Orphan Barrel

Acquiring some of the rarest casks from some of the finest Whiskey cellars.

The Orphan Barrel Conservation project acquired some of the rarest casks from some of the finest Whiskey cellars. Rare species hand bottled in Tullahoma, Tennessee, and once they're gone, they're gone forever. Extinct. In 2013 the U.S. had a boom in Bourbon and Tennessee Whiskey. At one point they were the fastest growing Alcohols in the game. This is when Diageo launched their Orphan bottle project, as a pretty ingenious response to this shift in the Whiskey industry.

Not only did this project address the market boom, it also accommodated the vast quantities of leftover product from a monopoly of acquisitions. At one point Diageo was sucking up mothballed distilleries like a hoover in a room full of dust bunnies. So when they didn't have a place for their newly acquired Spirit in their blends, they set the Drams aside. Time transformed the young Spirit into adult delicacies, thus allowing them to commercialize large stocks of ultra-aged American Whiskeys.

The Orphan Barrel Rhetoric 22 Year Old Bourbon was discovered at the iconic old Stitzel-Weller Warehouses in Louisville, KY -the distillery formerly owned by the legendary Pappy-Van-Winkle- but before you lose your shit, it was originally distilled at the historic Bernheim Distillery in Louisville, KY. The annual progressive release of this Kentucky ambrosia is in its 22nd year. The limited edition Bourbon is the eighth release from the Orphan Barrel Whiskey Distilling Company, and third in the Rhetoric series. Rhetoric carries a higher proof at 90.4.