January 1, 2026

Happy New Year, Bourbon Family!

At Your Bourbon Journey, we spent all of 2025 searching for the absolute best pours on the market. We tasted over 100 expressions, from heritage Kentucky legends to innovative craft distillers. But now, the “fun” part of the year is over, and the evaluation begins.

Starting tomorrow, January 2nd, we launch our 2025 Whiskey of the Year Sweet Sixteen Playoff.

The Integrity of the Process

We believe the label on the bottle shouldn’t dictate the score. To find our winner, we use a 100% Blind Bracket System.

1. Selection: We took our 12 Monthly Winners and our 4 highest-scoring runners-up (Wildcards).
2. Seeding: Bottles were seeded based on their performance in our “Whiskey of the Quarter” battles.

The Playoff: A head-to-head, single-elimination tournament where we have no idea what is in the glass until the Championship trophy is awarded.

The Class of 2025: The Contenders

To make it into the Sweet Sixteen, these bottles had to be the best of their respective months. Here is the field of 16 that earned a spot in the starting bracket: (with links to the original tasting videos)

The #1 Seeds (Quarterly Winners)

• Old Louisville Cognac Finish (Q1 Winner)
• Wild Turkey 101 8-Year (Q2 Winner)
• WH McBrayer, 2025 Batch 5 (Q3 Winner)
• Bardstown Discovery Series 13 (Q4 Winner)

The #2 Seeds (Quarterly Runners-Up)

• Woodford Double Double Oaked
• Star Hill Farms Wheat Whisky
• Starlight 2025 10-Year Cask Strength
• Patriotic Meri-COB

The #3 Seeds (Quarterly 3rd Place)

• Starlight Family Reserve (Blake’s Pick)
• Orphan Barrel: Fanged Pursuit
• Neeley Bottled in Bond Four Grain
• Fountain Run Bottled In Bond

The #4 Seeds (The Wildcards)

• Oxmoor Farms Single Barrel (March Runner-up: 94.5)
• Old McBrayer Single Barrel (January Runner-up: 94.5)
• Silver Grove Kentucky Straight Bourbon (December Runner-up: 94)
• Booker’s 2025-01 “Barry’s Batch” (April Runner-up: 93.5)

How to Follow the Tournament

We will be releasing the results in stages. Every bottle you see on the table will be masked. We won’t know the winners of the early rounds until the very end, ensuring that our palates stay objective through the Grand Finale.

• Jan 2–5: The Sweet Sixteen (4 Videos)
• Jan 6–7: The Elite Eight (2 Videos)
• Jan 8: The Final Four
• Jan 9: The Grand Finale & 2025 Champion Reveal

Who is your pick for the title? Will a #1 Seed hold the line, or are we looking at a “Cinderella Story” from the Wildcard ranks?

Subscribe to our Your Bourbon Journey YouTube channel to see every battle as it happens.

Cheers to the journey! — Wayne & Rebecca

🚨REMEMBER TO ALWAYS DRINK RESPONSIBLY🚨

❓Questions❓ YourBourbonJourney@gmail.com

NOTE: All spirits in this tournament were purchased by us for the purpose of evaluation. We were not compensated by any producer for reviews or inclusion in this series. These rankings are based solely on our blind tasting scores and the performance of the liquid in the glass throughout the 2025 season.

#whiskeyoftheyear #bourbon #blindtasting #whiskeytournament #bourbonreview #yourbourbonjourney #bestwhiskey2025 #sweet16 #whiskeybracket #kentuckybourbon