Bourbon Weekly: Pernod Walks, $3,000 Stitzel, New Riff Wins It All

The Brown-Forman board confirmed Tuesday what bankers had been whispering for a week: Pernod Ricard is out. Two days later, Stitzel-Weller put 176 bottles of a 31-year-old bourbon on a shelf in Louisville at $3,000 each. By Friday, a $40 bottle of New Riff Bottled-in-Bond was named World's Best Bourbon in London. Tariffs lifted off Scotch and dropped onto EU autos in the same news cycle. May opened heavy.

This Week's Key Moves

• Brown-Forman and Pernod Ricard terminated merger talks April 28, leaving Sazerac's $15 billion offer as the only formal bid on the table¹
• Stitzel Reserve 31-Year-Old went on sale April 30 at the Louisville distillery: $3,000, 163.2 proof, 176 bottles²
• New Riff Bottled-in-Bond named World's Best Bourbon at the 2026 London Spirits Competition, announced May 2³
• Trump dropped the 10% Scotch tariff May 1, then raised tariffs on EU autos to 25%; EU bourbon retaliation list reactivated⁴⁵
• Wildcask Bourbon 2026 sold at the UK Beam Institute April 27, hits Lexington retail this week at $69.99/750ml⁶
• Michter's debuted US*1 Barrel Strength Sour Mash (111.5 proof, $120) and Angel's Envy released its first age-stated rye, a 10-Year Cask Strength ($269.99)⁷⁸
• MGP Q1 distilling sales fell 40%, signaling deeper bulk-whiskey demand collapse than analysts had modeled⁹

Pernod Ricard Walks. The Brown Family's Calculus Just Changed.

Brown-Forman and Pernod Ricard issued a joint statement Tuesday morning confirming they had ended discussions about a potential combination¹. The deal under consideration was 80% stock, 20% cash. The Brown family, five generations into running Brown-Forman, had reportedly backed the Pernod approach over Sazerac because the merger of equals would have preserved family influence in the combined business¹⁰.

That preference went nowhere. Two family-controlled public companies on different continents could not reconcile governance, valuation, and family-stake weighting at a price either side could accept. The talks ended without a deal.

What's left on the table: Sazerac's $15 billion all-cash offer at $32 a share, a roughly 11% premium to where Brown-Forman traded before the bid surfaced¹¹. Sazerac, which owns Buffalo Trace, Pappy Van Winkle, Eagle Rare, and Weller, has spent the last decade quietly assembling the most allocated portfolio in American whiskey. A Sazerac–Brown-Forman combination would put Jack Daniel's, Woodford Reserve, Old Forester, and the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection under one roof.

A 31-Year-Old at Cask Strength, $3,000, One Bottle Per Person

Stitzel-Weller opened sales of Stitzel Reserve 31-Year-Old on Thursday morning, April 30, in Louisville². Pulled from 13 charred American oak barrels in 2024, bottled April 28, 2026 at a cask strength of 163.2 proof (81.6% ABV). The yield: 176 individually numbered bottles. The price: $3,000.

Distilled in 1992 by a producer Diageo declines to identify and aged on-site at Stitzel-Weller for the past three decades, this is the second release in the Stitzel Reserve collection following the 2024 24-year-old. Director of American Whiskey Liquid Development Nicole Austin oversaw the project. The bottling proof is the second-highest of any age-stated bourbon to come out this year, behind only a handful of Buffalo Trace experimental releases.

Tasting notes published with the release describe waxy orchard fruit, pear brandy, cedar, burnt sugar, and the smell of old books on the nose; structured oak tannins and dark fruit on the palate; pine boughs and baked apple on the finish². A $350 add-on at the Garden & Gun Club at Stitzel-Weller offers a tasting pour, an etched glass, a branded bag, and a distillery pin. Bottles will not appear in retail.

The math here is unambiguous. Three thousand dollars buys you one of 176 bottles of bourbon distilled the year George H.W. Bush lost reelection. That is not a value proposition. It is a collector's product priced for the collector's market and likely to land on the secondary side of $5,000 within the month.

A $40 Bourbon Wins the World

The 2026 London Spirits Competition announced its results on May 2. The top bourbon honor went to New Riff Bottled-in-Bond Kentucky Straight, the Newport, Kentucky distillery's flagship roughly $40 expression³. Maker's Mark Cask Strength took the broader best-in-class score with 96 points.

A $40 bottle beating allocated and ultra-premium contenders is not an indictment of the high end. It is a reminder that allocation-tier scarcity and tasting-quality blind scoring measure different things. New Riff has been on this trajectory for years: a four-grain, sour-mash, no-chill-filter producer that built a reputation on consistent flagship quality rather than scarcity drops. Bottled-in-Bond is widely available at retail. The win tightens the case for buying it without checking the secondary first.

Tariffs Cut Both Ways This Week

Two tariff stories landed Friday and traveled in opposite directions. First, Trump announced the removal of the 10% U.S. tariff on Scotch whisky following a state visit by King Charles III⁴. That matters for Kentucky distillers more than it sounds: Scotland is the largest export market for used American oak bourbon barrels, and reciprocal tariff-free trade restores barrel-flow economics for both sides. Brands like Never Say Die have already announced they will resume U.S. shipments.

The same day, Trump raised tariffs on EU automobiles to 25%, citing what he called noncompliance with last summer's 15% framework agreement⁵. The EU response was immediate. A European Commission spokesperson said the bloc would "keep its options open to protect EU interests"¹². Translation: the retaliation list (bourbon, Harley-Davidson, jeans, and a dozen other politically-coded products) gets dusted off again.

This is the third time in a single calendar year that bourbon exporters have been pulled into a tariff cycle that has nothing to do with bourbon. American whiskey exports to the EU dropped 35% in 2025, the steepest single-market decline in the category¹³. Smaller distilleries with thin EU exposure can absorb it. Brown-Forman, which built Jack Daniel's into a global business through European duty-free and on-trade volume, cannot. Each new tariff headline pushes the $15 billion Sazerac math down, not up.

The Release Roundup

Wildcask 2026 — UK Beam Institute, $69.99

Wildcask Bourbon had its sales day April 27 at the University of Kentucky's James B. Beam Institute, with retail bottles reaching Lexington this week⁶. The 2026 blend: 24% Beam 8-year, 24% Four Roses 8-year, 39% Bardstown Bourbon Co. 6-year wheated, 13% Bardstown 5-year. Bottled at 100 proof. The 750ml runs $69.99 and a new 375ml is $34.99. Students in the Commercialization of Distilled Spirits course do the blending. The recipe access is the kind a working blender at a major distillery would want their hands on, and the result lands above the price.

Michter's US*1 Barrel Strength Sour Mash — $120

Michter's released the first-ever cask strength version of its Sour Mash Whiskey, averaging 55.75% ABV (111.5 proof) across the 2026 batches⁷. Standard US*1 Sour Mash is a softer, lower-proof expression in the lineup; the barrel-strength version is meant to showcase the sour-mash character without proof reduction. Annual or semi-annual cadence is likely; this is a lineup expansion, not a one-off.

Angel's Envy 2026 Cask Strength Dual Release

Angel's Envy put out its annual Cask Strength Bourbon (117.8 proof, $249.99) alongside its first age-stated rye, a 10-Year Cask Strength Rye (111.6 proof, $269.99)⁸. The 10-year rye is the more interesting bottle: a decade in oak plus Caribbean rum cask finishing, in a category where most American rye ships at four to six years. If you have liked the standard Angel's Envy Rye, the cask-strength, age-stated version is a meaningful step up.

Abraham Bowman #26 — Lottery Opens May 4

A. Smith Bowman's lottery for Abraham Bowman Special Release #26 opens at noon Eastern on Monday, May 4, and closes May 11¹⁴. An 11-year, 110-proof rye distilled in 2015. Suggested retail $79.99. Winners must pick up at the Fredericksburg, Virginia distillery between May 13 and May 31. No shipping. If you are within driving distance, this is a number worth chasing.

Industry Headwinds: MGP -40%, RNDC Selling States

Two business-side stories that did not get the M&A headlines but matter for shelf prices in the next 18 months.

MGP Ingredients reported Q1 distilling solutions sales fell 40% year-over-year, to $28 million⁹. MGP supplies bulk whiskey, including bourbon, to a long roster of non-distiller producers and craft brands. A 40% drop in their bulk pipeline means inventory pressure across dozens of brands you have probably never connected back to MGP. Combined with Jim Beam's full-year Clermont shutdown, the bulk-whiskey market is correcting harder than the consumer side has registered.

Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC), one of the country's two largest spirits distributors, agreed to sell its operations in 17 control-state markets to Martignetti Companies¹⁵. RNDC has been shrinking for two years. Big distributor consolidation is invisible to consumers until it isn't: bourbon brands rely on distributor relationships for shelf placement, and a forced reset in 17 states will reshape allocation patterns going into the second half of 2026.

What to Watch

• Brown-Forman May earnings and any board statements on the Sazerac bid. The next 30 days decide whether $15 billion is a floor, a ceiling, or a memory.
• A. Smith Bowman lottery results May 12.
• EU bourbon retaliation list if the auto escalation holds. The bourbon line item moves first.
• MGP Q2 guidance for whether the 40% drop is a single-quarter dip or a structural reset on bulk whiskey demand.
• Wildcask retail availability spreading from Lexington to wider Kentucky markets through May.

Keep Reading

Footnotes

1. Brown-Forman press release, "Brown-Forman and Pernod Ricard Terminate Discussions Regarding Potential Combination," April 28, 2026 ↩ ↩²

2. Breaking Bourbon, "Stitzel-Weller Distillery Unveils Stitzel Reserve 31-Year-Old Bourbon Whiskey," April 28, 2026 ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. Forbes, "The World's Best Bourbon — According To The 2026 London Spirits Competition," May 2, 2026 ↩ ↩²

4. Fred Minnick, "Trump Vows to Remove Tariffs on Scotch Whisky," May 1, 2026 ↩ ↩²

5. Bloomberg, "Trump Says US to Raise Tariff Rate on EU Cars, Trucks to 25%," May 1, 2026 ↩ ↩²

6. UKNow, "Wildcask Bourbon 2026 release is bottled and ready to hit shelves," April 2026 ↩ ↩²

7. Whisky Advocate, "Kelsey Plum's Maker's Mark Bourbon and More New Whisky," May 2026 ↩ ↩²

8. Luxury Lifestyle, "Angel's Envy Debuts 2026 Cask Strength Dual Release," May 2026 ↩ ↩²

9. The Spirits Business, "MGP's distilling sales plunge 40% in Q1," April 2026 ↩ ↩²

10. The Drinks Business, "Pernod Ricard gains family backing in Brown-Forman pursuit," April 2026 ↩

11. BevNET, "Sazerac Enters the Ring for Brown-Forman, But Analysts Are Skeptical," April 2026 ↩

12. Euronews, "Trump to raise US tariffs on EU cars to 25%, accusing bloc of not complying with deal," May 1, 2026 ↩

13. The Spirits Business, "US whiskey exports to EU plunge 35% in 2025," April 2026 ↩

14. Breaking Bourbon, "A. Smith Bowman Distillery Advances Rye Whiskey Experimentation With Latest Abraham Bowman Limited Edition Release," April 27, 2026 ↩

15. Brewbound, "RNDC Agrees To Sell 17 Control State Markets to Martignetti," April 2026 ↩