Your Bourbon Journey Standings

The Live Leaderboard: Road to the Sweet Sixteen

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This is the heartbeat of the Your Bourbon Journey season. As we move through our monthly blind competitions, every bottle’s performance is recorded here. The Top 16 highest-scoring whiskeys at the end of the season will advance to the Whiskey of the Year (WOTY) Blind Bracket.

Current Standings

Updated: 02/28/26

Video Leaderboard Updates

Catch the deep dives where we discuss the movement on the board and which bottles are “on the bubble.”

  • Q1 Update (4 Months): [Link to Video/May]
  • Q2 Update (8 Months): [Link to Video/September]
  • Selection Saturday: [Final Seeding Reveal Video/December]

The WOTY Bracket Structure

Once the leaderboard is finalized, the Sweet Sixteen are seeded #1 through #16 based strictly on their rubric scores. From there, it is a single-elimination march to the finish. Every single round is conducted completely blind to ensure the liquid in the glass does the talking.

  • The Sweet Sixteen: Our top 16 seeded whiskeys face off in head-to-head (or group) blind flights.
  • The Elite Eight: The winners advance to a high-stakes blind showdown to determine the best of each region/bracket.
  • The Final Four: The four remaining heavyweights meet in a penultimate blind tasting.
  • The Championship: The final two bottles go nose-to-nose. Only one will be crowned the Your Bourbon Journey Whiskey of the Year.

Tie-Breakers & Seeding

Because we rely on a 100-point scale, ties are possible.

  • Seeding Ties: If two whiskeys have the same score, their seed is determined by their Taste score. If still tied, we look to the Nose.
  • The Play-In: If there is a tie for the #16 spot, we will conduct a Live Blind Play-In to see who earns the final seat at the table.

How the Scoring Works

Each bottle starts with a base of 80 points. We then apply our 20-point Rubric (Nose, Taste, Finish, and Wild Card) to reach the final score.

[Click here to read the full breakdown of our Scoring Rubric]

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