Elijah Craig 1981 - 18 Year Old - Single Barrel Bourbon 1422

Heaven Hill is a major producer of American whiskey founded in Bardstown, Kentucky in 1935 by the Shapira family, who still own the company today. The Shapira’s distillery, originally known as Old Heavenhill Springs, has been associated since the 1940s with the Beam family, with Earl Beam, Parker Beam and Craig Beam all serving as Master Distillers during the company’s history.

Aside from their substantial bulk whiskey and contract distilling business, Heaven Hill’s main bourbons include Evan Williams, Elijah Craig, Old Fitzgerald and Henry McKenna, alongside the Pikesville and Rittenhouse rye whiskey brands. The original Heaven Hill distillery sadly burned down in 1996, with Brown-Forman and Jim Beam stepping in to help cover supply. Heaven Hill subsequently purchased the Bernheim distillery from Diageo in 1999 and can now produce around 80 million litres of spirit per annum at full capacity.

Distillery bottlings are, as the name suggests, bottled by or for the distillery from which the whisky has originated and are thus often referred to as Official Bottlings or OBs. Distillery bottlings are generally more desirable for collectors and usually fetch higher prices at auction than independent bottlings. They are officially-endorsed versions of the whisky from a particular distillery and are therefore considered the truest expression of the distillery’s character.

This ideal of the distillery character is regarded so seriously by the distilleries and brand owners that casks of whisky that are considered to vary too far from the archetype are frequently sold on to whisky brokers and independent bottlers. When this happens, it is often with the proviso that the distillery’s name is not allowed to be used when the cask is bottled for fear of diminishing or damaging the distillery’s character and status.