// Designation · Bourbon / Rye
Single Barrel
Whiskey drawn and bottled from one individual cask rather than mingled across many; a bottling method, not a mash bill or flavor profile of its own.
At a Glance
- Category
- Bourbon, Rye
- Flavor Direction
- Oak & Wood, Fruity
What Makes It Different?
- "Single barrel" means the whiskey in the bottle came from one specific cask, never blended with any other; as opposed to the far more common practice of marrying dozens or hundreds of barrels together before bottling.
- Because no two barrels age identically, single barrel releases of the same brand can vary meaningfully from bottle to bottle; that barrel-to-barrel variation is the point of the format, not a flaw in it.
Single barrel says nothing on its own about mash bill, proof, or flavor family; it describes how the whiskey was bottled, not what recipe produced it. Two single barrel bourbons from different distilleries, or even two single barrel picks from the same distillery, can taste noticeably different.
Flavor Profile
Production
A bottling choice, not a production step upstream of it -- the whiskey ages and is distilled the same way as the distillery's other releases, then gets pulled from one specific barrel rather than blended with others before bottling. Bottle matches here come from a bottle's own name explicitly naming it a single barrel release, not an independent barrel-count field -- see this style's own Explore Bottles section for that caveat. See Rickhouse Science for how a barrel's own floor level and rick location can make one single barrel taste different from its neighbors.
Explore Bottles
59 real bottles in our Distillery Directory carry this designation in the bottle's own name -- we don't have an independent field confirming batch size or barrel count, so this is based on what the bottle calls itself, not a verified count.
Try It Yourself
Trying a single barrel? Use the Guided Tasting experience to walk through aroma, palate, and finish while it's actually in the glass -- a more useful way to learn what this style tends toward than reading about it alone.