Does "small batch" mean a specific number of barrels?

Unlike "bourbon," "straight," or "bottled-in-bond," the phrase "small batch" has no standard of identity under TTB regulation; no required barrel count, no production ceiling, nothing. Any distillery can put it on a label, whether the batch was 12 barrels or 1,200. Different producers genuinely mean different things by it: some cap batches in the dozens, others use it for blends numbering in the hundreds of barrels, and it's entirely up to the individual brand to decide.

That doesn't make the term meaningless; plenty of distilleries use it honestly to describe a real, deliberately smaller blending run; but it means "small batch" is a marketing claim, not a verifiable spec you can hold a bottle to.