There are many factors we can consider that may be behind the scenes, but as the consumer we don’t have clarity on all of the factors leading to decisions like this, and it kinda leaves a sour taste in your mouth (no pun intended). 

The main thing I wanted to point out was although Batch C923 was widely considered as one of the best tasting and best quality batches since the older pirate label bottles, it still left a lot of doubt in me as a whiskey consumer. With the context we have now of continually trending-downward age statements over the past few years, it leaves me frustrated as a consumer. I don’t think I’m alone in saying this, but I think I felt, “Surely, they won’t go below 11 years.” “I understand with how crazy the bourbon boom has been over the past few years, maybe they just need a little flexibility to batch in some barrels that taste incredible that are almost 12 years old.” But then, we see the age statements decrease again and again until we see 11 years on the dot, and the unthinkable, an age statement below 11 years (10 years 9 months). Even further, with the release of batch A125, we see another lowered aged statement (10 years 7 months). I think the consumers felt this sense of impending doom (to be dramatic haha) that the C923 batch was almost like a bandaid to the lowering age statement rather than a promise of future quality. 

Although I don’t necessarily want to defend Heaven Hill’s seemingly lowering quality and still charging the same price, but as I’ve matured in tasting whiskey, I’ve learned that age is not everything. If you’ve ever had a bourbon at a lower age that tasted much older, you begin to realize that quality can be attributed to many other things. On the other hand, there are well aged bourbons that just don’t taste very good, and even some high aged blends, don’t taste as great as we may want them to. Now Heaven Hill makes very high quality bourbon, but at the trend that we’ve seen, even with inflation, I don’t think that you can continue to keep the trust of the consumer by continually lowering the age statement. That brings me to my main point: If the age statement gets any lower than 10 years, Elijah Craig Barrel Proof will fall into obscurity.

Written: Friday, February 14, 2025

Article by: Drew Martin