🥃 Clash of the Titans! Elite Eight Battles 9 & 10 | Blind Whiskey of the Year 2025

The field has been cut in half, and the intensity is peaking! Welcome to the Elite Eight of the 2025 Blind Whiskey of the Year tournament. Today, Wayne and Rebecca from Your Bourbon Journey dive into Battles 9 and 10, where only the “best of the best” remain.

This isn’t just any tasting—it’s a clash of 1 seeds vs. 2 seeds. These are the quarterly champions and runners-up, featuring top-tier straight bourbons, a wheat whiskey, and a finished standout. Everything is 100% blind, re-shuffled to ensure total objectivity.

Battle 9: Candidate Q vs. Candidate R

• Candidate Q: A dessert lover’s dream on the nose with brown sugar, caramel, and cinnamon, leading into a spicy palette with intriguing notes of coffee and chocolate.
• Candidate R: A “classic bourbon” powerhouse. Savory, complex, and layered with emerging notes of tobacco and leather on the back end.
• The Verdict: Does the sweetness of Q win out, or does the savory complexity of R take the slot in the Final Four?

Battle 10: Candidate S vs. Candidate T

• Candidate S: A “light and bright” profile featuring a unique “sweet and sour” yin-yang of lemon zest and brown sugar.
• Candidate T: A confectionery shop in a glass! Huge notes of rich butterscotch and silky dark caramel with a thick, oily mouthfeel.
• The Verdict: It’s a battle of contrast—bright citrus vs. deep butterscotch. See which one secured a 94-point score!

Which of these profiles sounds like your winner? Are you Team Butterscotch (T) or Team Tobacco & Leather (R)? Let us know in the comments!

🏆 WOTY TOURNAMENT HUB: View the live bracket, match results, and winner scores.16 Bottles. One Champion. No Labels. HERE

📈 THE ELITE EIGHT IS SET: The opening round saw a massive 93.5 average winner score. Even the bottles that were eliminated averaged a 92.1! See the full breakdown of the scores and which “Giant Slayers” pulled off the upset HERE

🥃 THE ROAD TO 2025 WOTY: We spent 12 months hunting for the best juice—see our complete selection process and the 100% blind bracket logic on our website: HERE

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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.

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