Previous Fitzgerald 2024 VVS Is the Finest Bourbon within the World, In line with the World Whiskies Awards

As with many issues in life, style in whiskey is at the very least just a little subjective. However pit the most effective drams face to face, and there’ll invariably be some standouts. In February 2025, the World Whiskies Awards introduced one bourbon that stood above the remaining.

Previous Fitzgerald 2024 VVS was named the World’s Finest Bourbon on the 2025 World Whiskies Awards. This 13-year bottled-in-bond bourbon additionally earned the title of Finest Kentucky Bourbon. Previous Elk’s 9-Yr-Previous Straight Bourbon took residence the award for Finest Non-Kentucky Bourbon.

It’s a giant win for Kentucky’s Heaven Hill Distillery, one of many nation’s oldest and largest bourbon producers, which makes Previous Fitzgerald. Heaven Hill acquired the historic model in 1999 and right now releases the prized decanter bottlings twice per 12 months. Modern Previous Fitzgerald releases usually carry age statements between eight and 19 years. It’s wheated bourbon, distilled from a mash of 68% corn, 20% wheat, and 12% malted barley.

Nevertheless, the 13-year-old 2024 VVS launch has an much more spectacular pedigree. To mark particular events, Heaven Hill releases “Very Very Particular” (aka VVS) Previous Fitzgerald editions with a definite crimson label. The 2024 VVS was solely the third such launch, with earlier variations hitting (restricted) cabinets in 2018 and 2020.

This award-winning bourbon, whereas bottled in 2024, was really distilled in 1999—when Heaven Hill bought the Bernheim Distillery in Louisville, Kentucky. (Heaven Hill’s distillery in Bardstown, Kentucky was destroyed by fireplace in 1996.) In line with Heaven Hill, grasp distiller Parker Beam and his staff decided in March 2013 that the whiskey had reached its peak maturation and “needs to be reserved for a momentous event.” Beam instructed his staff to empty the barrels and retailer the bourbon in metal tanks.

Beam handed away in 2017. In 2024, Heaven Hill selected to launch the whiskey after greater than a decade in storage. The Very Very Particular launch celebrated each the twenty fifth anniversary of the Bernheim acquisition and Beam’s enduring legacy with the corporate. 

1 / 4 century after it was distilled, that bourbon hit cabinets in extremely restricted provide at Heaven Hill’s guests middle and choose retailers in Kentucky solely. Like all fashionable Previous Fitzgerald releases, it’s 100-proof and carries a bottled-in-bond designation. 

And after quite a few rounds of judging from dozens of skilled palates, the World Whiskies Awards decided it was the 12 months’s greatest. The placements for the World Whiskies Awards had been decided final fall by two rounds of judging held in Bardstown, Kentucky and Washington, D.C. A various panel of judges was chosen from throughout the whiskey business, together with distillers, blenders, journalists, and distributors. As is customary for the competitors, the evaluations had been performed solely blind, with samples poured in standardized glasses behind closed doorways and introduced out on numbered trays.

Even when assessed blindly, it’s not solely stunning that this specific Previous Fitzgerald stood out from the gang. Amongst reviewers and lovers, it was one in every of final 12 months’s most talked-about and well-received new bourbons. It’s a bourbon the general public needed to wait a long time to style — and for Heaven Hill, an award winner 25 years within the making.

The full checklist of winners in American whiskey classes showcases quite a lot of manufacturers, starting from established giants to craft operations and non-distilling producers. All U.S. winners had been introduced at a February ceremony held at The Brown Lodge in Louisville, Kentucky. Since bourbon and Tennessee whiskey can solely be produced in america, the determinations for these “World’s Finest” awards had been made after two rounds of home judging. Many top-rated whiskies from the American competitors, together with rye, malt, and wheat whiskies, superior to compete towards worldwide spirits for different World’s Finest titles, which had been evaluated within the UK in early February. The “World’s Finest” titles will likely be introduced later this March.