Bourbon News: Old Forester and Elijah Craig Headline Bourbon Day

National Bourbon Day fell on Saturday, June 14, and the distilleries treated it like a deadline. Two of the week's biggest bottles landed within 24 hours of the holiday. A third arrived carrying a story about milkshakes. And a farm in the Nevada high desert opened a lottery for the oldest whiskey its soil has ever produced.

The Week in Five Bullets

• Old Forester brought back President's Choice in bourbon and rye, June 13, $225 each, 110 to 125 proof, aged 7 to 9 years¹
• Elijah Craig released a 21-year single barrel for National Bourbon Day, June 14, $299.99, 94 proof, 1,789 bottles²
• Booker's poured its Milkshake Batch (2026-02), 124.4 proof, aged 7 years 6 months 12 days, $99.99³
• Frey Ranch balloted its first 10-year bourbon, 102 proof, $99, the oldest whiskey ever aged in Nevada⁴
• Barrell Bourbon Batch 038 landed, a four-state blend for the country's 250th, 116.96 proof, $84.99⁵

National Bourbon Day Did the Heavy Lifting

Old Forester brought back President's Choice for the second year running, in both bourbon and rye. Both went on sale June 13 at the Louisville distillery, with a small online allocation for Kentucky, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and D.C.¹ Each barrel runs 7 to 9 years and bottles somewhere between 110 and 125 proof, picked barrel by barrel. The suggested price is $225. The program traces back to a 1960s practice of hand-selecting single barrels for Brown-Forman executives, and the modern version keeps the same single-barrel format. The catch: that online allocation only ships to five jurisdictions, so for most of the country this is a distillery-floor bottle or nothing.

Elijah Craig answered the next morning. Heaven Hill reserved exactly 1,789 bottles of a 21-year-old single barrel, a nod to the year Elijah Craig is credited with first making bourbon². It went on sale June 14 at the Heaven Hill Bourbon Experience in Bardstown for $299.99. The number that stands out is the proof: 94. A 21-year Kentucky bourbon at standard bottling strength is unusual, because two decades in a rickhouse usually either dries the barrel out or pushes the proof well past 120. Heaven Hill held it at the everyday EC strength so the age could carry the glass instead of the heat.

Beam's Milkshake

Booker's released its second batch of 2026 this week, and the name does the storytelling. Batch 2026-02, the "Milkshake Batch," comes in uncut and unfiltered at 124.4 proof, aged 7 years, 6 months, and 12 days, for $99.99³. Booker Noe, the sixth-generation Beam master distiller, was known for stirring bourbon into homemade chocolate malted milkshakes at family gatherings, and the batch carries his name forward. The whiskey pulls from four seven-story rickhouses, weighted toward upper-floor barrels where the heat works fastest. Booker's remains one of the few barrel-proof bourbons from a major producer you can still find near suggested retail, though "near" does some lifting in allocated markets.

A Blend Built for the 250th

Barrell Craft Spirits put out Batch 038 with a red, white, and blue label for the country's upcoming 250th anniversary⁵. The blend bottles at 116.96 proof for $84.99 and reaches across four states: 12-year Kentucky, 12- and 15-year Tennessee, 9- and 10-year Indiana, and 8-year Maryland stock. Barrell owns no distillery. It sources and blends, and Batch 038 leans into that by stitching together aged whiskey no single producer could pour from one warehouse.

Lower down the price ladder, Penelope began a nationwide rollout of its Classic Series, with a 92-proof Kentucky straight bourbon at $44.99 and a straight rye at $34.99⁵. Not a hype release. Just a wide, steady pour at a price most people can actually pay on a Tuesday.

Under the Radar: Frey Ranch Goes Long

The release with the longest backstory came from Fallon, Nevada. Frey Ranch grows its own grain and has distilled since 2015, and this is the first time it has let a bourbon sit a full decade⁴. Batch #1 of the 10-Year is 102 proof, non-chill filtered, $99, distilled from estate-grown corn, rye, wheat, and barley. Five hundred bottles go through an online lottery that opened June 15 and closes June 22, with winners drawn June 23; another 500 sold at the distillery starting June 13. It already pulled a Double Platinum at the 2026 ASCOT Awards. A farm-to-bottle 10-year from outside Kentucky, priced under $100, is the bottle to watch this month.

Cultural Signal: $1,500 for a Horse

The week's loudest luxury bottle honors a thoroughbred. Thirty-One Lengths, a collaboration between Hallowed Spirits, Claiborne Farm, and the family of Penny Chenery, is a 15-year Kentucky straight bourbon bottled at 100 proof and priced at $1,500⁶. The name marks Secretariat's 31-length romp at the 1973 Belmont Stakes, and Claiborne Farm is where the horse is buried. Sales run direct-to-consumer, first come first served. Whether the liquid justifies four figures is almost beside the point. The bottle is selling one of the best stories in American sports, and the people who chase it know that going in.

What to Watch

• Father's Day, June 21. This week's premium drops were timed to it. Expect retail shelves to thin out fast on anything allocated.
• Frey Ranch lottery closes June 22, winners announced June 23. Sign-ups are open now.
• Green River Distillery Select Toasted Double Oak (115.1 proof, $49.99) reaches the Owensboro distillery June 20⁵.
• Garrison Brothers Ranch Reserve, PX Sherry and Oloroso Sherry expressions (109 to 110 proof, $149.99, 8 years), debut June 27⁵.

Keep Reading

Footnotes

1. Breaking Bourbon, "Old Forester Celebrates National Bourbon Day with Return of President's Choice," June 2026 ↩ ↩²

2. Heaven Hill, "Elijah Craig Expands Single Barrel Lineup with Rare 21-Year-Old Release," June 2026 ↩ ↩²

3. Fred Minnick, "Beam Releases Booker's Bourbon, The Milkshake Batch," June 11, 2026 ↩ ↩²

4. The Spirits Business, "Frey Ranch ballots northern Nevada's 'oldest' Bourbon," June 2026 ↩ ↩²

5. Bourbon Obsessed, "New Bourbon Releases News for June 13, 2026" ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

6. Fred Minnick, "Secretariat Tribute Thirty-One Lengths Bourbon Launches," June 5, 2026 ↩